On that day two full trams passed her stop before she was able to get on one. Something that otherwise never happens in the city.
So I think you've got a very different impression of how Amsterdammers stop cycling when there's a bit of snow. My own impression is that there's at least a 10x difference in the number of cyclists the day after some snow at rush hour compared to the same time of day on a weekday in the summer months when you can bike to work in a T-shirt.
Also, as someone from further up north than Oslo you may not be appreciating the logistical difference in cycling in the sort of snow they get up there v.s. what you get in Amsterdam. Most of the time when it snows in Amsterdam you've got 2-3 cm at most, no icing, and major cycle paths clear up down to the asphalt on at least the center-line by 8:30 at the latest.
None of which means you need a car. I cycled to work year round to work when I lived in Iceland, but it's definitely a very different challenge. You need studded tires, a mountain bike etc.
[1] https://twitter.com/GVBnieuws/status/1087946558677635073
Oslo has very steep hills. I know people that climb 100's of meters per day during their cycle commute.
So yeah very different.
Oslo is 5 deg celsius colder in winter than Amsterdam. You sometimes have sub-0, for them it's a norm.
There is a big difference between 5C-10C and 0C (a Warsaw-native here, which is closer in terms of temperatures to Oslo)
When I did live in Oslo I did put on those studded tires for the colder months. But that was only for the late autumn and spring when there might be ice but mostly bare tarmac.
The actual winter months was not suitable for cycling. Studded tires are fine on cleared roads with nice rink type thin ice on it. But on most roads especially the park roads I prefered to cycle on you could not see the tarmac. Cycling in the winter on a normal bike is a nightmare on these surfaces that are several layers of snow and ice refrozen many times leaving random deep grooves which forces your wheel to turn in all sorts of directions all the time. Add a foot or two of snow if the snow ploughers and gritters had not been there yet that morning. Exhausting and dangerous.
I'd like to corroborate the sibling comment: this is not true. Although not in Amsterdam, elsewhere in the Netherlands I consistently park my bike in the same parking around the same time, and it usually fills up at about the same pace. Far fewer spaces were taken when I parked my bike during the harsh weather than there were usually.
Here in the Netherlands people seem to have no problems doing exactly that on a bike. Is Oslo any significantly different than, say, Amsterdam? Last week we had all sorts of harsh whether (sub-zero temps, heavy rain, snow) during my morning commute, which didn't seem to affect bike traffic one bit.
> Parents in Norway also spend a lot of time caring for their children
The subtext being if you are against cars you are a bad parent?
> which includes driving them around to various activities
No, parenting includes taking them to places, not driving.