Given the specific Texans I know that have had expat assignments in Stavanger, I can't imagine that helped erase the stereotype... We seem to send some crazy folks over there... Not to mention drillers... Drilling engineers are nuts.

To be fair, the origin of the term probably has more to do with 50's and 60's Westerns than with any idea of present-day Texas. You'll also find references to "wild west" / "vill vest" used in pretty much the same contexts as "texas".

Though we also have the harsher term "Amerikanske tilstander" ("American conditions") that especially in the 80's was often used in politics by the left to evoke an image of a failing state.

Fellow Norwegian here, can confirm this is an old term related to the "cowboys & indians / wild west" stuff that was so prevalent in American cultural exports at the time. I actually grew up in Texas among a tiny colony of Norwegians in the Houston area (obviously centered around the oil industry).

It's given me an interesting window into all the weird obviously false stereotypes that Americans have about Scandinavians and that Scandinavians have about Americans (and Texans in particular).

Like pretty much everywhere in the US, big Texas cities lean (or, in Austin’s case, are quite) left, suburbs are increasingly very swing, and the rural areas are really right wing but have been emptying out. Texas has a somewhat higher proportion of rural to urban/suburban population than New York State which makes Texas overall a “red” state and New York “blue”, but a current Silicon Valley resident is probably going to feel far more at home in Austin, Houston or one of their closer suburbs than they would in rural western or upstate New York.