In my personal opinion, Norwegians are easier to get to know than many others, for the simple reason that we all (mostly anyway) dislike small talk. For example in the US, UK or Aus where I have spent a lot of time the normal thing is to start with a "hey, how are you", "hey, how's it going" or "Hi, it's nice weather outside today". And the only acceptable answer to give is "I'm fine, how are you?" Which is so fucking boring and often times really hard to develop an actual conversation from there. I have noticed so many times that if you just start talking about the weather or some other pointless shit the conversation never goes any further than more pointless shit.

Every time I try to make friends while traveling and the conversations always, without exceptions, start with small talk like the ones mentioned above, I just start cringing and I can't keep up. The same as they probably cringe at me trying to make a valuable conversation with them without going through the motion of small talk first. It's just a matter of cultural differences as mentioned above. But if you know how to get around these cultural differences making friends is easy everywhere... How to get around small talk in other countries is a topic for a different time.

Getting to know a Norwegian person the easiest way is to just be open and "alpha". You say your coworkers don't invite you out anywhere, and yeah that's pretty fucked up of us Norwegians, but as mentioned above it's all about knowing the culture - invite yourself. Just say or ask: "Hey, do you mind if I join you for lunch today?" or "Can I join you for a night of drunkenness this evening". Unless you're a super creepy dude they will without question say "sure". Do not expect anyone to invite you out here - it's not about being cruel or cold, it's just how it is.

Every Norwegian friend I have that I didn't get to know through university, work or hobbies started with something like "What do you study" or "Do you like your job". These questions are open-ended enough that the conversation can easily be steered to more questions about who that person actually is, and not too direct to scare anyone off.

This is of course just my personal opinion so I might be wrong about the whole small talk thing, but that's my opinion as a dude who grew up in Norway and has traveled a lot (and also has a lot of friends in all cultures).