Vidar Sandli finally had to tell his fiance Aida Hassan years after they met that he had been convicted and sentenced to jail before he met her and that a vacancy in the Norwegian jail system had finally opened up and he had to leave her to go serve his prison sentence.

Sandli, 41, had been convicted and sentenced more than four years earlier, before he met her, but so chronic is the shortage of jail cells in Norway that he - like thousands of other criminals - was forced to wait indefinitely for a place to become vacant.

"At first, before I met Aida, I was calling the courts every day, wanting to get my sentence started," said Sandli, who was convicted of possessing two kilograms of cannabis. "I really cleaned up my act after my conviction. I haven't touched drugs since."

He had to wait 4 years to begin serving a 3 year sentence. This is not uncommon in Norway. It is also really bizarre. They do at least jail rapists and murderers immediately. But not all kinds of violent criminals are jailed and some attack again before being put into prison. What kind of nation would subject itself to this kind of nonsense? Are they masochists? Do they want to see just how much they can mess up their society and still have it function?