Is Norway having a hot summer like the much of the rest of Europe?

Yes, kind of. We have had a pretty nice summer this year, so far.

All bananas in the photos here were planted as seedlings or small pups this year. Basjoos were about 12 inches tall when planted out, same as the largest sikkimensis. (Calling it huge, as I do on photobucket, might be a little exagerated...)

We started off May with a week of high temps and sunshine. Then the weather turned "crappy" in the 50-60s range until the end of june. The weather here changes quickly, and musa basjoo doesn't really like that at all. Especially 55 degrees and rain seems to be of the wrong sort.

July has been very nice, with temps of upper 80s. Today I actually went swimming in the ocean wich today was a temperature of 70 degrees F.
With a warm august, maybe these bananas will get a little bigger before king winter comes around.

Erlend

Erlend, will you have to dig up your bananas and palms to bring indoors for winter? How cold does it get there? I know that some palms grow on the southeast Irish coast nearest the Gulf stream. Do you have mild winters in your part of Scandanavia? Is that an oakleaf hydrangea I see in a pic? If those are oakleaf hydrageas, are they popular in Norway?

The sikkimensis and helens, I will bring in. The basjoos I am going to leave out. I will not take any chances with the sikkimensis, cause they grow slowly when young and fast when big. So I will store these in the cellar, bare rooted.
Here we have a minimum temperature of about -10 degrees celsius, but usually it's only about -5 most winters. We can also have fairly warm days in the middle of winter in the range of 10 degrees C. And we're in a zone 8. With plenty of rainfall!
If you are referring to the pic with me posing in it, I think the plant you see in the background is "Goats beard" or "Aruncus dioicus". They definately grow very well here, and can probably take zone 4 conditions.

Erlend