It simply means that most of Norway (In the area sense, not population) simply is too sparsely populated to support any meaningful form of public transport, and

It simply means that most of Norway (In the area sense, not population) simply is too sparsely populated to support any meaningful form of public transport, and for large parts of the year the weather is sufficiently disagreeable that walking or biking either is out of the question or means getting dressed for the occasion, which adds considerably to the time needed to get somewhere, particularly if kids are involved. I am sure some advances could be made - say, utilizing smaller buses and perhaps make them go out into the boonies only if someone had notified the bus company that they wished to take the bus - but for the most part, when the population is evenly and thinly distributed over a large-ish area with shoddy weather, the car is king for transport. Walking in the snow is one thing, walking on ice in -20C/-4F while wind gusts threaten to topple you quite another; that being said, people are quite eager to use bikes whenever the weather is agreeable-ish - it's just that the car is the viable fallback plan when it is not - not public transport.