I'm in Norway and not freaked out either, but I'm mildly entertained by the news coverage:
- The TV2 news' only comment from the locals, paraphrased as "What the fuck was that?" ("Ka i hælvete va det?")
- UFOologists claiming that "this defies physics as we know it".
- Russian Military Official A claiming that this was definitely a missile, while Russian Political Official B claiming that this was definitely not a missile.
The rocket/missile explanation was the first thing I thought of. It looks pretty much the same as some U.S. military missile tests I saw in southern California. (Those ones didn't malfunction and spiral, but they left the same sort of glowing trails in the evening sky.)
Altho I enjoyed Adam Curry's crackpot theory on it being related to the large hadron collider and the Obama visit.