If I need a government number, I'd like 007, please

Yesterday (Friday) was an action-packed day for us both. Our agent had gotten back to us with the news that I needed to have a personnummer (national ID number) to get a bank loan to buy the house. This was when I started to get a bit nervous. My experience with government bureaucrats in the US has led me to look on them all like James Bond villains writ small, whiling away their days in cubicles instead of hollowed-out volcano lairs, plotting against humanity. When we got married I told Inki it would be fine with me if she kept her name if only because it would spare her the trouble of changing it. When she changed it anyway, all my fears were borne out. Example: It took us three visits to the NC DMV to get her a new driver's license. Each time we came back with what we were supposed to have and they wanted something else. By the second visit (with a new Social Security card in her married name) we had enough to get her a new license in her married name, but apparently not enough to change the name on the one she had. They were going to send us away the third time as well until Inki jumped the counter, took the fellow we'd seen the second time by the collar, and forced him to admit that we'd brought everything he'd said we'd need for a new license.
Norwegian bureaucrats, on the other hand, have always been helpful and reasonable in my experience. Before the wedding my anxiety dreams did not have Inki leaving me at the altar or confessing her love for another; my great fear was that I would not have the one impossibly elusive piece of paper I needed to convince the Norwegian church and state to marry us. Norway has a central registry of its people and knows whether they are marriage-eligible or not, so if you're a foreigner looking to marry there, they ask for a certificate from your government's central registry to confirm that you're neither a) already married nor b) mentally incompetent. Of course, Americans don't want the guv'mint knowing too much about them, so there's no such central registry in the US. All I could do was provide a) a letter from the embassy that no such document exists, and b) a letter from the NC Department of Public Records that they had no record of a previous marriage for me. I could, of course, have been married in Arizona or Maine (or both, like those bigamist truckers you sometimes hear about), but there was no practical way for me to perform searches in all 50 states. I was afraid that on the eve of the wedding my papers would be found somehow wanting just like in every WWII movie ever and all hope would be lost. Nope. No problem whatsoever. "Have a happy life together, and congratulations!"
Still, when I heard I needed this registry number (and fast), I was nervous. Andor tried to reassure me, telling me, "It's just a blank on a form the guy doesn't know how to fill in. There's no ill will behind it, so don't worry."
So yesterday at 8:30am we were queued up outside the Foreigner's Office waiting to speak to a case worker to get my work permit expedited so I could apply for a national ID number. The fellow we spoke to was very sympathetic and said he'd have the work permit for us by Tuesday, which was the first day he wasn't meeting with applicants all day.
Then we went to the agent's to get the keys and take a look around inside our new place, and one of her co-workers suggested we apply for a "D-number" which would fill the bill. We went back to the Foreigner's Office to ask about a D-number, and learned you need to get one of those to open a bank account, so we went to the bank. The bank people said they'd have to apply for a D-number for me at the national registry so we went there. At the national registry they told us a D-number was the same as a temporary personnummer and that I could apply after getting my work permit on Tuesday, but that there was a backlog in Oslo due to summer vacation and it would be at least three to four weeks before I got one. My heart sank. I looked over at Inki to see if she saw some angle I didn't, and she didn't look any happier. Everyone had wanted to help us but couldn't. We wouldn't get the loan, we wouldn't get the house, everything was going to fall apart. I felt sick to my stomach.
The lady at the registry office was really sad she couldn't help us and tried to cheer us up with the knowledge that once I had this D-number/temporary personnummer I'd have it for life. Then the light bulb over Inki's head went on. "But," she said, the hope rising in her voice, "he had a work permit here four years ago. He paid taxes. He must have had a D-number then, right? And it would be the same D-number now, right?"
Yes, it would be the same D-number, and after borrowing my old passport (thank God I didn't chuck it when the new one came) she looked me up. I had my number, we called the agent, and all was right with the world again. I actually did one of those triumphant slides soccer players do after scoring a goal with both knees out in front of me and my hands raised to the sky, right across the tiled floor of the registry office. GOOOOOOOOOOOL!