“Norwegian Wood” is a Beatle song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It was first recorded on October 12, 1965; but the final version on the album Rubber Soul (maybe my favorite Beatle album) was recorded on October 21, 1965. The song lyrics, written primarily by Lennon, are about an extramarital affair. McCartney added to the lyrics, especially the middle eight (“She asked me to stay...).

Originally titled “This Bird Has Flown”(now the subtitle), the name “Norwegian Wood” is a sarcastic commentary on the cheap pine paneling on the walls in Peter Asher's house. Paul McCartney is quoted here referring to the last verse as a statement about revenge (something that I often wondered about when singing the song): "In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge. It could have meant I lit a fire to keep myself warm, and wasn't the decor of her house wonderful? But it didn't, it meant I burned the f**king place down as an act of revenge, and then we left it there and went into the instrumental."

Lennon started writing the song in February '65 while on a ski vacation at St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps with his wife Cynthia and also George Martin, who was injured in a ski accident. Lennon said in an interview: "I was trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know I was having one. I was sort of writing from my experiences - girl's flats, things like that. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with."

While filming “Help” George Harrison became interested in Indian music while watching the Indian musicians play their Beatle medley featuring sitar. George studied the sitar with Ravi Shankar, and the droning sitar became an integral part of the sound of “Norwegian Wood”

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1971, John Lennon explained why it was decided to use the sitar on this song. He recalled: "I think it was at the studio. George had just got the sitar and I said 'Could you play this piece?' We went through many different sort of versions of the song, it was never right and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn't coming out like I said. They said, 'Well just do it how you want to do it' and I said, 'Well I just want to do it like this.' They let me go and I did the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time and then George had the sitar and I asked him could he play the piece that I'd written, you know, dee diddley dee diddley dee, that bit, and he was not sure whether he could play it yet because he hadn't done much on the sitar but he was willing to have a go, as is his wont, and he learned the bit and dubbed it on after. I think we did it in sections."

“Norwegian Wood” is said to be a prime example of Bob Dylan's influence on the Beatle's lyric writing.