I have a Pinus sylvestris 'Glauca Nana' shrub-on-a-stick that has been in the ground for a year. It is doing very, very well, so well that I started pruning it. I primarily removed dead wood and weak growth in the crown, and made it airy. This made it possible for me to look at the internal branch structure.

I discovered that nearly a quarter of the branches are contorted, more contorted than I expected. A few branches are even snake-like, taking maybe 10 or 20 times longer to take the green at the end of the branch to the sunlight at the outside of the crown. The green itself is perfect, there are even two little green pine cones that I did not expect to see on such a small tree, so cute :-) I can see no signs of disease or pest. I did not prune the snake-like branches as I do not see any necessity (yet) but they are likely the first to go if I need to further thin out the crown some day. Or maybe I keep the longest snake as a curiosity :-)

Anyway, are such snake-like branches normal for the given cultivar? Even looking at the crown as a shrub (the one on the stick) why would even a shrub grow a few of its branches in a snake-like fashion like that?

As a reference point, I have pruned an old globe arborvitae once (that was so old, it lost its globular shape). I was then able to examine its internal branch structure with all its contorted branches, but even that once globular plant does not have such snake-like branches.