In my ongoing campaign to raise the intellectual level of the blogosphere, and indeed of the world at large, I ever strive to draw your attention away from the trivial, the evanescent, and the superficial, to matters of universal relevance and substance.
Today, the subject is my face.
The spark for this meditation was a couple conversations I had in Minot (I expect I’ll be milking Minot for months in this space, since I don’t actually interact with my fellow man much in ordinary life, and that plays hob with a guy’s stock of anecdotes).
An older gentleman approached me in the Viking village on (I think) the first day. He asked me if I was Icelandic.
I told him I wasn’t, but that I’d once spent a couple days in that delightful country.
He said, “You’re a fine looking man. Handsome enough to be an Icelander. In fact you look like you could be a member of my family.”
At that point I realized I’d had this exact conversation two years ago, on my last visit to Høstfest. The same man had approached me then, and said the same thing.
I figured he was about the only Icelander at the festival, and was desperately trying to connect with someone. In his loneliness he felt compelled to go around and confer Icelandicity on random Norwegians like me.
Poignant, no?
That in itself wouldn’t have led to this post, but later on I was approached by two middle-aged ladies. They said, “We recently lost our dearly beloved brother, and you are his spitting image.”
At that point I thought, “Oh no. My old face is coming back.”
As a visual aid at this point (and against the advice of counsel), I shall re-post a picture of myself in high school which I used a while back:
I looked pretty much like this through my college years too, except that I changed to wire-rimmed glasses as a junior.
You’ll note the utter lack of distinction in this face. Ordinary brown hair. No particular bone structure to speak of. The nose, though large, is not of any identifiable shape. Is it a long face or a round face? Somewhere in the middle. Could go either way. It’s a blank slate face.
Back in those days people used to tell me all the time, “You look just like my cousin So-and-so.” Or their nephew. Or some guy they went to school with. I remember walking through Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis one afternoon while a drunken Native American yelled at me for minutes from across the grass, trying to get the attention of some buddy he’d mistaken me for.
As I grew older, and especially after I grew my beard, that sort of thing stopped. Stopped completely. I figured that the wrinkles and spots installed by Time’s little Mr. Potatohead game had finally given me an aspect that was also an artifact (Lincoln once said, “Any man over forty is responsible for his own face”).
But now I seem to be losing it. As we age, it’s well known, we start reverting to our baby faces, and it looks like my short run as a figure of distinction is coming to an end.
On the other hand, if I can get these people who think they’re related to me to co-sign a loan or two…
Seriously, in that picture I can see a certain resemblance to Bjork. How do you suppose your Icelander friend & the Tony Orlando fans would react if they booked her at the next Hostfest?
(Please forgive me for not looking up the codes for the appropriate Scandinavian letters)
Without my beard I closely resemble another AFLC pastor. In fact, at one AFLC Annual Conference I was mistaken for him. By two of his aunts.
I know little about Bjork, and have never heard any of her music, to my knowledge. But I seem to recall reading that she’s no great beauty.
She would look great if she had the right makeover, but the pictures on her Wikipedia article would suggest that she’s not walking that road.
I have been confused for others too and told I looked just like someone from ‘back home.’ So maybe we’re related. 🙂
Several people say that I look like Jimmy Stewart, but I think that’s partly the way I present myself in some situations, such as my habit of calling out to Clarence when I’m in distress and the wild look in my eyes whenever I get vertigo.
But more often people have said I look like someone else, most recently that one of my co-workers and I resemble each other. I think some people just think this way. When I saw the Moody choir last year, I thought one man looked like Will Smith and a woman resembled a woman from my church.
I’ve always thought you look like a dangerous literary genius, especially with a spear in your hands.
Hey, have you ever thought about writing mystery or crime stories, maybe set in Minneapolis/St. Paul with Norwegian American characters?
I’d love to write mysteries. The problem is that I can’t seem to come up with a plot for one. I think that’s one reason I enjoy them so much. I can’t see so much of the backstage machinery as I can when I read fantasy.
Lars … I like your face. Your photo reminds me of the boys I grew up with, and they all became fine men (I married one of them).
What you can’t see … and it’s as plain as the nose on your face … are your Norwegian antecedents. What you view as a “lack of distinction” is evident to all those who have looked upon your face and said, “You look like my cousin!” I’ll do it now: Your nose is a ringer for my brother-in-law’s nose (and his son’s), and his family is Norwegian and Scot.
Also, consider your smile. Unposed, I think, for this photograph … relaxed and natural. See how wide and generous your smile is? Note that it is wider than the outer edges of your pupils? That is also a feature of your heritage.
Not a blank slate at all 🙂
I wouldn’t have seen the Icelandic resemblance except that Mrs. M, our cute young next-door neighbor, loaned us a book about her heritage, which is largely Icelandic, and I’ve looked at lots of portraits reproduced in the book. So I can see the “Icelandic” look your interlocutor mentioned now.
PS There’s a book called Before the Dawn, which is about (alleged) human evolution, that I have browsed a bit, and I think there’s a passage in which the author says that in the relatively short period (a thousand years) of Iceland’s history, the “natives” have had time to develop some distinctively Icelandic features. I don’t have the book at hand to give a reference, though. I think it was a reference to this Icleandic thing that got me to get the book on interlibrary loan. It might have been something John Derbyshire or Steve Sailer said about the book.
Well, the Icelanders are mostly a mix of West Norwegian with Irish, and a lot of my people do come from West Norway.
As for my smile, Deborah, thank you. But the picture was very much posed (it was for the yearbook), and I believe that it was the sight of this picture that pretty much put me off smiling forever.
Spoken like a true Norwegian!