I’ve joined a Kvalavåg group on Facebook. Kvalavåg (as I’ve probably told you already) is a farm (more of a rural community today) on Karmøy Island, Norway. My great-grandfather was born there, and if it weren’t for the xenophobia of a naturalization judge who asked my great-granduncle, “Why don’t you call yourself by an American name?” my last name would probably be Kvalavåg today. Or Qualevaag, in the spirit of the orthography of the age. (Norwayphilia aside, I’m not sure I’d really care to have to spell my name for people six times a day.)

Anyway, somebody in the group linked to an Ikkepedia page for Kvalavåg. (Ikkepedia is related to the English language Uncyclopedia. It’s a good pun because “ikke” means “not” in Norwegian.) Having nothing amusing of my own to tell you tonight, I thought I’d translate the entry for you below.

Kvalavåg

Kvalavåg is a small home base on Karmøy. Many people dwell in Kvalavåg.

History

Kvalavåg was founded in 1165 by wandering nomads. These nomads were half German, half Russian, and half Japanese fur trappers. They found enormous deposits of East German foxes in Kvalavåg, and so determined to settle there. The trade in fox pelts prospered so that in 1475 Kvalavåg had nearly 14 million residents. The reason for its profitability was that Kvalavåg has outstanding topsoil. The fur trappers took advantage of this to grow foxes in the ground instead of trapping them. As a result, fields heavily planted with foxes sprouted up everywhere. This went on until the middle of the 1500s, when the Japanese trappers got fed up with their German and Russian competitors and set fire to the foxes. This rendered the topsoil unusable, and the town was reduced to a little ball with only a couple residents. Foxes are now extinct in Kvalavåg, but a memorial has been erected in honor of the 140 million foxes who perished in the great fire. Kvalavåg was a part of Japan up to 1996, when King Harald V won it in a poker game with the king of Japan.

Population

Kvalavåg today has 300 residents. Mostly Germans live in Kvalavåg (65%), and the rest are Karmøyers (25%) and Japanese (10%). [The text goes on with an inside joke that I myself don’t get.]



Imports/Exports

Kvalavåg’s chief export is home base cats. These cats are better than other cats. French railroad workers use these home base cats to pull trains. Well-known home base cats are Tom (30 years old), Bobben (professional fighting cat) and Idefix (Heavyweight champion of Karmøy). Other exports include toenails. These toenails are employed in witchcraft all around the world.