I have a lot to do. I can’t find any music that pleases me. So tonight you get a little promo video, telling you about Avaldsnes in Norway. This is where my great-grandfather was born, and it’s one of the places I’m going this summer (God willing) to play Viking — likely with some of the people shown in the video.
Have a good weekend.
Well, this is nuts, isn’t it? And by “this,” I mean pretty much everything that’s going on in the world. I have never before in my long, marginal existence felt that listening to the news – and even to conservative talk radio – doesn’t do much to inform me about reality.
I think I know whom I’m against. I’m not entirely sure whom I should root for. I have a feeling of being awash in misinformation. And I have this fear in my heart that that will be our future – we will never again be sure what’s going on.
So, I’m concentrating on my translation (been fairly busy) and my developing plans for my Norway trip this summer.
I am now in contact with Vikingklubben Karmøy, the group that hosts the festival documented above (that was 2019, which I assume was the last festival held). This year they’re hosting a portion of the big Riksamlingen Festival (National Unification Festival). And they’ve told me I’m welcome to participate in costume. Not sure at this point whether I’ll actually be of any help to anyone, but I hope to be there, on the outskirts, an object of pity and horror, no doubt.
The prospect thrills me. And terrifies me. It involves interaction with actual human beings. I don’t always do well with those kinds of people.
Most of what’s below can be skipped without any loss to the diverse richness of your life. It’s just the account of my day, offered here for your perusal because I can’t think of anything actually interesting.
No, wait, I do have one interesting fact. Norway has opened its borders again. The requirement that people traveling from countries outside a certain short list must go through a quarantine period before entering has been lifted. You still need to show proof of vaccination, but this is a big relaxation. A step back toward normal life, one fervently hopes.
“Following a recommendation from the National Institute of Public Health, the government is abolishing the requirement for entry quarantine because it is no longer considered necessary for infection control,” the Norwegian Ministry of Health stated.
You may recall that I predicted something like this just a few days ago, based on the amount of translation work I’ve been getting – which would seem to indicate a belief inside the film industry that freer association and travel are coming. I didn’t expect it to happen this fast, though. No doubt the movie moguls I serve in my small way have friends in high places, who tipped them the high sign.
Today was my first day without translation work since… I don’t recall. Probably less time than I think. But it’s been a string of days. I’d marked today out, whatever my work situation, for shopping and errands. (Note: it’s in times like these that I contemplate finding a wife. Only I know she’d retaliate with a Honeydo list.) The coldest day of the week isn’t prime time for such activity, but there are moments when you just need to go to the store, or else you’ll run out of some staple, like chocolate or beef jerky or pigs’ feet.
As I planned my day, I realized a lot of stuff had piled up on my list. It called for careful trip planning and logistics. Aside from the gym in the morning, which was a separate excursion, I must:
Go to the post office. Take my suit to the cleaners. Run my car through the car wash (not optimal on a day with a high around zero, but on the other hand there wasn’t much of a waiting line). Go to Wal Mart for a new computer monitor (because I knocked the old one over and broke the screen. Nothing to do with old age and clumsiness, of course – I was just as clumsy at twenty. And the piece of junk was always unstable. Which should teach me to buy computer components at Wal Mart). Get groceries. Stop at the drug store for immune system supplement. Then get the new monitor working, which is always more complicated than you expect, if you’re over ten years old.
I’m planning to work on the novel tonight. If God gives me strength. And the monitor doesn’t fall over again.
“Solveig Thorkildsen and Ingeborg Hornkjøl of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) found the objects—a bone featuring a Norse inscription and a rune stick with both Latin and Norse text—during ongoing excavations at the site. According to a statement, the rune bone is the first of its kind found in Norway’s capital in more than 30 years.”
Smithsonian Magazine describes their excitement over the discovery and preliminary translations of the runes. The stick may have a prayer written on it.
So Christmas is done, and winter, as it always does, snuck in while we were distracted. Winter is no less annoying before Christmas day, but it always seems like part of the festival. As if God is setting up His holiday department store window display. But then the holiday ends (I know it goes on till Epiphany, and I electrify my tree accordingly. But you know what I mean) and winter remains, like Styrofoam peanuts from the box Christmas came in. We didn’t get a white covering until Dec. 26, but the snow is here to stay now (I believe) and I have the snow shoveling muscle aches to prove it.
I was able to gather with family (not the whole family, but some, which beats last year), and we had a low-key but pleasant holiday. As part of my duties as Weird Old Uncle at the celebration, I shared a story I’d gotten in a letter from a distant cousin in Norway. He’s been doing some research on family history, and he found a story worthy of Hollywood. I paraphrase it for you below:
On a warm summer day around the year 1800, a young man named Ola was watching his father’s cows on a hillside with a good view of the sea near Ogna, in southern Rogaland. He noticed a square-rigged ship becalmed offshore. On a whim, he left the cows behind, walked to shore, appropriated a boat, and rowed out to the ship. He then signed on to the crew. He left his lunch bag hanging from one of the cows’ horns, so his family would know he’d left voluntarily. (They also noticed a boat was missing.) He later wrote his parents from Amsterdam. As a merchant sailor, he sailed with his ship to the Mediterranean, where they were attacked and captured by Libyan pirates. They were taken to Tripoli as slaves. One dark night, along with a French boy, he escaped. They swam in the sea for a while, then went ashore, walking and running the 2,200 kilometer distance (something under 1,400 miles) to Alexandria, Egypt, eating whatever they could scrounge. They stowed away (I think that’s the meaning) on a ship to Istanbul. From there it was an 1,800 kilometer (a little over a thousand miles) walk back to Amsterdam. Ola went into the shipping transport business. When Napoleon blockaded European ports to British shipping, rates for cross-channel commerce skyrocketed, and Ola made a fortune in that business (smuggling, I guess you’d call it). He married a British woman and settled down in Bergen as the owner of a shipping company once the war was over. Around 1830 he went home to Ogna to visit his family. He gave his siblings, two sisters and a brother, what amounted to a small fortune at the time, enough to build a nice little house.
Some years later, his nephew Helge received a letter from him marked, “Do not open until my death.” After a few more years another letter arrived without any instructions outside. This document itemized his property. Ola had no children of his own, and he was concerned that his wife might conceal some of it when the estate was divided. Finally, in 1843, a letter came announcing Ola’s death. Helge the nephew then opened the first letter. It said that he and his sister had each been left $100,000. But they had to do a sort of treasure hunt to collect the money. The letter said the money was buried in two small pots concealed under flat stones beneath the kitchen floor of Ola’s house in Bergen. Being honest people, they went first to the Bergen police for permission, and then dug the floor up, found the flat stones, and discovered the pots, each with the amount of money promised. Helge also hired a lawyer in Bergen, to look after their interests until Ola’s widow died. In the end they got half the estate, worth about $600,000 in modern money.
I was quite excited to read this story, and wrote back to my cousin to ask if this adventure came from my side of the family. Sadly, no. All he could find about my side was that one of my ancestors was involved with the Moravian religious movement even before the Haugean revivals (which I’ve written about here often ), and that another was the last person to die of leprosy in Randaberg parish (near Stavanger).
My family history, so far as I’ve been able to learn it, has been relentlessly unromantic. But I still reckon I’m descended from Erling Skjalgsson. Prove me wrong.
From last year, a “distanced” celebration of 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day. No doubt today’s celebrations were similar. The tall old man on the balcony is King Harald V, the little boy on the “Atlantic Crossing” miniseries.
“Ja, Vi Elsker,” the Norwegian national anthem, says this (roughly translated by me):
Yes, we love this land, as it rises, tree-covered and weather-beaten, over the water, with its thousand homes. Love it, love it, and think of our fathers and mothers, and the saga nights that descend with dreams upon the land.
Norwegians in houses and cottages, thank your great God. He will protect the land, however dark things may appear. All our fathers have fought for, our mothers have cried over, the Lord will quietly alter, so that we will have our rights.
I don’t know the third verse.
I was busy translating yesterday (got some work done on the novel too; it was a good day). So I don’t have anything to review tonight. Of what shall I write? Well, there’s a miniseries running on PBS, to which I have a personal connection. I’m sure you’re following this excellent production closely. I’ll share some of my vast personal store of knowledge to give you some background information, illuminating and enriching your viewing experience.
You may recall a scene where King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav discuss whether to remain in the country, risking capture and capitulation, or to flee to England, which could be construed as abdicating. “This could mean the end of the monarchy,” one of them says. (Maybe not in those very words; I translated it but I don’t have eidetic memory.)
Their concern here is greater than it would be for ordinary monarchs. The Norwegian monarchy was actually still experimental, and a little shaky. Haakon and Olav had spent their entire lives inventing and sustaining a modern Norwegian royal tradition.
Norway, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, lost its independence for a period of about 500 years – from the mid-14th Century to 1905. Roughly 400 of those years were spent in union with Denmark, and then it was transferred to Sweden by the Congress of Vienna in 1814.
With independence coming, the question was, what form of government would Norway have? A lot of Norwegians admired France and the US, and favored a republic. But republicanism was unpopular among the European elite. Republics were notoriously unstable; France was suffering a string of government turnovers.
When the Norwegians voted to become independent, Sweden was uncertain whether to oppose the move or not. Military action was not off the table. They let it be known that they were more favorable to having a monarchy next door than a republic. So when Norwegians (the explorer/diplomat Fridtjof Nansen among them) went to speak to their favored royal candidate, Prince Carl of Denmark, they explained that if he agreed to become king, he might very well secure Norwegian independence and prevent war.
Prince Carl had his reservations. The brother of the king of Denmark, he had a perfectly fine career as a naval officer, and had never meddled much in politics. Accepting would involve radical lifestyle changes and new responsibilities for his wife Maude (daughter of Edward VII of England and not an outgoing person) and his young son Alexander.
But they were won over. They began with a brilliant public relations move. Knowing that the last two kings of Norway had been named Haakon VI and Olav IV (Olav had died young of a congenital condition, ending the independent Norwegian dynasty), Carl changed his own name to Haakon, and his son Alexander’s to Olav. So they became Haakon VII and Olav V. Symbolically, they were picking up the dynasty precisely where it had left off half a millennium ago.
The Norwegian constitution granted the king a fair amount of power. Haakon deliberately refused to exercise it, keeping himself to ceremonial and non-political activities. Even when the Labor Party (Arbeiderparti), dominated by Communists and inclined against monarchy, took power in 1927, Haakon insisted on working with them.
The decision to evacuate and form a government in exile lost them a measure of support. Some Norwegians who joined the Nazis actually blamed the king and the crown prince for abandoning them.
But they persevered, and when they finally returned victorious in 1945, they were more popular than ever. Olav in his turn was highly regarded (and accessible. Have I mentioned I saw him in person once?).
In pursuit of my mission to enlighten the world on Norwegian Christmas customs, I offer the clever TV commercial above, complete with English subtitles.
It will help your comprehension to know that the “nisse” is roughly what the English would call a brownie, or possibly a gnome. He is distinguished by his characteristic red cap. Every farm has at least one, and they control the farm’s luck. Get on his wrong side and he’ll sour the milk, sicken the livestock, sabotage the equipment, etc. My maternal grandmother’s father, according to my mother, blamed everything that went wrong on his farm on the smågubbe, the “little old man,” who was the same as the nisse (like the elves, they prefer it if you don’t use their name).
One matter of supreme importance in coexisting with the nisse is the Christmas porridge (julegrøt). The nisse expects to get a bowlful of the family’s Christmas porridge every Christmas Eve. You leave it out in the barn for him. He especially requires that a generous pat of butter be placed on top. Neglect that, and you can expect a very bad year. Sometimes it’s the farm owner’s fault, and sometimes the fault of a lazy servant. It makes no difference. The nisse must have his due. (I wonder who screwed up last Christmas.)
Tine is a popular brand of butter in Norway, and they did themselves proud with this charming and technically excellent ad, a few years back.
I posted this video of Sissel singing “Det Lyser i Stille Grender” the other day. Watch it if you missed it before, or watch it again; it’s worth it.
There’s one detail I wanted to comment on. That concerns the Christmas tree standing behind the singer. Note what they did with the shiny garlands.
In America, it’s customary to wind the garlands around the tree, top to bottom (or bottom to top, if you prefer; I’m not dogmatic on the point). The effect is similar to what snow looks like as it lays on the branches of an evergreen after a snowfall. But in Norway it’s common (though not universal) to arrange the garlands as you see here – hanging straight down from the star (or angel; again, I’m not dogmatic) at the top. The idea here (I believe) is to suggest the rays of the star shining down from Heaven. If you set a Nativity creche underneath, that works even better. I did a search for pictures of Norwegian Christmas trees, and often they look very much like ours, but I’ve rarely seen the star-ray configuration on an American tree.
Another difference is in the use of flags. A popular decoration in Norway is a garland of little paper Norwegian flags on a string. You arrange them on the tree as you would any other holiday garland. That sort of thing’s pretty much unknown in America, even in Republican households. We try to separate Church and State – but in Norway they had a State Church up until fairly recently. And the flag, after all, does feature a cross.
It’s common to deride American conservatives as flag-worshippers, but really the Norwegians have us beat on that point. Through the periods of agitation for independence under Denmark and Sweden, the display of a “pure” Norwegian flag (one not quartered with the flag of the “parent” country) was subversive, but relatively safe. During the Nazi occupation, having the flag was less safe, but that made it all the more precious. To this day, old people get tears in their eyes when they remember the day it was finally safe to display the flag again.
No doubt, as that generation dies off, this passion for the flag will diminish.
The title of this book probably requires a little explanation, and I’m just the man to do it (though I actually had to look it up in Norwegian Wikipedia).
“Jøssing” was a common word used in Norway during World War II to describe patriots, those who opposed the Quisling collaborationist government. It arose after an incident in 1940, when British commandos attacked a German ship in the Jøssingfjord, rescuing 300 British POWs. The incident was one of the incitements for the German invasion, and the Nazis themselves originated the term as an insult against anti-Nazis. Like the name “Christian” in Roman times, the people who were being laughed at adopted it and wore it with pride.
The hero of J. L. Oakley’s The Jøssing Affair is Tore Haugland, a Resistance agent. He lives in the Norwegian town of Fjellstad, working as a fisherman’s helper. He poses as a deaf-mute. In fact he’s a University graduate and a former athlete, trained as an agent in England. He operates a secret radio transmitter and organizes “imports” and “exports” through the Shetland Bus – which at this point in the war (late 1943) no longer consists of Norwegian fishing boats, but of English submarine chasers.
Anna Fromme is the widow of a Resistance hero, a man who was tortured to death by the Gestapo. He was also a close friend of Tore’s, though Tore keeps that a secret. In spite of her husband’s heroism, single mother Anna is a pariah in Fjellstad – because she’s German. No one is sure of her loyalties, and no one trusts her.
Tentatively and almost involuntarily, the two of them slip into friendship, and then love. But that love – and much else – will be threatened when Tore is betrayed into the hands of the Gestapo, and the Nazis, aware they’re losing the war, crack down harder than ever on the Resistance, exploiting love, friendship, loyalty and trust to crush all opposition.
Author J. L. Oakley is – based on my reading of this book – a good storyteller, but a less good writer. The story had lots of dramatic tension, and I cared about the characters. It illuminated splendidly a part of World War II history that most people don’t know, and I myself wasn’t entirely aware of – the time at the end of the war when German armies were surrendering all over Europe, and the free world rejoiced – but in Norway the Nazis held on fiercely, declaring their determination to defend Fortress Norway or die in a Götterdämmerung, taking the Norwegian people down to hell with them.
What I liked less about the book (and I’ve been complaining about this in my reading reports here) was the sheer length of the thing. I thought the story could have been told faster and more simply. I had trouble keeping the characters straight (even the hero – he uses multiple aliases). Also, there were a number of word mistakes and typos in the text.
Some sexual content, but it was fairly mild. All in all, The Jøssing Affair was a good book and I’m glad I read it. (Some of the action takes place on the island of Hitra, where one of my great-grandmothers was born. I also liked the absence of pro-Communist cant, which you often find in such stories.) But it sure took a while to read. (There was a strange sense of déjà vu as I read about a population suffering deprivation, looking for liberation by Christmas, but having to wait until spring for relief. Hmm, what does that remind me of?)