Boating on the Telemark Canal

One of the most enjoyable summer vacations we’ve ever had was in August of 2001 when we decided together with two friends to sail up the Telemark Canal with our own boat, from the beginning of the canal in Skien (in south Norway) all the way up to Dalen (a distance of about 65 miles/105 km) and then back to Skien. Our plans included an overnight stay at the famous Dalen Hotel once we arrived there. This was a trip we had been talking about doing for several years, ever since I had taken a short day trip on one of the passenger boats that tourists can book trips on and experienced how the boats enter and leave the lock-chambers in the multiple lock system that characterizes the canal. The canal, formerly an important transportation route within Telemark, was completed in 1892. It consists of eight manually-operated locks situated at Skien, Løveid, Ulefoss, Eidsfoss, Vrangfoss, Lunde, Kjeldal and Hogga, and each of these locks consists of several lock-chambers (a total of eighteen spread out over eight locks), with Vrangfoss having the largest number of chambers (five) (see http://www.telemarkskanalen.no/nor/content/view/full/288).  The following websites describe the canal and also the lock system in more detail (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemark_Canal; http://www.visittelemark.com/The-Telemark-canal).

It took us about three and a half days to make the trip from Skien to Dalen and three days to return to Skien, so we were on the canal for about a week including the one-night stay at Dalen Hotel. Hilde and I drove by car from Oslo to Porsgrunn to meet Trond and Tom, who met us there in the boat before midday, having already sailed from Oslo the day before we left. We then sailed from Porsgrunn to Skien and entered the canal at Skien. 

The entrance to the Telemark Canal in Skien

Thus began a fascinating and idyllic trip that I will never forget and one that I would like to do again at some point. The first day (Monday) we sailed as far as Ulefoss where we docked the boat at the visitor’s pier for an overnight stay. Except for the one evening we stayed overnight at the Dalen Hotel, we slept in the boat (room for six people to sleep) the entire trip. The following day we sailed as far as Lunde and stayed there overnight, and then on Wednesday we docked for the night at Kviteseid; this day was the only day of the trip when it rained heavily, otherwise the weather was very nice for rest of the week. 

The following day we arrived in Dalen at midday where we docked the boat and made our way to what must be one of Norway’s most spectacular old hotels. The hotel’s architecture has been influenced by stave churches, with dragon heads and spears at its topmost portions. 

Dalen Hotel

It has to be experienced—the grand salon with piano, velvet draperies, elegant furniture and carpets—fit for kings, and indeed, kings have stayed here. We enjoyed a very good dinner in the hotel’s restaurant and then retired to the salon afterwards for coffee and cognac and to listen to the pianist play. This was the one night of real luxury during the trip. On Friday we began our return trip down the canal, with an overnight stay at Lunde and then at Ulefoss again. We arrived back in Skien on Sunday evening where we spent the night, returning to Oslo on Monday.

We didn’t realize at the time we planned it, but we actually made the trip during the very last week that the locks were manned for the summer. Had we done the trip a week later, we would have had to have called ahead to each lock station to ensure that someone was there to manually operate the lock chambers.  As it was, we did not have to wait at all to enter the lock chambers, as would have been the case had we done the trip in July with all the other smaller boats plus the tourist boats that normally sail the canal. The rule is that the tourist passenger boats have priority, so sometimes the wait to enter the chambers can be long for pleasure boats.

Tourist boat

It was very interesting to be on our boat as it entered or left the lock-chambers. Once the big wooden doors had closed tightly behind us, the water would rush in and fill the chamber in order to bring us higher (the height of the canal increases considerably from Skien to Dalen—about 72 meters total). The reverse occurs on the return trip to Skien--the water in the chamber would begin to be slowly emptied in order to aid our descent. Several pleasure boats of about the same size were usually allowed into the chamber at the same time. Fenders had to be out of both sides of the boat, and ropes (attached to a post at the top of the chamber) were tossed down to us by the men who manned the locks. These were to help us keep the boat in position during the filling or emptying of the chamber, which could often create choppy water and currents that tossed the boat about somewhat. Holding onto the ropes was actually a harder job than it seemed at first, once the filling or emptying of the chambers started, but Trond and Tom managed this job well (Hilde and I helped as well) and it became easier with each chamber we entered.

Lock chamber filling with water

Our boat in a lock chamber

On the return trip, during the time it took for the boat to go through the five lock-chambers at Vrangfoss (about an hour), I had the chance to leave the boat before it entered the lock to go the restaurant there that sells rømmegrøt—a sour cream porridge that is very good. I never thought I would like it—but I do. It is particularly good in exactly that restaurant in Vrangfoss. During the remaining time Hilde and I stood and watched Trond and Tom maneuver the boat into the lock chambers and watched the other pleasure boats as well.

It was peaceful to be on the canal for a week. There was no rushing, no stress, no having to be anywhere at any given time. We enjoyed leisurely days--eating lunch on the boat and dinners at small cafes or restaurants in the vicinity of the different places we docked for the night. The water was calm, the weather mild, the sky blue and the sun warm. Parts of the canal were idyllic--the scenery beautiful with the greenery of summer, and small cottages dotted the landscape here and there. We saw many swans along the canal, especially at Lunde; such graceful beautiful birds. I took a lot of pictures, trying to capture that idyllic feeling in photos. It cannot really be captured—it has to be experienced. We had the canal mostly to ourselves for the week because there were so few tourists at the time we made the trip and that was ideal. Looking back on that vacation, I would have to say it is one of the best we have ever had. 

Norway through the eyes of others

Today is a beautiful sunny day in Oslo, just like yesterday. Real summer days that give you that lazy feeling of summer, those days that are necessary for the heart and mind and soul if one is to survive the long gray winters. This past week Haika was in town—my very good friend from my Memorial Sloan-Kettering days in Manhattan—and we had a wonderful week together. She arrived last Sunday evening and left on Friday morning. Haika came to Oslo from Berlin, and brought the good weather with her. I was afraid she would take it with her when she left, because it rained heavily all day Friday. But thankfully no, the weekend has been beautiful! We managed to see quite a bit of Oslo together this past week, and spent all day Tuesday doing the ‘Norway in a Nutshell’ trip. As Haika would say, it was a fabulous trip, and it was fabulous to see her too after so many years. The last time I saw her was in England during the mid 1990s when her husband was doing a sabbatical at a college right outside of London and I visited them there. Here we are, so many years later. The passage of time—how quickly it happens.

When I look back over my twenty years here, I feel blessed to have opened our house to many different visitors from the USA, family and friends alike: my sister Renata and her husband (several times); my good friends Gisele, Jean, Maria, Jola, and Haika; my cousin Cathy; my friends Lucy, Steve and their son Andrew; and my friend Janet’s niece Sonja. They come from different areas in the USA—upstate NY, metropolitan NY, Long Island, West Virginia, Michigan, Colorado, and California. I have learned a lot along the way. For one thing, I’ve relearned that Norway is expensive when I see it through others’ eyes! I stopped dividing the total kroner amount by 6 (roughly the amount of kroner to one USD) a long time ago. It made grocery shopping a lot easier and helped me hang on to my sanity. Early on, when I was still calculating the cost of things in dollars, it would floor me that I was paying nine dollars (about fifty-four kroner) for a grilled chicken, fifteen dollars (ninety kroner) for a small pizza, not to mention fifteen dollars for a cocktail or ten dollars for a beer. When I wanted a turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving, a frozen one could easily cost sixty to seventy dollars in the supermarket back in the early 1990s. Needless to say, it made a huge dent in our meager scientist budgets at that time. Even though we earn more now, it can still be daunting to take a trip to an upscale supermarket. But ok, I’ve lived here for twenty years now, so I’m used to it. I forget that when friends come here, they go into a mild shock initially before they adjust. My current advice in terms of figuring out a travel budget for Norway is to think about what you might normally spend on such a trip and double the amount, just to be on the safe side.

The ‘Norway in a Nutshell’ trip (http://www.norwaynutshell.com/en/explore-the-fjords/norway-in-a-nutshell/) is expensive but well-worth the money in terms of the scenic views and fjord experience. We boarded the 6:30 am train at the Oslo Central Station that took us to Myrdal, about a five-hour train ride. This is the second time I have done this trip. The first time was when Gisele visited in 1995. We have some pretty funny memories of that train ride. Just about every time she was about to take a picture through the train window of some scenic view, we entered a tunnel. After it happened a few times we were laughing hysterically. It was very funny to watch the same thing happen to Haika and to a group of senior citizens traveling together. The latter were also laughing hysterically for the same reason. God knows if they got any pictures at all. Haika got a few but it wasn’t easy. In the summer of 1995, when Gisele and I reached Myrdal, we stepped off the train into close-to-freezing temperatures, completely underdressed for the weather. It was not cold in Oslo, but it was cold in Myrdal! There were a few people on the train before we got off who commented on our lack of warm clothing—looking back I think they must have thought—typical tourists (or typical New Yorkers?). It reminded me of stories I had heard about my former boss in NY when he was visiting Italy and walked over part of the Alps wearing a thin leather jacket and leather shoes. People remember things like that. So with Haika, I remembered my earlier experience with Gisele and we were prepared, but this time it wasn’t cold at all. Once we got to Myrdal, we took a connecting train to Flåm, which is about an hour’s train ride from Myrdal. This is a beautiful train ride with lovely scenic views on both sides of the train. The only problem is all the tourists rushing from one side of the train to the other to get pictures. Not an easy task. My NY ‘get a seat on the subway’ instinct came to good use—I managed to get us both window seats. Once we reached Flåm, we boarded a boat for our trip along the fjord ending at Gudvangen, which took about two hours. It was not really possible to take a photo that truly captured the beauty of the fjord and of the landscape along it, and the same goes for the scenic views from the bus that took us to Voss where we got the train back to Oslo. Luckily I was not aware beforehand that the bus would be driving down a road (from Stålheim) that barely had space for the bus let alone an oncoming car. If we had backed up at any point I think we would have been in trouble. Add to that thirteen major hairpin curves and you end up thanking God that the bus driver knew what he was doing and had nerves of steel. Every time there was a scenic view people moved from one side of the bus to the other and I thought—no, no, please stay in the middle of the bus so we don’t tip over. But we made it to Voss in one piece and with some lovely photos as our reward.

On the train trip back to Oslo, we met a family from the USA traveling together—an elderly woman of 85 and her four sons with their respective families. The trip was their family visit to Norway to see where the woman’s family came from, as her maiden name was the Norwegian name Hellerud. They were a very interesting family; we spent time talking to her (a former professor of Spanish) and her son who was a craftsman. They were as interested in our lives as we were in hearing about theirs. It struck me that every time I travel by train, I meet some interesting people, and time passes quickly in conversation. That is also one of the things about traveling that I enjoy—the world is still an undiscovered place and the strangers in it can become known if one just listens and takes a chance. Haika commented on another thing that we noticed about a few people who sat on the train with all the wonderful scenery outside and instead played video games or watched a movie on their laptops—what they were missing in terms of new experiences and in terms of opening their eyes and really seeing the land they live in or are visiting as well as the people around them. I am glad that Haika and I had our eyes open for the days we were together. Memories are made of such.

Norwegian Summer Meals

July is usually vacation month in Norway. Most people take their vacation at that time, traveling to their summer cottages or abroad. Life slows down a lot, Oslo is much quieter and not so crowded with cars and traffic, and all of it is a welcome change from the rest of the year. We are enjoying a “stay-cation” this year, to borrow a word from a young Norwegian woman whom we had the pleasure of conversing with this past Saturday evening at her parent’s summer party. We are not traveling anywhere during the month of July. We are instead enjoying some quiet time at home, sleeping in a bit later, enjoying leisurely breakfasts, shopping, watching Tour de France, biking long trips or biking down to our boat, and taking some boat trips in the nice weather. It’s been a relaxing summer so far. And with free time comes the desire to try out new recipes and to make some traditional Norwegian summer meals. I love buying new cookbooks and this summer has been no exception—I’ve purchased a world recipe book on baking—from dinners to desserts. I have a list of new recipes I want to try. But the two recipes I’m including here are not from this book. The first is fried mackerel, a general meal that most Norwegians prepare at one time or another during the summer months, and the second is cucumber soup (Norwegian-style) from Magnar Kirknes’ Kokkeskolen (Cooking School) section in the VG newspaper from June 2010. Neither of them is very complicated to make and they come out well each time.

I. The first recipe is Fried Mackerel served with cucumber vinegar salad and boiled potatoes

1-2 mackerel fillets per person, cleaned and well-dried
flour, salt, pepper
oil for frying
4-6 oz. sour cream

Coat the mackerel fillets in flour, salt and pepper. Fry the mackerel in oil until golden brown and add 4-6 oz. sour cream just before serving. The cucumber salad is prepared as follows: peel one medium-sized cucumber and slice it into wafer-thin slices with the slicer section of a grater. Place in a small bowl and cover with white vinegar (7% strength), add 1 tsp. sugar and mix. Prepare several hours ahead of time and refrigerate. Serves 3-4 people.



II. The second recipe is Cucumber Soup with Crayfish Tails

1 large cucumber, peeled
½ yellow onion
1 green pepper
1 green chili
1 green apple
1 garlic clove
1 tbs. sherry vinegar
1 bunch dill, chopped (save a little to mix with crayfish tails)
1 bunch parsley, chopped
4 oz. olive oil
2 cups chicken bouillon (should be hot)
5-6 oz. crème fraiche (18%)
7 oz. crayfish tails rolled in chopped dill

Cut the peeled cucumber in half lengthwise and remove the soft centers with a spoon. Chop up the pepper, chili and apple coarsely after removing the seeds from each of them. Chop the onion and garlic also. Place all ingredients in a bowl along with the chopped dill and parsley. Cover with the olive oil, sherry vinegar, and sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Then place all ingredients in a food processor, add the hot chicken bouillon and process until completely mixed. Add the crème fraiche and mix until the consistency is soup-like. Add a little sugar, salt, and pepper to taste. While the soup is cooling, mix the crayfish tails with finely-chopped dill and divide into about four portions in soup bowls. Pour the cooled cucumber soup over the crayfish tails and add a little crème fraiche (in stripes) to the surface of the soup. Serve with buttered toasted Italian or French bread.

Enjoy!

The Nighthawk Diner

The Nighthawk Diner in Oslo opened for business in March of this year. It is an American-style diner in a section of Oslo called Birkelund, not far from where we live. The menu has a small logo of a hawk on it and the letters TND. The diner’s name comes from the famous painting ‘Nighthawks' by Edward Hopper that shows two men and a woman sitting in a downtown diner at night. There were apparently long lines of people waiting to get in on the day it opened. It has become a rather trendy place to eat, for as long as that lasts.

I have to say that the owner, Jan Vardøen, has done a very good job of creating a realistic copy of a typical American diner. He has captured the ‘concept’ of a typical diner. It has that particular feel to it that American diners have—straightforward, “what you see is what you get”, nothing too fancy, comfortable and inviting. There was always something comforting about drinking coffee and eating a slice of apple pie or chocolate cake in a diner together with a good friend or several friends. I did it many times in the USA when I was younger. Diners were places we went to after we had gone to the movies in Ossining or in Yonkers, because we could get a cheap cup of fairly good coffee and we could sit there for a while and no one bothered us. When I lived in the Bronx, I would meet my very good friend once a week at the Seven Stars Diner (if I remember the name correctly) in Yonkers where she lived, and we would sit there for two or three hours and talk and drink coffee and eat dessert. No one ever bothered us or pushed us to order more food or to leave. There was always a big bowl of jelly mints with a spoon in it on the counter near the door, and we could dig in and scoop out a handful of them. They were always so good and they rounded out the evening. Those memories are very nice. Just to be able to chat and share our lives got us through some tough times as I remember. When I would visit my mother in Tarrytown, we would often eat lunch at a diner near where she lived. We always ordered the same thing—grilled cheese sandwiches on toasted whole wheat bread, a side of cole slaw and a dill pickle, followed by coffee and sometimes dessert. It always felt like a meal fit for a king, and I know it was because we enjoyed being together eating simple food that tasted good and that didn’t cost a fortune. I have another good friend who lives on Long Island, and when I visit her as I usually do on my annual trips to NY, we often end our visit together by going out for breakfast at a nearby diner. I usually order French toast, orange juice, and coffee, and we sit and talk and watch other people come and go. They are also nice memories.

The TND has a long counter when you first come into the diner, and a jukebox sits not very far from the entrance. Many of the diners I have frequented in NY with friends years ago had small jukeboxes at the booths we sat in, and we used to have a lot of fun feeding them quarters and playing the music we liked. I don’t know if the jukebox at TND actually works, but I must say that it was pretty cool to see a real jukebox again. The menu is also quite interesting. Breakfast is served all day--eggs made in many different ways, pancakes with maple syrup. Burgers are standard fare. Sandwiches include grilled cheese, tuna melts (yum), BLTs, and Reubens. There are ice cream sodas and milk shakes of all kinds. Desserts include cherry pie, apple pie and different types of cakes. I am going to eventually try them all. The one big difference between this diner and most American diners is how much food costs at TND. We’re not talking cheap; we’re talking typical Norwegian prices. But considering that this is just about the closest thing to basic American food as you can get, I’m not going to complain. I am just so glad to experience it, because it is one more thing that reminds me of ‘home’ and that makes me nostalgic for an earlier time when life seemed simpler and uncomplicated.

Land of Milk and Honey

There is now a supermarket on every corner in Oslo. Well ok, I am exaggerating a bit, but it seems like that. ICA, Rimi, Rema 1000, Kiwi, Spar, Meny, Joker, Bunnpris and Coop are the major supermarket chains, and within each chain there are stores of different sizes that are appropriately named--Mini (small), Maxi (large), Mega (very large) and Nær (Near, as opposed to Far, but there are no supermarkets named Fjern or Langt borte (means ‘far’) and so on. So not only do we have all of the different supermarket chains, we also have ICA-Maxis, ICA-Nærs and Coop-Megas. There are easily eight supermarkets within walking distance of our co-op complex--Joker, Bunnpris, two Rema 1000s; ICA, ICA-Nær, Meny and Kiwi. And if you don’t feel like walking the 5 to 10 minutes it takes to get to them, you can also call them and ask them to deliver or you can go online and order from them over the internet.

This is quite different from the situation I found myself in when I first moved to Oslo. There was one major supermarket and it was about a 30-minute walk from our home and a 10-minute drive by car. It was called Arena Mat (translated as Arena Food) and it was a big deal to go and shop there, at least for me. It was not a very large store compared to the enormous Pathmark stores I used to frequent in Yonkers and New Jersey. Because like many other European countries, most people did their food shopping at the small neighborhood daily stores, which sold bread, milk, vegetables, fruit, cigarettes and beer and not much more. It was a much simpler existence, often a bit frustrating but nevertheless simpler. Most of those stores are gone now, overtaken by the larger supermarkets. The small daily stores that are left are struggling to survive.

Our trips to Arena Mat were always fruitful. I would come home with a big bottle of Heinz ketchup or Hellman’s mayonnaise (American products were like a magnet for me) and it felt like I had won the lottery. If I found Tropicana orange juice or Campbell’s mushroom soup, I was also happy. It wasn’t that the Norwegian equivalents were bad products (if you could in fact find equivalents); it was just that feeling of seeing products that reminded me of home. It was comforting to see them and to know that they had made their way to other countries and that one of those countries was Norway. Arena Mat evolved into another supermarket after some years, bought out by the larger supermarket conglomerates that have sprung up. The families that started these newer chains became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. But that was the 1990s. A lot of people became wealthy during the 1990s. It was a global phenomenon. Norway was the land of milk and honey then. Oil flowed and money flowed and while the oil is still flowing anno 2010, the rivers of money are slowly drying up, thanks to the politicians who are now stepping in to cut (where they can) the social programs and healthcare programs and all the other fringe benefits that a socialist democratic country enjoys. But the supermarket chains continue to spring up on each corner, along with the Deli De Luca convenience stores that overtook the Seven-11 stores (also one of my favorites during the 1990s--they sold Snapple drinks and Haagen Daaz ice cream and every now and then American candy like Milky Way bars). I have to wonder how they’re all managing to make a good living, but I imagine that time will give us that answer. In the meantime we are being exponentially inundated with the same products in spite of the diversity of supermarket choice, because the one thing the multiple supermarket chains have not managed to give us is diversity of choice when it comes to food products. That type of diversity these days is found in the few remaining daily food stores that are struggling to survive. The question is whether they will survive in the land of milk and honey.

Lilacs and the Gamle Aker Church

Lilacs are my favorite flowers, followed closely by lilies of the valley. Lilacs grow in abundance in Oslo right now; their purple flowers and wonderful fragrance are too colorful and too strong to be ignored. They are late bloomers this year because spring was late in arriving this year. If you walk up along the Akerselva river you will come upon many lilac bushes with flowers that are all different shades of purple. I would like to have cut some of the flowers to have taken home with me, but people don’t do that here even though the flowers grow wild. I respect that but I would have liked to take a sprig or two just the same. There are also many lilac bushes that grow in the vicinity of the oldest church in Oslo, the Old Aker Church (Gamle Aker kirke--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Aker_Church). The church dates from around the year 1100 A.D. and is one of the most beautiful churches in the city. It is also the oldest building in Oslo. It is surrounded by a church graveyard with many trees and a lovely view out over the city. The church grounds are very peaceful to walk around in on a warm spring or summer day.

The church itself is very peaceful to walk around in, and we have been there a few times to hear different choirs sing carols before Christmas. I have also been there to attend Good Friday services which are very solemn and moving. I have been there several times even though the services are Protestant and I am Catholic. The church was originally a Catholic (Christian) church, and still has the feel of a Catholic church. It feels ancient, but that feeling is a good feeling and one that inspires awe, much in the same way as Westminster Abbey does, and the baptistery of the cathedral in Frejus in France which dates from the fifth century A.D. Just to stand in those buildings and to try to imagine what it was like to be in those places at those earlier times is daunting. I remember standing in Westminster Abbey upon the graves of people (mostly monks) who had died of bubonic plague in the 1340s, and it was an indescribable feeling to stand there and know that they were there before you. It is that feeling of the linearity of time that comes over you, when you know that sometime in the future there will be people who will look back on us and our lives and wonder how we were and what we did.

Below the Gamle Aker church is a parselhage, which means garden colony. Oslo’s inhabitants can apply for a parcel of land that they can use as their own garden. The waiting lists for these parcels of land are long. We are on one such list, and there are one hundred individuals ahead of us. The likelihood of obtaining one of them in our lifetime is thus slim to none. So that may be one reason to buy a house with a small yard, so that we can grow flowers and tomatoes and some few vegetables. Time will tell. Houses are expensive in Oslo and also in the nearby suburbs. It is not unusual for prices for average-sized homes to approach a million US dollars (or more). The parselhage in the area of the Gamle Aker church is on a street called Telthusbakken, which is famous for its very old traditional wooden homes. They are lovely old homes that have undergone many renovations, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Their owners take good care of them, but unfortunately when they burn, they burn to the ground, as happened a few years ago with one of the houses. The married couple who owned the house perished in the fire. Also in the vicinity of the parselhage is a restaurant called Akersberget (http://www.akersberget.com/Bilder.html), which was renovated and restored a few years ago after standing as a decrepit old building for nearly as long as I have lived in Oslo.

All things Scandinavian

Our connection to Scandinavia as children was limited to my uncle Hans who came from Denmark (he was married to my father’s sister and they settled in Maryland) and to Hans Christian Andersen, the children’s story writer from Denmark. My uncle used to make us pancakes for breakfast when we visited our cousins. I don’t remember exactly how they were made or even if they were really Danish, but he sprinkled them with sugar when they came out of the frying pan instead of serving them with maple syrup and that made them different—not American. They were excellent.

We read a lot of Andersen’s fairy tales as children. ‘The Little Match Girl’ comes to mind—you would have to search very hard to find a sadder story than that one. ‘The Little Mermaid’ story also stands out. When I finally saw the Little Mermaid sculpture on the waterfront in Copenhagen, I thought it was lovely but actually quite small, not at all as I had imagined. I guess I thought it would be larger than life.

I don’t remember anything particular that stood out about Norway, Finland or Iceland when I was a child. I don’t think I had heard much about Norway before I moved here. I paid more attention to small news items about Norway once I met my husband-to-be, but before that Norway could have been Denmark or vice versa for all I really knew about it. I do remember that Continental Airlines and SAS formed an international partnership in 1988 and that meant that SAS would fly into and out of Newark airport in NJ. The prime minister of Norway at that time, Gro Harlem Brundtland (a woman), was pictured in the NJ Star Ledger newspaper visiting Newark airport for the celebration ceremony, if memory serves me correctly. I do remember Sweden being held up as a very secular and liberal country in the USA, especially when it came to filmmaking. The Swedes stretched all the censorship rules. Vincent Canby reviewed movies for The New York Times for many years, and I can remember that he wrote about the controversies connected with some of the Swedish movies that made it to America when I was a pre-teenager and teenager. But I don’t remember the names of the films. And of course there was the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, but I never saw any of his films until I was an adult, and most of them I have seen while living here in Norway. I remember hearing about the Vikings, but they never really interested me that much. What I now know is that the Vikings were from Denmark, Sweden and Norway (and even Greenland), not just from one country.

In 1985 I saw the film ‘Out of Africa’ and became fascinated by the Danish writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and her life. Visiting her house in Rungsted in Denmark was one of the first things I wanted to do when we first visited the country. I also read her biography by Judith Thurman (‘Isak Dinesen—The Life of a Storyteller’) which I can recommend. We combined that visit with a trip to Roskilde (in 1991) to attend one of the biggest annual European four-day rock concerts. That trip was a mixture of good and bad happenings—the concert started out well, we had pitched our tent and were enjoying ourselves. Then about two days into the concert, all hell broke loose. A major storm with high winds and pelting rain hit that area of Denmark. My last semi-comfortable memory before the storm really hit was listening to Billy Idol at midnight sing ‘White Wedding’ under one of the big tents. The following days saw us sinking into mud up to our knees and watching our parked car sink down about as far as that as well. But seeing Karen Blixen’s home did save the trip from being a complete washout.

My father, who was a great reader, was a fan of the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. I have not yet really explored her writing, but I know that she converted to Catholicism during her adult life, and that fascinated my father. I have read the works of other Norwegian writers and poets—the novelists Knut Hamsun and Sigurd Hoel and the poet Rolf Jacobsen. They are definitely worth reading.

Norwegian Independence Day

May 17th is Norway’s Independence Day (Constitution Day), and the Norwegians celebrate it in style. It is an interesting day to observe and be a part of, especially if you are a tourist, because it is one of those days in Norway when nearly everyone you meet is happy and in a party frame of mind. There are huge crowds in the streets, with people turning out to watch the parade of schools and other organizations that march past the Royal Castle at the top of Karl Johan Street, where the King and Queen stand on the balcony with other family members and wave to the crowds and to the marchers. The high school students (‘russ’) usually round out the parade, dressed in their red or blue outfits and hats (the color is determined by the type of studies they pursue, e.g. blue means they have studied business). The parade is usually finished by midday/early afternoon. Later in the day, people gather for barbecues and parties and when the weather is nice you can hear the music from the different parties blaring out over the city because all the windows are open. We ate lunch out today at Martin’s Kro--der maten er go'-- (Martin’s inn/pub--where the food is good) in a town called Gjelleråsen after driving around the suburbs of Oslo for a while. The restaurant was packed with people.

Women and men alike dress in traditional costumes (bunads). Interest in buying and wearing them has resurged during the past ten years. My husband’s family gave me a bunad when I first moved here. It had belonged to my husband’s mother who passed on many years ago. I wore it at our marriage in 1991 and have used it since at formal parties, dinners and weddings. It is worth quite a lot of money together with the silver jewelry that accompanies it. I don’t use it as much now as I did earlier—no specific reason, just that perhaps the feeling of novelty has diminished somewhat with the passing years. I will wear it again, that is certain—there will be future occasions for that.

Fireworks are not really part of the Norwegian Independence Day celebrations, in contrast to America’s Independence Day celebrations. They have mostly always been a part of New Year’s Eve celebrations for as long as I have been here and before that. Fireworks displays aren’t organized by individual towns and cities. It is rather individual people who buy them and set them off. I used to love ushering in the New Year standing outdoors with a glass of champagne in one hand and a sparkler in the other, while my husband and his friends set off different fireworks. My stepdaughter had to have fireworks when she was younger and that was always fun. We don’t buy them anymore now that she is grown up, but we still like to go out and watch them fill the skies each New Year’s eve. But as is the case with so many other things, the numbers of accidents resulting from their use have increased and thus the laws are changing to forbid the purchase and use of personal fireworks.

The American Women’s Club in Oslo arranges a July 4th Independence Day celebration every year in Frogner Park. I went there one year with my husband and my American friend and her daughter. It was interesting but it did not compare to the celebrations and fireworks that I grew up with in Tarrytown NY. I am not sure what I expected really, but probably nothing could have lived up to my expectations or to my memories of childhood celebrations. Perhaps it felt artificial in some way—not the real thing. In any case, we have not celebrated it that way since.

I never thought much about what it meant to be an American until I lived abroad. I think most Americans, if they get the chance, should live abroad for a while. It opens your eyes to so many things and is a great learning experience. It also opens your eyes to how the USA is perceived in other parts of the world and believe me, that has not always been a pleasant experience. I will write more about that in future posts.