Some reflections on navels and the souls of peoples..

When I started this blog, it was as an attempt to keep in touch with what happens back home. Yesterday, I noticed some sites written by people living abroad, away from their home countries. Two of these were www.iliveherenow.com and Travels in Time.

I really enjoy to read about how other expats are living. Reading through these sites, I noticed that, they all concern themselves with the places where these people are living. As you would expect. This made me think, about my own blog, and a little about us Norwegians.

When you live abroad, away from home, in a country where thing as not the same as home, it gives you a great opportunity to reflect upon yourself as an individual and a member of your nation, in my case as a Norwegian. You see things that are different from home, and you suddenly notice things about your home country that you haven't before. And you see yourself reacting to different circumstances in a way that you maybe wouldn't if you had been at home.

I think that one trait of ours (i.e. of us Norwegians') is that we can be rather self-centered. Take my own blog - I don't blog about the country I am in. I blog about Norway and Norwegians. Instead of taking the opportunity to reflect upon the Czech Republic, where I live right now, I just keep gazing at my own Norwegian navel. And that's they way it is with a lot of us.

I remembered I watched the news on tv some time ago. The reportage was about peacekeeping, or peace diplomacy. Some reporter - a Norwegian one - interviewed Bob Geldof about it, and asked what he thought about the Norwegian peace-keeping and peace-making efforts. His reply was: "So you're fishing after compliments again?" I think that response captured the way we act in a lot of situations pretty well. We basically love to hear how good we are, and how good Norway is.

We truly are a navel-gazing nation.