More on flags..

The controversy about flags on May 17 goes on. After the Commitee for May 17 initially had decided that only Norwegian, Sami, and the UN-flags were allowed in the official procession on May 17, the mayor of Oslo, Fabian Stang, have now overruled that decision - which means that any flag from any country will be allowed in the procession. After this, several members of the Commitee for May 17 have resigned from the committee.

As stated in my post on April 8, May 17 coming up, I am opposed to using other flags than the Norwegian one in the official procession on May 17, even the Sami one. What people do outside of the official procession is a matter of freedom of speech. If people want to wave the flag of their country of origin - fine. But it should not be done in the official procession. That one should be reserved for the Norwegian flag. That is what we are celebrating.

Some, including journalist Hege Ulstein of Dagsavisen, have presented the issue as innocent little children being brutally thrown out of the procession should they not be deemed sufficiently nationally correct. That is missing the point. What we are celebrating on our national day is the Norwegian nation, which is symbolized by the Norwegian flag. That nation encompasses everyone living in Norway, not only people with hundreds or thousands years long Norwegian pedigree, but also people of recent immigrant heritage.

There is no contradiction in reserving one day of the year for celebrating the Norwegian nation, and embracing all our nations inhabitants, wherever they might originate from.

Th!nk!

Just before I moved to Liverpool, a friend of mine asked which car brands were Norwegian. I said "none." That was a lie. But to my defense, I did not lie in purpose, just out of ignorance. Norway do in fact produce a car, the little Th!nk electric car.

The car was brought to life by the Norwegian company PIVCO in the 1990s, and the company had some success with the CityBee/Citi model in the mid-90s. The CityBee even won the Scandinavian Electric Car rally in 1995. In 1999, PIVCO was bought by Ford, and renamed Think Nordic, keeping it until it finally went back to Norwegian owners in 2004. (And for any Czech-speaking readers; yes, it is quite funny that a car company is called PIVCO.)

The Th!nk comes in three models - Th!nk City, Th!nk Ox (5 seater), and Th!nk Open (cabriolet), with prices from around £14.000, not including battery rental. The car will go on the UK market in the last quarter of this year. The car can travel up to 200 km before recharging, and can go as fast as 100 kh/h. And all of that of course, being an electric car, with no local emissions whatsoever.

Norway is not and has never been a great vehicle-producing nation. But the Th!nk is not the only car that has been made in Norway. During a very short period of time, from 1956 to 1958, the Troll car was produced in Norway. Although only 5 cars were delivered from the factory, had it not been for lacking support from the government, this could have been the start of a car-producing industry in Norway - the car was at the time compared to Citroën, SAAB, and even Porsche.

The Troll-project stranded in 1958, just after the factory having gotten into production, due to the government more or less conciously obstructing the production of the car. The company initially got a promise of a license to produce 500 cars for sale in Norway, but this was later reduced to a ridiculous number of 15 cars.

When the company wanted to produce additional cars for export, the government refused to support the company. This was despite the fact that the company also had other investors, who would invest only if the government also supported the production. The main reason for the governments reluctance to support the Troll company was that it did not want to disrupt the trade balance with Eastern Europe, from which Norway imported cars in exchange for fish flour. So in effect, the government chose not to risk their markets for fish flour instead of supporting a possible car producing industry in Norway.

Lets hope the Th!nk will have a much brighter future than what the Troll had...

Some reflections on history - Scandinavian influence on the British Isles

Even though I am an historian by education, my knowledge of certain parts of history is admittedly a bit patchy. But I do make an effort to close those gaps from time to time, mainly because I think it is immensely interesting. One of those areas where my knowledge is a bit lacking is medieval history, which in Norway chronologically correlates roughly to the Viking period.

During that time, Scandinavians (i.e. the Norwegians and even more, the Danish) had a huge influence on the British Isles. From the sacking of the Lindisfarne monastery in 793 up until the Norman invasion in the 1060s, Scandinavian vikings ruled large parts of Britain and left their mark on culture, language and politics. And even with the Norman invasion, the Scandinavian link is clear - William the Conqueror was a direct descendant of Rollo (or Ganger Hrolf), the Scandinavian viking who founded the viking principality that would become Normandy. William the Conqueror was the direct ascendant of the present-day Royal family in Britain, which in turn makes them direct descendants of Scandinavian vikings. Intriguing.

Contrary to common belief, the vikings were not simply bloodthirsty hethen warriors. More importantly, they were traders, who established extensive trading networks in areas such as the British Isles, Russia, Belorussia, Normandy, etc. Evidence of the extent of viking trade can be seen from frequent findings of Arab silver, Byzantine silk, and Rhenish glass in viking graves. Maybe the view as vikings being such merciless murderers stems from the fact that much of the history about the viking raids were written not by the victors, but by the people being raided, from the monks of the Lindisfarne monastery and onward, or from people highly sympathetic to them. Every historian, including myself, have got an agenda with what they write.

I have brushed upon the linguistic influence the Scandinavians had in my post from April 14, titled "Linguistic whores". A more thorough account can be found on the websites of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) in Aachen, Germany. Interestingly, some of the linguistic influences where quite profound:

Not only lexical, but also grammatical changes were due to Norse language influence, for example changes in the pronominal system: The Present Day English forms they, their and them were borrowed from Old Norse. The Old English forms were hie, hiera and him. Other influences on the English grammatical system are assumed to be the Norse influence on the verb to be: The original form of the plural present indicative in Old English was sindon, and it is assumed that Norse influence changed it to are. The inflectional ending –s of verbs in the 3rd person singular present indicative is also assumed to go back to Norse influence.¹

Another interesting point is that some words that we think of as borrowed from English, actually are words we have "gotten back", after English first borrowed them from us, and then them having fallen out of use in Scandinavia. One such example is the English word "bag", which was first borrowed from the old Norse word "Baggr".

In Ireland, vikings founded among others the city of Dublin. Many great cities, most notably York and London, were main trading centers for Norsemen. York was described by an unknown writer in 1000 AD as "…..filled with the treasure of merchants, principally Danes."² Other evidence of viking influence can be seen in names of towns and cities. Endings like -by, -thorpe, -thwait, and -toft are all of Scandinavian origin.

The viking also intermarried happily with the local population. Considering the viking love for red hair, one might do some speculations about the Irish ginger hair and the vikings.. However, intermarrying was not only constricted to Ireland, but happened commonly wherever the vikings settled, with the consequences that must have had on culture, both ways.

The historical links between the British Isles and Scandinavia are strong. Now that I live in the UK I have a good incentive - if I ever needed one - to delve into that part of history, which is undoubtedly very interesting.

Linguistic whores..

The great thing about living abroad is that it can give you some perspectives on your own home country. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Norwegian language being some kind of sponge, sucking up words from other languages, and thus dilluting itself. Of course, Norway is not the only place where this happens. It is not even the worst case, as I become more aware of now that I am living in the UK.

In his new book, The Secret Life of Words (reviewed by Kate Colquhoun in the Sunday Telegraph on April 12), Henry Hitchings shows how English has been a far worse delinquent. "Invaded and as invaders, [the English] have "borrowed" copiously from old and new languages - more than 350 of them, according to Hitchings. So English is the great whore of all languages, a hybrid hotchpotch of words accumulated like treasures each time a new thing, concept or technology cries out for a word to give it definition." (Quoted from the Telegraph)

So, the English have knicked almost entire sub-vocabularies from other languages, also from Norwegian or old Norse. For instance, seafaring terms like storm, oar, sail, and mast all come from Norwegian Vikings.

Languages are, after all, organic and evolves to fit peoples' linguistic and communicative needs. When new communicative settings arise (e.g with the introduction of new technology), new vocabularies are needed. Nowadays, we get them mostly from English. It is certainly interesting to see that Hitchings enlightens us about how English has in fact also been a great linguistic sponge..

Forward! - A British play about a Norwegian

Yesterday, Tony Harrison's new play, "Fram", had it's first preview on the National Theatre in London. The play will start playing on April 17.

"Fram" ("Forward") was the arctic exploration vessel of the Norwegian polar explorer turned humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen. The play, named after his ship, is about "Fritdjof Nansen who, with his suicidal companion, [Hjalmar] Johansen, makes a bid on foot for the North Pole in the 1890s." Later, in 1922, Nansen was a central character in the famine relief in Russia, and became in Tony Harrison's words "the first celebrity fund-raiser."

Maybe it is a Norwegian national character trait that we like to bask in our former heroes' glory. Anyway, it is very nice to see that a story like this is put on the stage abroad.

May 17 coming up..

The May 17 celebrations are not far away. in just a little more than one month the Norwegian nation will be celebrating its national holiday.

The Norwegian Forum for Immigrants would like children of "non-Norwegian" origin to be allowed to wave their home-country's flag in the official procession on May 17. The committee for May 17 says no. The arguments from the Forum of Immigrants are that this can make the procession more colorful, and that minorities' cultures are part of the Norwegian culture.

Yes, immigrants' culture should be considered part of the Norwegian culture. We do, in fact, have large minorities of both immigrants and indigenous people in Norway. They should no doubt be considered part of our culture and of our nation. But this is done not by waving different flags in the procession. It is done by showing one flag, namely our Norwegian one.

Personally, I think it is wrong that the Sami people are allowed to flag with their national flag on the national holiday. There are very heavily weighing historical reasons why they are allowed to do that, and of those the Norwegian nation have no reason to be proud. As stated before, I have great respect for the Sami people and their culture and history. Still, I do not think it is appropriate that they are allowed to flag with their own national Sami flag on May 17.

The plurality of our nation should be celebrated and appreciated. But this can be done in other ways, especially on this particular day. For instance, national dresses of any kind are accepted in the official procession.

By waving the flags of their home-countries or preferred nationality in the case of Samis, they are signaling that they are not part of Norway, but something else, different from our Norwegian nation. That is not what our national holiday is about. We should be celebrating unity under the Norwegian national flag.

Goodbye Prague, hello Liverpool!

Yesterday, I moved from Prague to Liverpool, where I'm going to live from now on. I had nine great months in Prague. I got to know of of the pretties cities in Europe, and I met a lot of nice people from all over the world, most of them through work. I am going to miss a lot of the people, and I am going to miss that great city.

Life as an expat brings loads of joys that you do not get at home. But there are also things that I have missed while staying here. I don't know if those things will be easier to get the hold of here in the UK, but I'll list them up:

1. Norwegian television. It's not that I really watch a lot of television, but I have missed it a bit. Mainly, I miss the two channels NRK and NRK2. It is possible to watch some programs on their websites, but that's not quite the same. And there is one website called zattoo.com on which it is possible to watch those channels live. Sadly, zattoo isn't avaiblable in the Czech Republic. Hopefully it will work in the UK.

2. Some Norwegian foodstuffs; liver paté, Bamsemums, Mill's Caviar-mix, and brown cheese. Those are things that Norwegians will have a hard time living without. And whenever some Norwegian expats get visitors from home, you can be sure that at least two of those items will be brought over. However hard it has been, I have surpisingly enough managed to live without these particular types of food for several months in a row. Granted, my parents brought Bamsemums, brown cheese and some caviar when they visited for Christmas, but still.. One other thing I've really missed is coarse bread. Real Norwegian bread. That is hard to get here; I found it once, but the next time I went to that shop to get it again, they didn't have it anymore..

3. Norwegian Easter. I didn't go home for Easter this year, so I kind of missed that a lot. Going skiing, driving the snowmobile, icefishing.. I missed having the oranges and the "Kvikklunch", a particular kind of chocolate bar we always eat for Easter while out on trips.

Coming to Liverpool, there are some things that I really look forward to. For one, it will be totally great to live someplace where I actually understand everything that is being said. Living in Prague, I worked in an international company where the working language was English, and whenever that was not spoken, Norwegian was. But outside of work, Czech was the language. I did not learn much Czech, mainly due to my own laziness, and thus I had a hard time communicating with people who didn't speak English. Living in the UK, it is going to be a relief to actually to be able to understand and communicate with everybody.

Another thing is that I think Brits and Norwegians are closer to each other, culturally, than Norwegians and Czechs. While living in a country that is further away culturally can be really interesting - and it has been - I think that I am going to feel more like home, somehow, here than in Prague.