Horsecocks and sissies - stereotypes and self-perception

Some time ago, a southerner (a person from southern Norway that is), visited a small fishing village up north. To start with he had a hard time understanding the ways and humor of the people in the little town, but as the days passed on he got to know them better and better, and befriended them all. As the day came when he was to leave, they had a farewell party organized for him. And as the party drew to a close, one of the townspeople rose up to say the last words. At the end of his little speech, he said that "we have all concluded that you are in fact a really nice horsecock", and although the southerner himself was a bit puzzled by this remark, many of the townspeople were touched to tears about this unbelievable compliment.

This story is probably not a hundred percent true, but it nevertheless highlights some of the perceptions of northerners in our country - that is both their own self perception and the perception of others. Now, the fact that there is a divide in some ways between people in different regions in a country is nothing particular for Norway. You do have the same in France, in the UK, in the USA, and in Germany (think Ossies and Wessies), and problably any country in the world in fact. But what lies behind the differences (perceived and real) is quite interesting, I think.

According to the stereotype, the northerner is utterly straight forward. He is telling everything as it is, straight from the gut. Uncomplicated and unpretentious, he is free of any urbane streaks. And his language of course, is juicy and full of imaginative swearing. An independent soul, never giving up no matter how dark things (literally) look. And as for humor, it is at times dark, at times light hearted, but mostly very coarse and a lot of the time of a sexual nature.

I guess the development of the nature of the northerner (perceived or real) can be at least partly explained historically. (Note: the following is largely speculation and my interpretation of things. I do not have very much academical backing for my claims here.) The northern parts were (and some say it is still) quite provincial, being the back waters of Norway. In fact large parts of the borders were not drawn out until in the mid 18th century, at least in part reflecting the irrelevance of this area for the government in Copenhagen (as Norway was in union with Denmark at this time).

It is easy to imagine how people in this situation would develop a character different from the urban centers down south. This situation would have encouraged a mentality of self-reliance, as people would have to cope with their lives without any help from outside, and in short a "tougher" and coarser mentality than you would typically get in more urbane settings. And of course, as people sometimes tend to define themselves by their differences compared to others, this might have been a self-reinforcing process as well: "We are a tough bunch, much tougher than those sissies down south"

Even today, a lot of northerners are defining themselves based on the perceived differences from southerners. We up north have an image of the "typical" southerner as a wimp and office rat, sipping his caffé latte or whatever they drink down there, and we define ourselves pretty much as the antithesis to this. We take pride in being able to withstand the harsh and cold weather (never mind that there are regions further south which have much colder weather than us), that we have such a coarse and simple humor, etc.

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.

Some bits of history - the Kautokeino Uprising of 1852

This post is related to my entry of March 19, "Separatism in Norway, pt. 2." It is not related to separatism, but nevertheless to conflict between Samis and non-Samis in Finnmark, Norway's northernmost administrative region. The Norwegian director Nils Gaup has recently made a feature film about this dramatic event, the Kautokeino uprising of November 8, 1852. I haven't had the opportunity to see this movie yet, by I can't wait to..

Briefly told, a posse of 35 adult Sami men and women and 22 children under the age of 13 ganged up and killed the sheriff and the merchant and badly beat up the subparish priest in the town of Kautokeino. The leaders and several members of the posse were imprisoned, and the leaders were sentenced to death and executed in 1854.

Both the actual events and the reasons for the revolt has been subject of much controversy, and there are several differing opinions on these subjects. It is the only known incident of conflict between Samis and non-Samis in Norway that has led to loss of life.

The group responsible for the uprising was part of a religious sect adhering to teachings of the Swedish preacher Lars Levi Læstadius. The sect held that theirs, not the official Church's, was the true faith. Læstadianism appealed to the Sami population for several reasons. For one, unlike the State Church, it was not seen to be representing an oppressing colonist government. Secondly, it got rid of some serious social problems such as drunkenness and reindeer theft in the areas where it had large followings.

Læstadianism was not agressive in nature, but there had been situations of commotion with its followers in the Kautokeino area before the uprising of 1852. The preceeding years, sect members had been acting threatening towards non-converts. On one occassion a confirmation-service in the town of Skjærvøy had been cancelled because of trouble with Læstadians. As a result, several of the responsible were sentences to forced labour sentences. This included some of those involved in the later 1852 uprising.

In November 1852, a group of Sami Læstadians had gathered in a reindeer herding camp just outside of the town of Kautokeino. On Sunday, November 7, the group broke up, and left for Kautokeino, which the angry crowd reached the following morning. The main object for their anger was a local merchant of Swedish Nationality, mr Carl Johan Ruth, who had made a fortune on others' misery by selling booze. The anger was also directed at the local Sheriff, Lars Johan Bucht, and the subparish priest, Fredik Hvoslef, both seen as representatives the colonist State power.

When the group, led by mr Ole Somby, reached Kautokeino, they were met by mr Ruth and mr Bucht. Fighting broke out immediately, and one of the Sami leaders, Aslak Hætta, clashed together with the Sheriff. The Sheriff was brought to the ground, and in the fighting mr Hætta bit off his nose. Hætta got hold of the Sheriff's knife, and stabbed him. In the meantime, the merchant, mr Ruth, was clubbed down. The women in the crowd jumped on him, and hit him several times in the head with sticks, leaving him lifeless on the ground. The merchant woke up a little later and tried to escape, but was stabbed down by Aslak Hætta.

The Sheriff was brought into mr Ruth's house. Even though he was dying from his wounds, Ole Somby's brother and also one of the leaders, Mons Somby, found it best that he was to be stabbed to death. As Aslak Hætta remarked, "the Anti-Christ was somewhat recilient." After the posse had stabbed Bucht to death, they set the house on fire and rounded up the priest, Hvoslef, and his family outside. The priest was whipped badly. Only his wife, eight months pregnant, was spared.

The uprising was finally brought down with the help of other Samis from the neighboring town. Five members of the group were later sentenced to death, of which only two, Mons Somby and Aslak Hætta, were actually executed.

The explanations for the uprising are numerous, amongst them were hate, desire for revenge, and religious fanaticism. One of the most credible explations is from the Dutch sociologist, Nellejet Zorgdrager. In her book "The Struggle of the Just - Sami resistance against Norwegian colonialism," based on her Ph.D thesis, Zorgdrager contends that the Kautokeino uprising has its roots in the court sentences after the commotion in Skjervøy the year before.

The 22 Samis involved in this had been given - at least in their own opinion - harder sentences than necessary, and on top of the forced labour were also deemed to pay the cost of the lawsuit. The only way to collect that kind of money would have been to sell off all but the entire herd of reindeer, which would have left them with no livelihood. To make things even worse, the borders with Sweden had been closed in September 1852, shutting off the winter grazing areas.

Thus, the only two alternatives were either to wait to get their reindeer herds confiscated by the Sheriff, mr Bucht, or to preemptively attack the colonialist power, represented by mr Ruth, the Sheriff, and Hvoslef. They chose the last alternative.

This post was based on the following sources:
Johan Brox: Kautokeino-opprøret: Kautokeino 1852
Wikipedia: Kautokeinoopprøret
Altaposten: Det blodige opprøret