I had a few more things that I’ve noticed in my time here that I thought would be interesting to note. Here goes, in no particular order.
Ice (Bear With Me)
Two thoughts: first, the Norwegian word for “polar bear” is isbjørn, or “ice bear”. Isn’t that adorable? I smile every time I hear it. Ice bear. See, there I go :D They eat people, but they have a cute name in Norwegian.
Second, Norwegians are huge on “climate change” and seem to assume, to a person, that the globe is warming and will continue to do so (never mind recent data that might point to a quickly coming “mini ice age” . . . and don’t forget how in the 1970’s politicians were urging us to take measures – which naturally reduced people’s rights and freedoms but accidentally put more power in the globalists’ hands – to save the world from the coming ice age, and scientists were developing plans to dump soot on arctic icebergs to melt the ice and avoid the ocean levels getting too low). The interesting thing is that people here are actually excited about “global warming” because, as soon as enough Arctic Ocean ice melts, a navigable shipping passage to the Far East will appear that will be drastically shorter than the current Suez Canal route. Of course, Norway would be able to so a lot of that shipping, and charge others a lot of money to borrow the coastal waters on the way to and from the Pacific.
Another Laugh at the Zoo
The Norwegian Coat of Arms is a regal and scary lion, wearing a crown, brandishing a silver-bladed axe. Does that kick butt or what?! “Don’t mess with us; we’re tough, lethal, and so rich we make our weapons from precious metals.”
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| Well lookie here, I found it online :) |
Curiously, Norwegians really do like axes. They were still making and using battleaxes 200 years after all the rest of Europe made the switch to swords.
Small Country, Big People
A little over 4 million ethnically Norwegian Norwegians live in Norway. None of them is petite. These are a sturdy people. Norway is the only place I have felt close to being an average-sized man instead of a big guy. Every day I walked past men who were both taller and broader than I am, and every day I passed by at least one woman who was about my height and not all that far off in build. The Vikings are alive and well.
Physical anthropology and human body architecture fascinate me normally, but in Norway, I was especially keen to look around and see people from the same blood as some of my ancestors. My mother says that I have the very same build (and hirsuteness) that her full-blooded Norwegian father had. So it has been cool to see more people who share certain physiological attributes with me. I won’t go more into it right now, as that might be delving into the realm of TMI. But ask me sometime if you’re also curious :)
A Colorful Idiom Comes to Life
The other day I finally realized what it felt like to be green with envy. After one visit, I was so envious of the cool job that the guys there had that I actually felt sick in the pit of my stomach and almost a little bit dizzy. Green . . . sick . . . aha!
I eventually recovered, of course. So what set me off so? We met with members of the Foreign Service of the US State Department. They told us about their job: travel around the world to a new place every 2 or 3 years to live there and represent the USA in various (often cool) State Department operations. And, even better, before they move to each new post, they spend 6 to 12 months in full-time language school, becoming fluent in the tongue of their next host country.
I almost died. If it’s not obvious to anybody yet, I LOVE TRAVEL!! It is my favorite thing in the world! I want to see it all! And, as you have caught a glimpse, I kinda dig learning new languages, too, at least when I have a chance to use them. To learn that these guys do my favorite thing for a living plus it’s interesting work, plus it’s a cushy government job, well . . . it was a little overwhelming.
So anyway, I’m back. That’s not my calling and even if I somehow tried to force it to happen and succeeded, it would kill Alissa. So it’s not on the wish list at all.
But still . . . there’s no reason I can’t find a job that needs to send me abroad every now and then. Not to relocate, of course, but surely someone needs a dual citizen AmeriCanadian trained in law and fluent in Norwegian (the latter detail is future tense) . . .
Speaking of Visits to Interesting Places
I can’t remember which places in our study program I mentioned and, as I type this, I lack internet access and can’t look things up online. So let me briefly mention some of the spots we toured in Oslo as part of our study program. This was some seriously amazing stuff; virtually none of these places could we have visited had we been here as mere tourists instead of in the program.
So let’s see then, we caught:
--> Two of the big four Norwegian law firms, where they presented on why they were the biggest (one had billed the most hours, the other employed the most attorneys), what kind of law they were into, and a few more fun facts. Plus, both fed us delicious open-faced sandwiches with smoked salmon, brie cheese, prosciutto (or its Northern European equivalent) and other goodies.
--> The central Oslo police station. They talked about interesting police stuff. They talked about the problem with immigrants and how their jails are a joke. I found the latter point amusing, as one of the Ph.D law professors at Bergen said that prison in Norway was quite a hardship. Why is that? Mostly because you can’t come and go as you please. The view of someone who’s never been outside the academic world is often interesting. Let me fill you in on Norwegian prison for a moment.
First, you get your own cell with a shower, sink, and toilet. You only serve 2/3 of your sentence, and the longest possible sentence is 30 years, which nobody gets. In 2007, only 21 sentences were 15 years or longer (meaning they will get out in 10). You get a two-week vacation from prison (yes, vacation, as in out on your own) each year, and of course conjugal visits, free school, and so on.
I had a funny moment when I was giving directions to some young American visitors in Oslo. They asked if buying drugs was “dangerous” here, punishment-wise. I affirmed that yes it was, and drug sentences are about as severe as murder sentences. But then I mentioned some of the above details about prison and they said, “Do you think we can be put in prison for just one night? It sounds much better than our hostel!”
More about the police in Norway: they are fit and can outrun and subdue criminals with ease (“We don’t have any doughnut-eating police here”) even though they do not carry guns. They have guns locked in their cars, but they must radio in for a police lawyer to approve the gun use and issue the secret code to get into the safe. How about that? Also, the assistant chief said, the police union is always asking for more pay, because they say their job is so dangerous. They never ask for more protective equipment, just more pay, which they get, and which seems to tame the mean streets for a while.
--> The national Labor Organization: unions are gigantic in Norway, and super powerful. In fact, weird laws exist that require a third of corporate boards to be union representatives (“To make sure that not just the shareholders are represented, but also the stakeholders” . . . hmm, doesn’t smack at all of propaganda). We visited the daddy organization of them all. Two of the spokesman’s admissions surprised me. He, too, lamented the problem in Norway where immigrant workers are upsetting the workplace since Europe opened its internal borders to migrant workers, although he quickly mentioned that the Organization fights for these people’s rights, too. He also criticized the American auto workers’ union for destroying General Motors by being too greedy and looking only to themselves instead of to society as a whole. Fascinating stuff!
--> The Nobel Institute (where the prizes were given every year for almost a century until they moved to a bigger venue). We toured it. We heard about the prizes and the guy. I could go on, but this is taking too long. Besides, the Nobel prizes seem rather irrelevant nowadays, especially since they started including them in cereal boxes.
--> Various government offices and NGOs devoted to peace and other foreign affairs. They talked, it was interesting and cool, we learned stuff, they treated us graciously, they inspired me with cool stories of interesting careers (almost everybody we talked to was a lawyer, naturally), and so on. Just nothing stands out quite as much as, for example, the police station.
Well I guess there is one: Norway’s pension fund (paid for by oil and the world’s largest pension fund) owns about 1% of Wall Street. That is gigantic. They have some clout. The office we visited had the task of selling off the Pension Fund’s shares in any company the office determined operates unethically. This ranges from companies that produce tobacco to companies known for influencing politicians to companies exploiting child laborers. They also recently sold all of Norway’s Wal*Mart shares. Discuss.
--> Various big business / trade groups: same as the governments and NGOs, but with sharper senses of humor and, seemingly, greater enjoyment of their lives. We learned a ton about Norway’s various industries including oil, shipping, manufacturing, and other stuff they do. Fascinatingly, containing only fewer than 5 million residents, Norway is still in the top 5 countries in the world for number of patents held. Labor is expensive here, so they concentrate on being the best and most innovative at what they do. They also invest a ton in their employees, which is heartening to see. They really want their young employees to succeed in their careers. And this isn’t just what the corporate bigwigs say, we heard it from the [young] horse’s mouths and saw it for ourselves. Norway is a land of opportunity.
--> Courts: we sat in briefly at a couple of criminal trials at the District Court, (one where I was actually able to deduce that the defense attorney was reasoning to the jury that 14.5kg of hashish – about 32 lbs – wasn’t actually all that much), toured the Appellate and Supreme Courts (where the Chief Justice presented), and Parliament. Neat stuff happened at all venues, but probably more neat for law students, so I’ll spare you the details.
à Opera software: I did not know until this trip that the Opera company, best known for their web browser, is fully Norwegian. A former Hamline Law School (the study program’s host school) student works there as their chief legal counsel. We actually had a really interesting presentation on what makes their software unique and cooler than the rest, and I finally learned why Opera used to cause me so many problems when I used it years ago (they claim it’s mostly all fixed, and it was never their fault). And they treated us to lunch in their cafeteria where I ate almost nothing but seafood. Including pancakes stuffed with cheese and seafood. What a great country!
Ending my Norway posts with some more random pictures, most from Oslo, but a few from Bergen which I forgot to post on time:
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| This is an actual picture out my window, about a week before the summer solstice. It's half past midnight. |
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| Hahaha imagine trying to sell this back home. "What's for dinner, dear?" "A steamy Bag of Taste, darling!" |
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| Talented one-man band. The only busker I gave money to all year |
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| Fresh Norwegian Blue Sky. I miss you. |
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| Beer cups seen in the museum |
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| Another midnight sky picture, this one about a month before the solstice |
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| Weird snack food. See below for what's inside |
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| How about that? They are actually ramen noodles shaped into little bite-sized pucks, eliminating the need for college students to break up a package of Top Ramen to snack on. Totally bad for you and totally delicious. |
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| I see this everyday in California. Or not. |
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| Not something I expected to see in downtown Oslo, but there it was in the city pedestrian mall during some kind of cultural expedition. |
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| LOL |
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| How could I resist buying several of these? Let me tell you, it was a battle. |
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| This picture doesn't fully capture the smallness of this electric car. They were quite common in Oslo. You can almost put one in your pocket. |
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| Possibly the coolest bicycle rack I've seen |
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| Rubber ball stoppers for mineral water! So much fun, I would buy this brand just for the bottle if i could do it back home. |
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| The woods by Fantoft in Bergen. I'll miss them. You can see the ocean through the trees when it's not an overexposed photograph but real life. |
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| At the folk museum. The "oven" they used to cook on was just a flat disc of metal next to the fire. |
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| The finished product: fresh lefse with melted butter |
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| More from the Folk Museum | |
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| Have you ever seen a fence like this? |
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| Pretty useful having separate buttons for separate, uh, needs. One weird thing I learned in my travels is that there are almost as many ways to flush a toilet as there are toilets. |
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| Super yummy Norwegian sandwiches served at Parliament. Almost everywhere we visited served us lunch, and often it was this awesome |
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| One of the famous "Stave Churches", mixing traditional Viking and Christian styles |
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