Strangers

Going for a walk in the neighborhood is a national pastime in Norway.  The term they use for this is “lufte seg” which literally translates as “airing myself.”  It’s funny when they say they are taking the dog out for a walk because the words translate as “airing the dog” as if it’s been stinking up the house.  I can’t help but laugh every time I hear someone say it. 

We were out walking with relatives one day and the first person we passed, my husband and I both greeted them with a “God dag”, which is a standard Norwegian greeting meaning “good day” but when pronounced sounds exactly like “good dog,” so that also cracks me up, since it’s something I often say to dogs.

After we’d passed them, Kory’s cousin asked us if we knew the people we had greeted.  We didn’t.  “Then why did you greet them?”  he asked.  We told him it’s because it’s just what we do – we greet people we pass on trails or in the street.  “We don’t do that in Norway,” he said.  “We only greet people we know.”  In fact, they don’t even make eye contact with people they don’t know.  The conversation went on from there about how Norwegians pretty much just keep to themselves and aren’t that welcoming to strangers. 

The foreign women in my Norwegian class often complained about how cold and uncaring Norwegians seemed to them and how hard it was to make friends with the locals.  I’ve even met Norwegians that have moved to America for that very reason – they hated how “closed” Norwegians are with their emotions.  Ironically though, that whole dynamic changes if there’s any common ancestry.

I have found the friendliest people in Norway when I have knocked on a complete stranger’s door, holding up a copy of the family tree, looking for a farm where one of my ancestors lived hundreds of years ago.  If there’s even a hint that I might be related to someone, they drop what they are doing, the door swings open wide, the coffee starts brewing in the pot, and I’m invited in for a good long chat.  Family is everything in Norway.

Based on my experience with doing family research on my husband’s side, if I go back far enough, he’s related to hundreds of people we know in Norway and thousands we don’t.  I guess that justifies us greeting strangers we meet when we’re out “airing ourselves.” 

I’m sure if every Norwegian had a copy of their pedigree, they’d realize they are all related, and perhaps then, they’d start saying, “good dog” to each other.