Ha-Det (Farewell)

I’ve always loved “people watching” and through this column I’ve been able to “culture watch.”  My husband says when we are in Norway he just thinks everything is normal, because it’s what he grew up with and is used to, but I see things “with American eyes.”  I find it odd he doesn’t notice as many differences between the two countries as there are.  Thankfully there are, or I wouldn’t have had anything to write about for the last three years.  Usually, comparisons are drawn between the Norwegians and the Swedes, not Norwegians and Americans.

It’s been a good ride.  When I started writing this column I never imagined I’d have three year’s worth of material to keep it going, let alone readers who wanted to read it.  I’ve been very encouraged by the number of positive comments I’ve gotten and even more thrilled that those who may not have liked it, kept it to themselves.   I’ve met some really nice people and even befriended some of the folks I’ve met through this column, simply because we all share a love of Norway.

Sandy Stokes has been a very gracious editor and I’m most thankful for her giving me the opportunity to put my writing in print.  I love to write.  I love Norway.  It was a good combination.  But I’ve racked my brain for more stories ideas and they just aren’t there.  I hate my column to start sounding like a high school report, so it’s time to stop. 

Several readers have requested a collection of my columns in book form, so that will be my next step and I’m sure you’ll “read all about it” in the LaConner Weekly News the days it hits the market.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the enthusiasm, chats over coffee, and general interest in my column.  The Norwegians that know about this find it hard to believe that Americans are interested in the goings on in their small country, but they of course, have no idea how much I’ve made fun of them in the process. 

I’ve won second place, two years in a row for “Best General Interest Column” in a statewide newspaper competition, with “Nuggets From Norway.”  I’m wondering now if I start writing about the Swedes, if I might finally come in first.

Comparisons

I’m married to a classic stubborn ol’ Norwegian.  He fits nearly every stereotype that’s out there.  Kory’s peers still in Norway, the friends he left behind when he came to America at age nine, have a completely different mindset than he and his Norwegian immigrant peers in America.  The Norwegians in Norway are much more easy going.

Norway has gone from a third world country fifty years ago, to the country that’s always at the top of the list for most “livable” places.  The discovery of oil in the North Sea has made all the difference, as Norway is now the second largest exporter of oil in the world.  The Norwegians that stayed through the hard times are now reaping massive rewards.

My husband can’t shake his immigrant mentality, so whether he came by his stubbornness through nature or nurture, I can’t say.  His father had nothing when he arrived in America.  He had to save for a year before he could pay for the tickets to bring over his wife and four sons.

Kory spent his American childhood living as if in poverty, while his father was investing every dollar in his construction business, increasing his net worth.  They shopped at thrift stores and often brought back more from the dump than they had taken.  Kory’s father repaired all their shoes as the passed down from one boy to the next. His mother made soap from scratch. They ate soup made from fish heads thrown out by a fisherman uncle or beef bones from a rendering plant where another relative worked. 

Since Kory’s had to earn every dime he ever spent as a kid, and pay for his own clothes in high school, he’s been pinching every penny since.  He knows how much work it takes to earn a dollar and he’s not quick to let them go.  He still wears socks with holes in them long after I insist he throw them out because in his mind, if he gets several more uses out of them before they get tossed, he’s made his money go just that much further.

Kory’s counterparts in Norway now enjoy a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle and would never even consider wearing socks with holes in them.  There’s a good chance they even throw out hole-less socks.  Norwegians take so many perfectly good things to the dump that several dumps have opened second hand stores so their landfills don’t fill up so quickly.  Naturally, it’s mostly just immigrants that shop there. 

Today’s Norwegians are anything but tight fisted.  They have so much of their lives subsidized by their government, that many don’t even have a savings account because any possible emergency they’d have, would be taken care of by their tax dollars at work.  Even, I’m sure, a hole in their sock.

Standardized Food

Theresa, a friend I made while living in Norway, told me that it’s very important for Norwegians to feel “safe” and in control of the foods they eat.  She said they get great comfort from the predictability of having the same foods over and over their entire lives.  Her grandfather, who is in his eighties, only wants his fish cooked one certain way – boiled in salt water – with no sauces or other flavorings on it whatsoever.  Boy does that sound like my husband, who is nearly 70.

When we were first married, I made Kory some blackened fish which I thought was fantastic, but Kory quickly informed me that he likes his “fish to taste like fish.”  I tried my favorite lemon chicken recipe on him from a gourmet cookbook and I got “I like my chicken to taste like chicken.”  And so I learned…  Norwegians aren’t into spices or any kind of fancy foods… they just boil something in salted water and call it good. 

Theresa told me her grandfather refused to try any of the “new foods” that have entered Norway these past few years – like pasta, tacos or rice – but she did talk him into having a piece of pizza once.  Only once. 

The whole food thing in Norway is so weird (and very boring), but they obviously have gotten used to some basic foods and it works for them.  In America, we want different things all the time and the packages here are always changing because things are “new and improved.”   In Norway they brag that they DON’T change the food - “original recipe since 1971,” is says on the package. 

Change, for Norwegians, is NOT good when it comes to their food.  Norwegians find something they like and they stick with it.  I guess it comes from a tradition of not having many options, as it’s only been recently that faster transportation has been able to bring other kinds of foods into the country.  Factor that with the fact that change happens very slowly when such stubborn people are involved in the process, and it’s easy to understand the situation.

Kory was very pleased when I told him what my friend Theresa shared with me about Norwegian’s attitude toward food.  He felt so validated.  But he was even more pleased when I made him salmon for dinner that night, with boiled potatoes and boiled carrots using no spices whatsoever.  Our marriage is safe.

Washing Clothes

Most bathrooms in Norway are huge and they all have heated floors.  In our little 725 square foot condo, our bathroom is larger than my son’s bedroom.  That’s the case, even in some houses.  The reason for their massive size is because the majority of bathrooms also double as the laundry room. 

Washing machines in the bathroom are as common as the toilet, sink and shower.  Dryers are rare, however, because electricity is so expensive, no one uses them.  The bathrooms have to be big because their needs to be enough space to hang up all the clothes on an inside clothes line and still have a clear path to the toilet.  I often find it tedious to hang up each individual sock or pair of underwear, and our bathroom is so huge, I just lay all the wet clothes down on the heated floor and they are dry in no time.  Weird system, but it works.  The warm floors are a real treat.  I’ve found my son lying prostrate on them more than once when he comes in from the cold.

Some lucky people do own clothes dryers, but the dryers are much different than the ones we have in America.  The Norwegian clothes dryers are more like water extractors.  There are no external dryer vents so there isn’t much heat involved in the drying process.  Somehow the dryer sucks out the remaining water in the clothes into this long plastic tube inside the machine.  It’s often necessary to empty the container once or twice before the clothes are dry.  Drying a load of clothes in this type of dryer takes about four hours.  Washing the clothes in a Norwegian front loader takes at least two.  I’ve yet to figure out why this is so, but when Norwegians come to visit us and their clothes are washed in thirty minutes they are certain they couldn’t have gotten very clean in that amount of time.

One day in my Norwegian class we learned about all the names for colors.  One woman was wearing a pretty pink top and when The Good Teacher Inga called it “rosa” (pink) the woman wearing the top said, “It used to be red” (rød).  I later asked her if it turned pink since she’s been in Norway and when she nodded we both had a good laugh.  Norwegian washing machines are notorious for ruining clothes.  They are sophisticated enough that one can select how many revolutions per second the machine spins the clothes (all washers are front loaders), but they have no cold water setting.  The lowest water temperature possible is 90 degrees.  The temperature settings go up by ten degree increments all the way to boiling.  The colors in the clothes fade quickly.

 My classmates “red” shirt was still a pretty shade of pink anyway - at least until she washed it again.