The Great Fire

Many great cities have had a catastrophic fire in their history and our town of Aalesund was no exception. A fire in 1904 burned down the entire city center. The scene of the aftermath was pretty devastating as 850 houses were nothing but ash heaps and piles of bricks. The fire displaced over ten thousand people and was and still is, the worst in Norway’s history. It started in the middle of the night in a factory, and there were such strong western winds blowing that it took no time at all to burn up the town.




When the first fire alarm sounded, the fire “trucks” had trouble getting to the scene because the horses, which pulled the water tanks, wouldn’t go near the flames, until they were finally blindfolded. Amazingly, there was only one death - an elderly woman who went back to her house to get her purse.



Some houses along the perimeter of town were spared, but there was just one home, in the midst of all the rubble, that miraculously remained unharmed. As the story goes, the man that owned that house was a strong Christian. He later said that God told him if he left his house, it would burn, and anything taken out of the house would also burn; but if he stayed, it would all remain unharmed. All the houses around his burned to the ground, but not his, as he believed God’s promise, and he wouldn’t leave. His wife and children left, and the things they took with them burned, but they were not harmed.



There was a documentary made for television several years ago about that man, as he became somewhat of a folk hero for his ability to hear the voice of God and obey what he heard. His faith touched many lives. The photograph of his house still standing, after the rest of the town burned down, is an unbelievable sight.



While the town of Aalesund was still smoldering, the last King of Prussia, Keiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who had previously visited that coastal Norwegian town and loved it dearly, sent several ships full of supplies for the people, along with building materials to start rebuilding. He also sent architects and engineers who designed and rebuilt it with the Art Nuevo flare that makes it famous today. Norwegians have voted Aalesund as the most beautiful city in their country, and it certainly is.



Most locals feel as horrible as the fire was at the time, in the long run, it turned out to be a good thing. I wonder if they feel the same way about the Vikings.

Challenges

The Good Teacher Inga never taught us on Fridays because she taught English to another class, so we always had a substitute teacher on those days. We had one substitute named Lidia, for several weeks in a row. She is from Russia and I have tremendous respect for her because she started teaching Norwegian after only having lived in Norway for a few years. She is gifted in the language department. She speaks English perfectly, as well as French and Spanish, Russian and Norwegian.




We didn’t have any native French speakers in our class, but we sure had Spanish and Russian speakers, so she was quite the hit with all of us. She was teaching us one day about the rules involved with prepositional phrases and we all sat there with a blank look on our face. When the light bulb finally clicked for me, I asked her, in English, if what I thought was correct. She answered back in English. Then a Russian woman fired off a whole string of questions and they went back and forth like lightening in Russian. Then the Spanish speakers spoke up and she answered them just as quickly, in Spanish. Finally, we all understood what she was trying to tell us in Norwegian. She was amazing. It’s not that we didn’t understand her Norwegian, we just didn’t understand why in the world the Norwegian language would have such crazy rules about prepositional phrases. (I’m sure most of the class didn’t even know what a prepositional phrase was, even in their own language.)



I’m sure the best training ground these Norwegians have for setting world records and winning so many Olympic gold medals, is the fact that as children, they’ve all had to learn to speak Norwegian.



When my dad was a little boy, he was quite mischievous and my grandma used to say, “If he lives to be five, he’ll live a lifetime.” (And he did.) I feel the same way about Norwegian. Norwegian parents must say, “If they can learn to speak Norwegian, they can do ANYTHING!” (And they do.)

Too Much

During lunch break one day, I was sitting in the back of the classroom checking my e-mail and one of my classmates asked me what the word “formue” meant. She was looking at a website that used that word. That website is a big hit in Norway – one the government set up in the last few years – which shows every Norwegian’s tax return; how much they made, how much they paid in taxes, and how much “formue” they have (assets, including money in the bank).




There are only 4.5 million people in Norway and in the first week the site went live, it got 1.2 million hits. Lots of people were apparently wondering how much their friends, family, neighbors, and ex’s make… and now it’s all right there for the whole world to see. The local newspapers even have a direct link on their homepage websites so the information is just a click away.



One local I talked to thought the reason the government did this was so they can find out who is not paying enough taxes. It’s more likely now that someone would turn in their neighbor if they see something suspicious. If their income doesn’t support their lifestyle, then there is a chance they are getting “black money” somewhere (money received “under the table”), which is obviously illegal.



The jails in Norway are full of people who had little “businesses” on the side and didn’t pay taxes for it. Taxes are a big thing and they take them seriously, since it’s how they support their socialist ways.



I’m not sure the money reported on the tax lists is such an accurate picture of what people really make, however, since it only shows their income after they deduct legitimate expenses, but it’s something to look at, for sure. For a country full of people known to be so closed, I think it’s hysterical that they have all this financial information so open and readily available. The website even makes little bar charts so one can compare the amount they made with others born in the same year, or in their area.



But the funniest thing of all is the word “formue” -- it literally means “too much.” And while I believe the intent was to say, “You have too much, therefore you will be taxed on it,” my take on it is, they have provided “too much” information.

Formalities

We were invited to my husband’s cousin’s ex-wife’s house for dinner one night when we were living in Norway. I didn’t know her at all, but Kory did. I was happy to attend because I like seeing the inside of Norwegian houses and I was thankful I didn’t have to cook.




One Norwegian custom we were formally unaware of, is just how very dressed up we must be for such an occasion. Previously we’d just eaten dinner at relative’s houses, so the same rules apparently don’t apply there. We found out on that particular night, we were completely under dressed. Everyone else came looking mighty fine, but embarrassingly so, our sloppy Pacific Northwestern lifestyle came shining through.



Another formality we learned was proper protocol when meeting someone for the first time. When someone enters a room, everyone stands up to greet them. If a person already knows them, they just shake hands and say, “Takk for sist,” which literally means, “Thanks for the last,” which is short for, “Thanks for the last time I saw you… I remember it so well and have such good memories of it.”



If a person doesn’t know the other person, they shake hands and they both say their names to each other with a standard greeting like, “Så hyggleig,” (which means, “So comfortably nice” – but the “to meet you” is implied and not always said.) Then that scenario gets repeated with every person they don’t know, so the person who just walked in repeats their name to everyone there. I found it was much easier to remember names when I heard them over and over, so I liked that formality.



It’s also customary to bring a hostess gift, usually a house plant or a bottle of wine. Fortunately, we’d followed protocol on that one.



There’s really nothing like having dinner and dessert in a Norwegian’s home. There is a lot of emphasis on the beautiful table setting as everyone owns nice china, silverware, linens, and centerpieces. The coffee table is also set for dessert so everyone moves into the living room and pulls up chairs around it after dinner. It’s also set with fancy china, special dessert spoons and burning candles. It’s the kind of ambiance that I’m not sure was ever part of American culture - at least not the crowd I’ve hung with - but then, I was raised in a trailer court, so it’s hard to compare anything to that. The only formality I was taught, was, when spying on the neighbors, at least have the decency to turn out the lights so they didn’t know we were doing it.

Swear Words

One of the more interesting days I had at school in Norway was when The Good Teacher Inga taught us all the swear words. She said the times, they are a changin’, as what is considered a swear word now is completely different than when she was a kid (and she’s younger than me.)




Historically, the most awful words that would never be uttered in anyone’s home would have to do with the devil himself. Saying his name, calling “on” him, or mentioning hell, were strictly forbidden. They were considered dastardly words that make even the hearty, weak kneed. The Good Teacher Inga even blushed as she wrote them on the board. No respectable person would ever utter such things and I couldn’t even find them in the English/Norwegian dictionary (yet I found the American F word there.)



But now apparently, the effect of Satan’s name is starting to wear off slightly, and even though kids are still not allowed to utter it, the new generation has come up with even more repulsive swear words that have to do with “private parts.” Inga wouldn’t write those on the board, but I’m thinking they are similar to some English slang words.



Inga said it’s good we know some of the swear words just in case we hear our children saying them or if someone tries to teach them to us, so we will know just how socially unacceptable they are.



Kory laughs about the fact that the swear word that starts with “sh” in English, is just an ordinary word in Norway. Literally, it means something is soiled or dirty, but it’s also just a common expression that isn’t offensive. He said when they moved to America, his dad said that word at church while giving a testimony. He had to tell his dad afterwards that it was a swear word here, so it shouldn’t be used from the pulpit.



I had to try out my expanded vocabulary one day on Tobias, a neighbor boy that came over to visit our son. Tobias was 12 at the time and I asked him to verify if the word that sounds like “fawn” (the devil’s name), was really all that bad. His eyes opened wide. His jaw dropped. He stared at me in disbelief. After a few seconds he said with a shocked tone in his voice, “I’ve NEVER heard an adult say that word before!” Oops.

Competitiveness...

The day we got our first big test back in my Norwegian class, I was reminded of just how competitive I am. I did OK, but I didn’t get the top score. I struggled with putting the stupid verb in the second position for every sentence. I so want to say, “Can you do that?” rather than, “Can do you that?” It goes against every fiber in my being to make a sentence that sounds so ridiculous, but that’s how Norwegians talk so I’m the one that sounds like a fool when I speak with an English sentence structure.




When someone is talking to me in Norwegian (even now), I feel much like the dinosaur that gets its tail stepped on and it takes a complete minute for that information to travel to its brain before it can say, “OUCH.” Once someone says something, they need to stop and give me a minute to process all the words to see if I can figure out what they just said. But no, they just keep on talking and I’m lost in a blur of syllables that go up and down with such a sing-songy rhythmic pattern it could put a person to sleep. No one said it would be easy.



It killed me though because back in my school days, I was used to being the best student in class, but in Norway, not so much. There were young women in our class, fresh out of high school, so their brains were still in the soaking-it-up mode and they kicked my butt in terms of learning the language.



The student that did the best was from South America, and she’s sweet as pie but my nature is to not like her because she was better than me. My only consolation was that she has a horrible lisp, so I told myself no matter how much she knows this language, no one will ever be able to understand her speaking it. At least people understood me when I talked, even if my sentence structure was wrong.



The only good news that day was that I got a better score on the test than My Pal Vestina, and she was a most excellent student. So apparently the class was not so much about me learning or not learning the language, as much as it was about me being competitive and petty. Go figure. I still have a lot to learn.

Baby Money

In class one day we learned all the special words one would want to know if they are pregnant (gravid) in Norway. The reason they are so important is because they mean money. It’s hard to believe, but they actually pay women to have babies in Norway, and they keep paying for those babies until they are 16 years old – no matter how much money a person makes. The government pays the parents several hundred dollars every month until the baby is three years old, when the amount drops to about $200 a month until they are 16 years old. All “baby/child” money is tax free and is given for every child living in Norway, since the government acknowledges that it takes money to raise a child.




Norway is, I believe, the most progressive country in the world when it comes to maternity leave. All working women get one year’s maternity leave and 80% of their pay for that first year – and their jobs remain secure. If they chose to not go back to work after that first year, they can take another year off and keep their job, but they get no pay during the second year. The father of the baby also gets a 100% paid maternity leave for eight weeks sometime during the baby’s first year of life. (It’s been proposed to increase the father’s time off to five months, but I’m not sure if that has gone into effect yet.)



If a woman was not working prior to giving birth, the government makes a nice one-time deposit into her bank account to help with the expenses of raising the baby – to the tune of 90,000 kroner (more than $15,000 – tax free.) And because of their socialized medical system, all medical expenses associated with having that baby are paid for by the government.



We went around the room that day and everyone in class told about the birthing and maternity leave policies in their home country. Everyone (except me) was from a country where the medical expenses are free or miniscule and several countries had many months of paid maternity leave.



I was embarrassed to talk about the policies in America and how we have none of the above and that I had the privilege of paying over eight thousand dollars to the hospital just to give birth. The gasps were audible. But I choose to believe you get what you pay for, and I now have a boy worth every cent (and then some).