Hey sorry if this is a bad ask but like, are people over there talking about the potential consequences of the US breaking NATO? Or how even the threats of pursuing some action actively undermine it?
Because I feel like I'm going crazy here, obvs the US has a billion things on fire rn but it seems NATO gets barely mentioned / is not a concern.
AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
No, can't say it's been a concern. Sure, we spent the past few decades since uh world war two ended being intentionally dependent on the US for security, because that's what the US wanted, and we have that big scary Russian border up North and the constant little acts of provocation, sabotage, and espionage against us and other nearby countries, and if the US moves on Greenland we'll have to choose between our biggest (but apparently very flaky) protector and one of our closest allies in this world, and also have to worry about what territory gets taken next and by who (Svalbard???), but noooo no one's concerned why would we beeeee
In other news when we support Ukraine we're just doing that for fun, no self interest there whaaaatsoever, and uh there is not one post on this blog of mine that has aged more poorly than this one. For all rereading it now is sobering, as it appears november 2024 me was more terrified than I'd remembered. So I guess it didn't age poorly, it just aged bitterly.
The state of NATO and potential scenarios for its future are in the news daily.
for the your country asks, 4, 5, 10, 11, and 13 (please teach me to swear in Norwegian my mom definitely knows how and she won't lmfao)
4. favourite dish specific for your country?
I’m a sucker for a good old fashioned norwegian salmon dinner with potatoes and rømme (kind of like sour cream but way thicker) I also like tørrfisk (dried fish) as a snack lol
5. favourite song in your native language?
Right now? anything by Cezinando, he’s one of my favourite norwegian artists atm. Anyway i listen to this song by him a lot cause im emo in 2020 cause im a graduating student with behavioural issues lmaooo
10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?
im from north norway so i swear like every other word?? Theres this running joke in Norway that ppl from north norway can call the police “Jævla hestkuku” (fucking horsedick) and get away with it cause we’re just like that. It’s true tho lmao I know ppl that do that on the regular up here and didn’t get trouble for it, but tried it down south and was fined. So yeah you came to the right place.
I’ll tell you some different ones cause you want to learn. one of my most used one would be “faen”. It’s a religiously themed swear, and it’s basically another word for the devil. You can say “Faen ta deg” which basically means fuck you. it’s kinda oldfashioned tho so usually we just say faen like english speakers would say. Our norwegian form for fuck is knull tho, but it’s mainly used when u actually refer to fucking, so we don’t say “knull you” or stuff like that, at least not in my circles lmao. Jævel literally means the devil and we usually use that like fucker i guess? like “Åh den jæveln” would be “oh that fucker”. We use hore as a swear a lot, and yeah it means whore and it might be problematic but like. it kinda doesn’t mean shit to most ppl cause it’s just a swear you know? anyway just putting whore infront of a word makes it into a swear. We also have helvete which is literally just hell, fitte which is pussy and a great thing to say when ur angry, and kuk which is cock or dickk or whatever. male genitalia. and ofc we have satan which is y’know. just satan. The good ol’ swears are the religious ones, the sexual ones are “newer”. Anyway now i’ll tell u what i usually say when i stub my toe which i know cause i just stubbed my toe and said this:
“satans jævla fittekukk i helvette FAENs horeunge knull mæ i ræva” translated - “Satans fucking pussydick in hell FUCKing whorechild fuck me in the ass”. Elegant, i know uwu
11. favourite native writer/poet?
OOOOOH LUDVIG HOLBERG!!!! He was a writer back in the enlightenment days and his novel “Niels Klims reise til den underjordiske verden” or “Niels Klims underground travels” in english changed my life! It was so progressive and he really said “give women the same rights as men” and “fuck slavery” back in the 1700s. He ripped white saviourism to shreds and i respect him so fucking much. Also he was a master at satire and would literally criticize the upperclass and “intellectuals” in the best ways possible, like this man really did that. I would advice y’all to read about him, he was pretty amazing and i hope to make the same kind of impact he made on me on someone else haha
13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?
I was raised in a strictly religious household so the only superstitions i were allowed to believe in was god, but my boyfriends family have a lot of those nordic superstitions.
His grandmother told me that when she was a child her grandmother told her if she went out during the northern lights it would take her away to heaven which scared the shit out of her (this superstition can be traced back to at least the vikings lol), they also believe in the creatures from the underworld like hulders and trolls. There’s this bush behind bfs grannys house that everyone knows the hulder lives under there. so to not get maimed by her we’re all just letting that bush grow. She also convinced my bf and his sister that there were trolls living under a rock by her cabin in the woods (but that they were kind trolls, she didn’t want them to be scared of them lmao). Now for something i believe in pretty strongly, but isn’t uncommon outside of norway is ghosts. I will always say hello and introduce myself when i go into an empty house just in case there are ghosts there, cause i don’t want to disrespect them, they were there first after all!
Thank you for the questions anon! Hope i helped you out with the swears, and if u have any more questions about them you can ask me anytime :)
So I’m posting some pictures I found on google images of Norwegian things.
Cabins used for short-term wilderness trips, called “hytte” (cognate of “hut”)
Galdhøpiggen, the highest mountain in Norway and indeed all of northern Europe.
The majestik møøse (Alces alces) (a møøse once bit my sister)
May 17th parade, commemorating the signing of our constitution at Eidsvoll in 1814.
Our traditional festive clothing, called bunad. Each region has their own bunad, and there are often variations within the region. These images are for my region, Trøndelag.
How we deal with snow. None of those dinky little F150s with a little scraper bolted onto the front that can barely handle a couple of inches, we’re serious about clearing that shit off the road.
Been baking some so called "Solboller", or "sun buns" directly translated, (a traditional thing to bake in Northern Norway when the sun comes back after the long dark winter, sweet buns with vanilla custard and icing on top) and I've been listening to Whitney Lindquists' new EP the whole time! Can't decide which of the songs I like the best, they're so good!
No problemo! <3 <3 Well, dialects in Norway are very distinct and sometimes people use words (or phrases) from other dialects if they are joking or fooling around. Or just being silly? BUT I fully support this headcanon, ok. Like Jonas probably got it from Eva something as she's from Bergen and "tjommi" is Bergen slang. It's like, super stereotypical Bergensk.
I was kind of thinking that usually the uncommon dialect words are just cooler so you might pull them out even if that’s not what you say. ;) But they made such a big deal of Eva speaking differently in s1 and being notably From Bergen that I choose to headcanon it’s Jonas picking it up from Eva because he was delighted by the way she spoke and thinks her Bergen roots are cool.
Far too many things for me to begin to cover in a tumblr post.
Suffice to say: we arguably owe our welfare and current standing in the world and inarguably our liberty as a nation to the US. This has shaped our domestic and foreign policies for the past 80 years, and we are currently breathing into a paper bag about the fact that Uncle Sam is talking about breaking up with us.
Also beware, there are matters in this post which are a matter of political opinion (rare for this blog, I know), and there are nightmareishly long paragraphs in here, so read at own risk and sorry about the long paragraphs.
Readmore for length and in case I need to make edits.
Norway, the war, and the Marshall Help
Imagine: your country is invaded by Nazis in 1940, and remains occupied for five years. When you are liberated, your country's gold reserve is depleted, many places bombed, and the entirety of Northern Norway is so badly ravaged that the population is evacuated and the region deemed uninhabitable (you'll notice, today, the architecture up north is new. All of it.). To say nothing of the human toll: one third of our Jewish population was slaughtered in Auschwitz, the country is littered in war memorials and tombstones of men shot or otherwise killed by Germans, and every family has at least one wartime story.
(I will take a note to say that it's our own occupation that comes to mind when I see the war and genocide happening in Ukraine. The differences are many, but the shared horror of an invasion, the fact that this happens on European mainland and is perpetrated by a country we share a border with, makes it feel extremely close. More, if Ukraine loses... I'll get into that further below, but suffice to say "Norway's defense budget" these days is labelled "Ukraine aid")
What are you going to do when peace comes, and the time to rebuild is upon you? Well, it so happens the rest of Europe is asking itself that same question, and the United States meanwhile sees an opportunity to both help its allies, strengthen our bonds so that we'll be on the same side for the foreseeable future, and weaken the communist sympathies in Europe. It's a win-win type of deal, and so the Marshall aid is launched: billions of dollars ($13 billion then, $178 adjusted for inflation) are poured into Europe, bolstering the post-war economy and allowing the countries which accepted (all of Western Europe, save Spain and Finland. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union declined as well.) to get back to their feet much sooner.
It's in this context that Norway's government's plans of a welfare society were possible to realize. Perhaps we would have managed it anyway, but the historically recorded fact is we did it with the help of the USA.
Then there's NATO, that beautiful response to not only the Eastern threat, but to the naivety that had reigned prior to World War II. Hitler had... helped himself... to increasing chunks of Europe, and country leaders kept saying "Well I don't want war, and I'm sure he'll be satisfied after that. Oh no, he invaded Poland?! Oh well I'm sure he'll be satisfied with- oh no, he's entered France!"
NATO means "Invade one, you fight us all", and while it may have come to mean "one invades Afghanistan, so now I guess we're all going" and even "boy Ukraine is having it rough huh. But we can't do anything without getting NATO involved, and that'll launch a new world war :/", and de facto "if NATO ever acts against Russia that will be world war three. Hang on, what's NATO for then?", NATO at its core still means "I am in NATO, so Uncle Sam will protect me. :)"
Which makes countries like Norway feel very safe. And, I cannot overemphasize, is why we've felt safe for the past 70+ years.
Which brings us to the next section.
That border. That border!!
If you look at a map of Norway, you'll see a long and happy border to Sweden. There has been much discourse (and war, war, war) over that border, I for one still think it would be nice if they gave us back Bohuslän, but overall we are very close and good allies.
Look a little further up, however. Yes, past the border to Finland.
Is that...
(photo credit)
Oh no, it's Russia!
This hasn't always been an oh no. We lived peacefully side by side frankly always, and the Soviets liberated Finnmark from the Nazis which was wonderful of them. Then Norway accepted the Marshall Aid, however, and while our governing party had had strong communist sympathies prior to the war (and after...) this cemented our ties to the United States. Our side in the Cold War had been chosen.
Border relations with Russia have been good, they have had to be good, but NATO was our safety and security during a very tense period of time. (This comedy skit is very funny but... kind of true... as does the entire Whaledimir debacle (adorable whale charmed the country, but was Whaledimir a Russian spy? Somehow, the answer appears to be yes.) The Russo-Ukrainian war has made relations historically bad, however. (Norwegian news article on the topic, if you feel like translating.)
Where am I going with this?
Norway has a shared border with Russia. Norway would not be capable of defending Finnmark if Russia invaded from the shared border, and having Sweden and Finland join NATO makes us feel better but the defense strategy has still been (and remains) "we defend what we can until US reinforcements arrive". One of the sexiest things the US has done this year was send a massive war ship sailing into our waters, just to say hello and show off their presence. MUCH APPRECIATED.
And, again, this might seem very remote and like the plot of a bad political thriller to the cursory anon and even to many Norwegians, but we were invaded in the last century, we have a shared border, a strategically important coastline and a lot of natural resources (oil!), and should Ukraine (god forbid) lose the war, the question will be this: what does Russia do next? What, specifically, does NATO and the US do if Putin for instance decides to take Svalbard? Is anyone risking nuclear war over Svalbard? What about Finmark? What about cyber attacks, underwater cable att- oh wait there were two underwater cables cut open yesterday.
Gee, that's not worrying at all.
In summation
America is a very important trade partner, and the cultural and political influence you have on us (on all of Europe, really) is immense. I imagine most asked would focus on that, especially on Norway's thoughts on the election, but you asked me and so you get my answer. Your election was a sports match to us (or at least covered by media and social media like one).
I will say this: Trump's first victory had us worried, and we have spent more on defense since then, but his second victory proves the first was not a fluke and the United States is shifting away from us. This is not something we can influence, as it is the will of the American people (or at the very least what they voted for), what we must do is adapt. I, a lifelong opponent to Norway joining the European Union, now see no other way if Norway is to prosper (though the EU also needs a major makeover to survive now, on our own without the US we are all shaking in our knees here in Europe). Likewise, to paraphrase a very good op-ed, Norway's national security neither can depend on a few undecided voters in Wisconsin who aren't thinking about Europe or Norway at all, nor should it.
We have been too dependent on the United States, this has been mutually beneficial and if it was up to us, this wouldn't change (I am now ignoring a faction on the far left which has been saying "Guys, I have a great idea: we should leave NATO :)" and another faction on the far right which is so eager to please Trump-senpai they think Norway is supporting Ukraine's effort because we're stupid), sadly it seems the US wants it to change.
Written, yes for the most part (there will be a few words that I don't know or am unsure about). Spoken, yes but that depends on the dialect. Bohuslän is very easy to understand, Northern dialects are very difficult. Most Swedish is understandable if I apply myself.
