Not specifically witchcraft related, I was just wondering if you could talk about Norway and that part of the globe. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Scandinavian and Nordic countries, and I’m dying to visit one of these days, but I wanted to know a few tidbits or anecdotes from someone who calls it home!
Hi there!
I think you have to be a little bit more specific.
It’s like this. I was born pre-oil, and grew up partly in poverty in a mostly rural mountain region, but I left during the last(?) big recession, just before all that oil-money began to trickle into our common piggy-bank, so I really don’t have much experience of today’s Norway and the blessings the “oil children” enjoy.
Certain things aside, most of my talk about Norway and norwegianness is most likely “outdated” compared to how things are today. It is certainly filled more with nostalgia and with memories and subjectivity than with the kind of objectivity that is necessary to get things across when the cultural context isn’t shared.
Circumstances has made it impossible for me to visit for many years, so all my knowledge about things, like current affairs and the development of the ever-evolving animal we call culture, stem from the media and from whatever friends and family share. Seen from the distance - from the outside - like this, I have to fill in the details that I can’t see from where I am with what I have from growing up there. And, like I said, it’s been a while, so it’s probably not quite up to date. I suspect that when I go back, I will get a terrible culture shock.
To me, Norway has become a very personal and very deep-felt dream. But…
Bringing stone masons over from Nepal and Tibet to build paths and staircases over the mountain passes; that eye-sore of an opera house in Oslo, the construction of those fuck-ugly and totally impersonal “signature” high-rises next door… The familiar and beloved block or wooden houses from the mid-19th century in the middle of Trondheim devoured by fire, and I don’t know what replaced them. Regular families have… maids…! People - adults - can’t pronounce the kj-sound any more and sound like toddlers when they speak. They’re growing grapes - and making wines from them - on the west-coast, and presumably sane people have exotic trees in giant pots in their gardens. All those vulgar national-romantic log-cabins - twice the size of regular Norwegian houses as I know them - strewn all over the place like so much visual pollution. There is a new tall gate to the museum area where I used to play, and it’s kept locked, and they’ve torn down old Jonetta’s house.
Et cetera, et cetera and so on…
…none of that is part of my dream.
So, yeh, you have to be more specific. I might know all there is to know about something, but I might also have no clue.
Edit: Gods, I sound quite critical and disapproving in that list of events that have changed Norway into something slightly “off” to me, don’t I! Sorry about that… not sure why it went like that. Maybe I am a bit miffed because I wasn’t there to share those changes. Nothing makes me feel more lonely and farther from home than when important things happen and I can’t be there.
You can see a tv-series about the “oil children” here [link] (some episodes have English subtitles). Theirs is a world very far from the one I grew up in.
Oh, and I am not all that “witchcraft related” myself, so that’s no problem! XD