Historical facts

Category: Ramblings | Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 2:52 pm

... are boring! I dislike the way historians recite years page up and page down. They have finely tuned the art of making history uninteresting to anybody but themselves. But some numbers need reciting.

The Black Plague reached Norway in 1349 and killed 65% of the population, which wasn't very big to begin with. From the remains a strange community slowly grew, but nothing really exciting happened for centuries.

Around 1800 the Norwegians started looking for the real Norwegian way of life. The National Romantics collected Norwegian stories, made Norwegian music and painted Norwegian paintings. The music of Ole Bull and Edvard Grieg and the paintings of Tidemand and Gude are still tresured. The focus was all on the Norwegian farmer. The Danish King Frederik VI lost Norway to Sweden in 1814, but he forgot to return Greenland, a fact we still dislike him for.

Whilst under Swedish government the Norwegians were still trying to find out who they really were. The speech and grammar had been Danish, but now a movement to find the Norwegian language started to surface. Thanks to a chap called Ivar Aasen Norwegians have two official languages; Norwegian, which sound and writes a lot like Danish, and New Norwegian based on dialects all over the country, which the Swedish understand quite good in writing. When Aasen published his book in 1848 he started a language fight that is still very much alive, and all school children suffer under it.

When tearing ourselves loose from Sweden in 1905, we lost the areas called JÃƒÂ¤mtland and HÃƒÂ¤rjedalen, and we still bear a grudge toward the Swedes for that. And we dived wholeheartedly into the art of being Norwegians. We didn't notice WWI much because we declared ourselves neutral and got to keep Svalbard because of that. Thank heavens!

Things took a real turn for the better after WWII, when our industry started growing and the welfare state was built. Being a hard working, proud people with no time for airs and graces, we've slowly built a system that is very equalitarian and built on trust. The taxes are quite high, but we all benefit from them at some point in our lives, so even though we all complain about them, we're not really making an effort to get rid of them. And now we've got time for airs and graces too.

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eileen wrote on Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:56 pm:

Keep the history lessons coming Droopy as I'm getting quite addicted to them!!! I can now hold a conversation with my youngest lads Swedish girlfriend about Norway and Sweden that I could never have done before.

Droopy wrote on Sun Oct 28, 2007 4:22 pm:

Thanks Eileen, that's nice to hear.

dooley wrote on Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:33 am:

I do enjoy history and geography and I did not know your facts about Norway. I must be sadly lacking. I thought Eric the Red was from Norway. Where were the Vikings from? dooley

Droopy wrote on Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:11 am:

Vikings were Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. Eirik the Red was born in Norway but fled to Iceland because the law was after him. Iceland was colonized by Vikings from all three countries. Then they made a couple of settlements on Greenland too.