Home / Blogs / Droopy's Blog / November 2007 /

The cost of living

Category: Ramblings | Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 10:08 am

---

I've tired of all the talk about higher wages, higher petrol prices, unnaturally high house prices, the very low prices on unhealthy food, the furniture people buy one year and throw away the next, and all the time complaining about the cost of living.

In my opinion these people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

How much is a tree worth? You buy it, care for it, watch it bloom and grow, and the pleasure it gives is worth far more than the money spent.

How much does a friendship cost? You invest in your friend with thoughts, actions, heart and time. You have to risk being vulnerable and open your heart to him. You risk being hurt from time to time. Sometimes so hurt that you will always carry a scar.

I can probably never understand why people work so hard to appear successful, with the right neighbourhood, clothes and cars. I do understand that the pleasure it gives them is very great, otherwise they would not do it. Each to his own. But my mind is different. I value the little things in life, the ones that might cost time and work to achieve, but not much money. The energy spent in my garden generates more energy when I see how things thrive. The warmth I give my friends I get in return when I need it. The animals give me strength to get through the days just by being their furry selves. All my surplus is given to my family, and I get a jump start when the girls hug me before going to school.

I did try to be conventional. I had a carreer and lived the life everybody expected me to. But instead of getting a broken back, I got a broken mind. If I had listened to myself, cut down on the work time, spent more time outdoors... If-if-if. Well, reality gave me a bang on the head and I had no choice but to listen. Fortunately I was young enough to make an about-turn and literally stick my finger in the dirt. So now I aim to be myself, which is awfully hard work. I lost much of me along the way, and I'm still picking up the pieces. I've got a prescription for fresh air, exercise and rest, which suits me fine! And perhaps in a couple of years' time I'll have found all of me.

Last edited: Mon Nov 05, 2007 10:09 am

This blog entry has been viewed 615 times

---

Old story

Category: Ramblings | Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:11 pm

---

We've got lots of written stories from when the vikings were still roaming the seas. The man who did most of the work, Snorre Sturlasson (1178-1241), was from Iceland. He started writing down stories that had been orally handed down from about 900 onwards, so we're not certain of his facts although his time line is more or less correct. What we do know, is that all the stories are shorn of embellishment, crisp and to the point. I'll give you an example.

In Flatoyrboka we find this story: «A herdsman stood resting, his head hanging. Torgeir Håvarsson struck him down with his sword. When asked why, he said: «He stood in a good position for a stroke.» His father deemed it an ill deed, but his mother thought he had the makings of a great king.»

Not exactly your normal bed time story.

The people in Snorre's stories are defined by what they do and how they act. We do not know how they think. Their spoken words are few and to the point. Of course it's mostly about men. The women are just accessories and rarely act. And the winning party is very honest and well-behaved, while the losers are dirty, sneaky characters.

Snorre himself used other peoples' work as sources. There were monasteries in Scandinavia and the monks were busy writing down the stories. They, of course, wrote it the way the Church wanted the story to be told. And Snorre probably twisted it a little too.

Also, in the story of Harald Fairhair, we sense the influence from «Tristan and Isolde», the Celtic love story. I can't bring myself to believe that Harald decided to gather all of Norway under one king just because he wanted to marry a beautiful girl. Marriages at the time were not from love but from what would be convenient to your family.

The stories also tell about lots of comings and goings from east to west, north and south, and we come to realize that the people of the middle ages actually had quite a big play ground.

This blog entry has been viewed 556 times

---

Some hobby

Category: Ramblings | Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 9:03 am

---

Norwegians are big about finding their roots. Almost every family has a hobby geneaologist digging about in old books and surfing the net to find as complete a family tree as one can. Why? I don't know, but it's fun.

Even though many really, really want to, it's hard to find lines dating further back than the 1600s. Before then, church books were poorly kept, and after that very many protocols have been lost along the way.

The State's archives are a treasure trove because they have managed to conserve the court protocols from the 1600s onwards. We didn't have a court in every town, and people often had to travel very far to get justice done. Property sales were also duly recorded. Of course these protocols won't include all kinds of facts, but one might find some nice tidbits.

Up until early 1900 people changed their surname if they moved from one place to another. It was common practice to use your home place's name as surname, a fact which can really make a geneaologist confused. The townies were an exception. They took their father's Christian name and added -sen which means son. As if that would make it any easier to find your ancestors.

Norway only had 440 000 people in 1665, and in 1822 we were one million, so the task of finding ones' kin should really not be too difficult providing someone with foresight already did the legwork and published a book about the small community where some of your relatives lived. But did they get their facts right? With people getting sick, dying in child birth, getting lost at sea or going away to war, re-marrying was a wide-spread practice. One man might have had three or four wives, and which one is the right one to record? And a newly widowed pregnant woman remarries, but who is the father of the child? Oops, somebody forgot to name her late husband.

The result of a several years-long search might be that one thread ends up around 1600, while another one stops in the early 1800s. One finds small holders, fishermen, traders, murderers and men of worth and status. They come from all over the country, even Sweden or Denmark. Your next-door neighbour might actually be a cousin 11 times removed. Nothing much is said about the women, of course, unless she did something extremely special. Maybe you've managed to pick up some useful knowledge along the way too.

This blog entry has been viewed 563 times

---

The Younger Sibling Syndrome

Category: Ramblings | Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 10:51 am

---

Since Norway had been under both Danish and Swedish rule, we felt we had nothing much to be proud of. True, the national romantics of the 19th century made a wave of national feeling, but it didn't last. We had no world renowned painters, poets or scientists, and not a single noteworthy building. We had stone, wood and water.

When trying to find out what to do next, we looked to Sweden, Denmark, Germany and England, but when we tried to emulate them we did not succeed. Then foreigners started to notice our mountains and fjords. The first mountaineers to climb our highest peaks were English. The first fjord tourist was Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. English and Scottish nobility discovered that our rivers were teeming with salmon. The term «Salmon Lord» was established.

The Norwegians shook their head, thinking foreigners slightly mad for spending so much money and energy just to get closer to the scenery. And we kept looking for guidelines from Sweden and Denmark.

Then there was oil. American drillers and oil workers came, bringing their families with them. Several other Europeans found work here, and they looked around and exclaimed: «How beautiful! Oh, how quaint! This is very special!» And the Norwegian blushed, nodded and said, «Well, we've known that all along.»

And finally we lifted our eyes from our boots and started to grow up.

When we discovered that we could actually excel in something, our common inferiority complex started to disappear. We have the painter Edvard Munch. We have Sonia Henie, an ice skating star who became a movie star. We have great ski jumpers and cross country skiers, and even soccer pros. The Iraqui soccer team just hired a Norwegian trainer. And we have diplomats touring the globe for UN. It seems that no peace mission is complete without a Norwegian, probably because we're so small and harmless that we intimidate no-one.

Our stone, wood and water gives a good income now, and we've got sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Hopefully we won't end up being intolerably proud of ourselves.

This blog entry has been viewed 1289 times

---

Goto page previous, 1, 2,

Home / Blogs / Droopy's Blog / November 2007 /