First off, I spent Christmas this year in Hønefoss with my distant Norwegian relatives. Hønefoss is a small city about 40 kilometers southeast of Oslo. I spent the days leading up to Christmas with Tore and Eldbjørg Ramsrud, then December 24th-26th with Morton and Vivi Indrelid, and then returned to Tore and Eldbjørg's for several more days after Christmas. Tore is my second cousin, two generations removed, and Morton is my first cousin, two generations removed.
On December 21st I traveled from Trondheim to Oslo by train. The train lines in Norway are very old and the routes they take have many curves so the trains are unable to go very fast. Because of this, the trip took over 6 hours to travel only 400 kilometers. I was able to use the time on the train to see much of the Norwegian countryside. EVERYTHING was covered in snow. It made everything look like Christmas, so it was a very good feeling to have while traveling down to spend the holidays with family. I know that Norway is supposed to be very green, but because of the snow everything looked black, white and shades of gray. It still was beautiful, but I want need to come back after the snow melts to be able to see the full spectrum of the countryside.
Tore met me at the Olso train station and drove me to his house. Tore and Eldbjørg live in a house outside of the city center, and it is very comfortable. They were very kind to let me stay in a guest room in the basement. My first impression of their house was that there were many doors which allowed you to isolate heat into small pockets rather than heat the entire house. It put me in mind of the Titanic which had compartments that could be shut off to keep water from flooding to the rest of the ship. All the doors make complete sense when you have to last through the Norwegian winter, and you don't want to be heating the entire house all the time.
My first day was spent with Tore doing errands to prepare for Christmas, as well as giving gifts and sharing Christmas tidings to people around town. We went to the grocery store to do some shopping and I had a very surreal moment as I realized doing something very similar with Bestemor (Grandmother) 15 or 20 years before. Going around, helping with groceries, meeting people; it struck me as so familiar and put a smile on my face when I realized it. I still felt like a kid following an adult around.
After shopping and errands were complete I helped Eldbjørg make goro kake, which are a kind of traditional Norwegian cookie. The dough is rolled out thin and cut into rectangles that are placed in a buttered griddle and heated for several minutes until crispy. The griddle has a pattern that is pressed into the dough as they cook. They tasted very good.
The next day there was more traveling around to meet people and deliver things, and to make preparations for Christmas. All throughout my time there, I was talking with Eldbjørg and Tore about speaking Norwegian, and trying to improve my language abilities. Eldbjørg works with immigrants to help them learn Norwegian, and she had a book that I was able to use while I was there that also helped me with many of the language basics.
Later that day s tree was brought in and set up in a stand in the main room. Tore and Eldbjørg's son, Knut Andreas, came over and I was able to meet him. Together we helped Tore decorate the tree in proper Norwegian fashion, with lights and Norwegian flags.
After the tree was decorated, Tore, Eldbjørg, Knut Andreas and I sat down to watch a television program that showed a skit called “Dinner for One” on the Norwegian station NRK1. It is a Norwegian tradition to watch this on 12/23 every year in Norway, but Germany and some other countries tend to watch it on New Years Eve. It started when NRK was only channel that everyone had, and so everyone watched this. It became a tradition and has been playing since at least the mid 1970’s. The skit involves an old woman celebrating a party at an empty table, with six or so imagined guests. Her butler serves her and her imagined guests all the courses of the meals, as well as toasts with her, to amusing results. It was interesting that a Norwegian tradition involved watching a British comedy skit the day before Christmas Eve.
It snowed about 15 centimeters of snow during the night before Christmas Eve. I offered to shovel the snow for Tore and spent a good hour or two making sure that all the snow was clear in the places people would park that night, and that paths through the yard and to the house were clear. I enjoyed it because in Seattle we don't get this level of snowfall, so it was a nice change and a chance to play in the snow. It continued to snow throughout the day. Since Norway celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas day, and it was snowing on Christmas Ever, I am declaring a white Christmas for this year. Two years in a row! Last year in
Tore drove me over to Morton and Vivi's house, about 15 minutes away from Tore's house. I met them as well as their son Øyvind. Their house is built right on the edge of a fjord, and it was incredibly beautiful. Sadly the fjord was not fully frozen over so I couldn't walk on it, but the snow covering it looked gorgeous. Talking with Øyvind, he told me that no one is allowed to build houses that close to the fjord any longer, so his parents are very lucky that they are so close. Also, their house seems to be built in a somewhat similar style to a Viking longhouse, which struck me as very appropriate. Here is the view from their front window out onto the fjord:
Morton and Vivi understand more English than they can speak, just as I understand more Norsk than I can speak. Initially there was some awkward interactions and we mostly worked through Øyvind who acted as a translator. I didn't want the evening to continue like that so I slowly started to increase the amount of Norwegian I attempted to speak until I finally just started going for it, inhibitions left behind. As the evening went on, we all became far more relaxed with one another and we continued to communicate more and more, me with an amazing attempt at pig-Norsk. I think it worked well.
In the NTNU environment, everyone immediately begins to talk to you in English if you fumble with Norsk. Tore and Eldbjørg Ramsrud both speak excellent English despite what they say, and my first days with them began to take me beyond the NTNU environment because they would actively help me as I fumbled my Norsk. The first days with them helped very much to prepare me for spending time with Morton and Vivi, who spoke less English and put me out of my comfort zone a fair amount. This was definitely a good thing because I think that in the 8 days that I was with Tore and Eldbjorg, as well as Morton and Vivi, I learned and got more experience than the rest of my stay in
One very good experience that I shared occurred as I sat at the kitchen table with Morton as he showed me pictures of my great-grandparents (Oldeforeldre) and my great-great-grandparents (Tipp Oldeforeldre). This was still at a point where we were a bit awkward communicating. Even if I don’t have the greatest of vocabularies, I still understand family relationships: Mother, Father, Grandparents, Children, Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, etc. I really enjoyed having the conversation with him about my ancestors, and then I went to talk to him about my uncles/aunts as well as cousins, so it wasn’t just a one sided conversation. It was the first event that really helped me gain confidence with talking in Norwegian (Or at least the first that I just decided to blunder forward).
Vivi cooked an amazing dinner of potatoes, ham, elg (moose), ribbe (roast pork ribs), home-made sauerkraut, julepølse (Christmas sausage) and vegetables, served with beer and aquavit. It was magnificent and delicious. For dessert we had multebær (cloudberry) jam with home-made whipped cream. Here is a picture of us sitting down to dinner:
The next morning I was able to walk around the area the Morton and Vivi live, and along Tyrifjorden, the fjord. There is a large island in the fjord that is connected with the mainland by a bridge. The island is the biggest in the fjord and has a golf course on it. When I returned to Morton's, I sat down with him and talked to him about the fjord and he showed me the map. The big island with the golf course was called Storøya (Big Island). There is also an island called Geitøya, where some farmers used to keep there goats. Very creative naming schemes.
We watched part of a Norwegian television program about the train route from Bergen to Oslo. It basically was a video camera that was strapped to the front of the train and showed the entire 7 hour journey. We started watching the program when the train was at a station that you transfer to another that goes to where Morton's cabin is. The Bergen-Oslo train left the station, as as it passed by the nearby fjord, he pointed out his cabin that they use in the summer time. As we watched the television and talked, Morton shared his home made cherry wine and sherry with me, which was excellent.
For dinner that night we had leftovers of the Christmas meal, and it was just as good as it was the previous night. Vivi is an excellent cook. After dinner we watched part of the animated movie, Happy Feet, which is about penguins. In Norway, most English movies are subtitled, but fully animated movies like this one are dubbed. I had a strange experience watching it because while everyone was speaking in Norwegian, there was a group of three smaller penguins that were speaking Norwegian with a Spanish accent. It was so weird to be able to hear it and pick out that they were speaking with an accent.
My last day with Morton, Vivi and Øyvind I was able to see more of the fjord because the day was clear rather than overcast. Øyvind and I took Morton's dog Dixie out for a walk and walked across the bridge and around Storøya. The sun was starting to set so it made for some very beautiful pictures of the surrounding area. Below you can see Øyvind and Dixie, a view of Storøya from the mainland and then two picture taken from the bridge.
After walking around, we got prepared for dinner. Morton and Vivi's daughter Helene was going to come for dinner with her two children, Markus and Mattias. I met Helene, as well as her boyfriend, Jan Egel, and the twins. Markus and Mattias were 7 years old, and while we couldn't communicate very well, as soon as they realized I would play with them, wrestle with them and swing them around, they were very excited to meet me. After dinner, Tore Ramsrud came to pick me up and took a picture of us all. In the back row is me, Øyvind and Vivi, and on the couch is Morton, Markus, Jan Egel, Helene and Mattias.
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