The Holidays in Norway

December was full of family visits, and the entire month felt like Christmas (except of course for the occasional 6 hour final exam, etc.) My Dad, Step-mom and Grandma were here in early December, and we welcomed the advent season at the Festival of Lights which included an amazing fireworks display above hundreds of individual torch lights and people singing Norwegian Christmas carols.

I’ve been especially lucky to have family here for both Christmas and New Years. My brother Alex and I went out on the town last night with a group of Germans, Belgians, French, Japanese and Norwegians. It was allegedly the last New Year’s celebration in which private fireworks would be allowed, so people put out quite an impressive last hurrah. Everywhere was lit up, throughout the center of town and along all the hillsides. The weather was beautiful with not a cloud in the sky, so we were able to actually be outside without fear of torrential downpour. That is an amazing gift when you live in Bergen.

Christmas was really fun and very meaningful. It was the first time my Mom had been to Norway since she was 22 years old. The relatives still live on the same farm where my great-grandmother grew up. She left Norway when she was 18 years old, moved to Petersburg, AK, and never had the chance to come back to Norway to visit. We all feel extremely grateful that we have the chance to know each other now - there are many wonderful cousins, including some very cool 3-12 year olds who are especially fun to hang out with. (There was quite a bit of Guitar Hero being played, mostly by Alex and the kids ;)

There was Lefse, and real homemade Lutefisk! There was Pinekjøtt (a traditional holiday dish of sheep ribs). There was an old skit aired on TV called “Dinner for One” that everyone must see at least once at Christmas. The Julenisse stopped by after Christmas-Eve dinner, especially to say merry Christmas to the littlest ones, and then all the presents were opened that night. We think it must be because the American relatives were visiting this year, but the American Nisse also came and brought stockings on Christmas morning. On Christmas Day there was homemade beer, an uncle who plays Hardanger fiddle, a neighbor who is one of the best accordion players in all of Norway and karaoke in both English and Norwegian (not to mention Guitar Hero).

Happy 2008!

Nobel Peace Prize

Norway’s most prominent international moment is perhaps the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize. It makes headlines all over the world each year. I remember particular excitement surrounding the prize in 2004 when it was awarded to Wangari Maathai for her work in Kenya with the Greenbelt Movement. It was the first time that the Peace Prize had been linked to an environmental movement, and it stirred great controversy. Many claimed such awards would water down the Peace Prize, and that a distinction should be maintained between a prize focused on peace and one focused on the environment. But there were many others, myself included, who believed the choice was of revolutionary importance. If shortages of and dramatic changes in the stuff upon which our survival is based - of land, food, water and clean air - are not at the root of conflict, then what is?

Being in Norway with the Fulbright program, I was lucky to get a ticket to this year’s Peace Prize ceremony on December 10th, 2007. It was a fortuitous year to be here, as this year’s prize also elicited a similar debate. The Prize was shared between the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore for their work on global climate change issues. There have been many this Fall, as in the case of the 2004 selection, who have decried the Nobel Committee’s choice to single out an environmental issue for the Peace Prize. The introductory speech of Ole Danbolt Mjøs, the Chair of the Nobel Committee, responded to these criticisms and described the relationship between environment and peace, addressing the committee’s reasons for selecting global climate change as the peace issue of the day.

The ceremony contained the appropriate pomp and circumstance, with the King and other royalty in attendance at Oslo’s Town Hall. There were musical performances, including Pakistani pop-rock and Italian opera sung by famous Norwegian and Latvian opera singers. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, accepted the prize on behalf of the organization. He spoke about the IPCC’s truly multi-national efforts to quantify the current global impacts of climate chance and predicted future impacts, providing essential background for policymaking.

Al Gore echoed many of his rallying cries from his movie and many speeches, among other things calling upon world leaders to meet early next year to review decisions that are made at the Bali Climate talks this week, and to meet with regularity until a treaty is achieved. He reminding us that “political will a renewable resource,” and called for a people’s movement. It is a great speech. Here is an excerpt:

"As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, 'Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.' Either, he notes, 'would suffice.' But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge."

You can find the text of all of the above speeches at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/

As I left Town Hall, I heard some elegantly clad Norwegian ladies joking uncomfortably about the airplane flights they would be taking on their way home, and I headed off to find my own carbon emitting mode of transportation back to Bergen. I know many of us are asking ourselves the same questions about how we can continue to live what we feel to be full, rich lives while putting the necessary changes into practice on the individual level and pushing for institutional change. I know one person (my father, Kurt Hoelting) who is about to start an exploratory ‘local year’ without leaving his home region, and without using a car, as an attempt to think deeper into this great dilemma we all share. His blog is http://insidepassages.blogspot.com/, and you can read more background about the project at: http://www.resurgence.org/2007/hoetling244.htm

Lena and Ole

I realized that the blog has been lacking in Lena and Ole jokes lately. Here's one from an unidentified family member of mine:

Ole and Lena had just come to America where Ole had a job promised to him. They were newlyweds and deeply in love. During the workday Ole would sneak home and they would have passionate love. Soon, Arne Ole's forman spotted Ole's absence and admonished him he would be fired if he kept on with this practice. But after two weeks Ole could stand it no longer and snuck toward their house. Coming around the bedroom window he saw Arne in bed with Lena. Oh my gosh, he ran back to the plant where he gasped to his best friend, Ralph. Boy, that was a close one. I just about got fired.

And if you like these jokes, here's a jackpot... pages and pages of 'em.
http://www.norskarv.com/jokes1.htm

Snow and Sailing

Bergen is rainy, and like Seattle snow is not all that common - at least snow that sticks. But the Arctic Winds visited us last weekend, bringing a snow storm to all of Northern Europe, and even in the lowlands we had a taste of winter. I hiked up Løvstakken with some friends on Saturday (one of the seven mountains that surround Bergen), and went sailing with the university sailing team in crazy weather on Sunday with sun, snow, rain, hail, and a full range of calm to storming wind conditions. We were practicing putting up the spinnaker with sun and calm winds, and when we felt menacing dark clouds turning day into night and the first sprinkling of snow mixed with rain, we learned how to take it down even more quickly!

North Sea and Shetland

This week I am a mere student in Bergen, but last week I was a researcher aboard the R/V Håkon Mosby, tossed in the North Sea, bound for Shetland Islands. We left Bergen on a blue-sky morning and saw the coast in brilliant light. On the second morning we found ourselves in a field of oil rigs, flaming in time with the sunrise. We made it to the North Sea Plateau, and we trawled, using both bottom and pelagic (mid-water) trawl gear. We students sorted, measured and weighed the catches. I finally feel somewhat acquainted with species of the Atlantic, which helps me to feel more at home here.

We had a few days in Lerwick, the largest town on the Shetland Islands. We were working during the day, but had the chance to experience local color in the evenings and take a short hike through the treeless sheep pastured hills and rain. The streets of Lerwick themselves have a Harry Potter magic to them. Winding rows of stone houses with a British flare.

I tried to get the Norwegian crew of the Håkon Mosby to teach me Norwegian Sea Shanties, but was unsuccessful. However, I can now say that I have shared the life of the North Sea, and harvested a few herring, and have always loved the Shanty below. They are beautiful, the Atlantic herring. I think much bigger than the ones we have in Alaska, with beautiful blue scales.

On the North Sea We’re Farin’ (Shoals of Herring)
By Ewan MacColl, with adapted first verse

On the North Sea we’re farin’
On that wild and wasteful ocean
Casting our nets, reaping the harvest of the deep
While we hunt the silver shoals of herring

O, it was a fine and a pleasant day
Out of Yarmouth harbour I was faring
As a cabin boy on a sailing lugger
For to go and hunt the shoals of herring

O, the work was hard and the hours were long
And the treatment sure it took some bearing
There was little kindness and the kicks were many
As we hunted for the shoals of herring

O, we fished the Swarth and the Broken Bank
I was a cook and I'd a quarter-sharing
And I used to sleep, standing on me feet
And I'd dream about the shoals of herring

O, we left the home grounds in the month of June
And to canny Shiels we soon was bearing
With a hundred cran of the silver darlings
That we'd taken from the shoals of herring

Now you're up on deck, you're a fisherman
You can swear and show a manly bearing
Take your turn on watch with the other fellows
While you're searching for the shoals of herring

In the stormy seas and the living gales
Just to earn your daily bread you're daring
From the Dover Straits to the Faroe Islands
As you're following the shoals of herring

O, I earned me keep and I paid me way
And I earned the gear that I was wearing
Sailed a million miles, caught ten-million fishes
We were sailing after shoals of herring

Melody can be found at: http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiSHOALHER;ttSHOALHER.html

Ode to Brunost

By Kristin Hoelting

By name you are cheese
Although some disagree
And say that this cannot be

They say that your flavor
To them is a stranger
And needs a new category

Cheese should be white
Or yellow by sight
And brown is never the way

But those who are wise
Know these are all lies
And eat you three meals a day

I admit I am smitten
And I fear for my kitchen
At home when you aren’t on the shelf

For your taste it is sweet,
For me always a treat
Now an integral part of myself!

The Fulbright

According to the U.S. Ambassador to Norway, I am a ‘strategic foreign policy asset’!

During the orientation for Norway Fulbright grantees in Oslo last week, we had the opportunity to visit the Nobel Institute, where meetings are held to determine each year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. We were addressed by the U.S. Ambassador, as well as the Chair of the Nobel Committee. Afterward each of us was called up to the stage to talk briefly about our research projects. It was humbling and thrilling to speak to a room full of people at the Nobel Institute, and I came away feeling very proud to be in the Fulbright Program.

The Ambassador jokingly called us foreign policy assets because of the origin and central goal of the Fulbright Program. After the atomic bombs were dropped in Japan, Senator J. William Fulbright wanted to do something to reduce the potential for future nuclear conflict. He came up with an idea that was simple and visionary: to use the proceeds from the sale of surplus war property to fund an exchange program to promote cultural understanding between countries. He believed that, after spending a full year in another country – long enough to truly come to understand a foreign culture – that an individual will cease to see the rest of world as nations on a map; instead, he/she will come to see the people that make up a nation. Those who have such an experience will therefore be less willing to choose war, and will choose diplomacy instead. As Fulbrighters, we are ‘strategic’ in the sense that we are ambassadors of U.S. culture, and hopefully we made the U.S. look good! (And we will bring cultural understanding and sensitivity home with us.)

It was wonderful to finally meet the other Fulbright grantees in person and share about our diverse research projects, from climate change research on Spitsbergen, far north in the Arctic Ocean, to the cultural impacts of tourism in the north of Norway, to the potential of using networks of robots to serve in dangerous rescue scenarios or Mars explorations, etc. Since we are located in almost all of the major cities in Norway, another excellent resource is the network of tour guides and floors on which to crash when we travel!