Norway
A newsletter in which I reminisce about ice skating and being in my 20s. Also, I'm glad I've never been accused of witchcraft.
A place to explore: Trondheim
I once spent a winter in Trondheim, Norway. It was nearly twenty years ago, and I didn’t have a phone to save pictures on the internet. Hence the Unsplash picture:
It was the most magical time of my life. My Norway adventure was nothing like the historical fiction book I’ll be recommending below. Because I went to Norway in 2005 rather than in 1617, there were no storms that wiped out the entire male population, nor was I forced to marry some weirdly religious guy twice my age. There were no witch trials.
I was in Norway to teach high school students about US politics, which I’m sure I did but I barely remember that part. I DO remember dancing at a club shaped like a red cylinder. I remember eating late-night gyros. I do NOT remember kissing Ole Martin, but according to my more sober friends, that happened. I remember sledding down hills and watching my roommates ski out of our third-story window. I remember doing a polar plunge in a fjord and spending a miraculous blue-bird weekend in Bergen. I have fuzzy memories of pre-gaming in various flats before hitting the town. I have no idea how I had the energy to teach.
Oh, to be 23 again.
My favorite memory though, was the night before I flew back home to America. I’d spent the weekend by myself in Oslo, wandering through museums and missing my friends. On my last evening, my watch broke. This was problematic as my watch doubled as my alarm clock (no cell phone, remember) and I had to leave my hostel at 3am the next morning to catch my early flight home. I decided to just stay up all night.
It was well after dinner when I stopped at an outdoor ice rink in the middle of downtown Oslo. They were about to close. Seeing my disappointment, the gal renting me skates reassured me.
“You can stay as long as you want,” she said. “Just leave the skates on the desk.”
“Seriously?” I ask, incredulous. Didn’t they worry about people stealing skates? Weren’t they worried about insurance clauses that forbid people from skating alone?
Of course not. This is Norway. Everything is perfect in Norway.
So I skated. I turned circles and circles on the ice as everyone else packed up and went home. As the hours drew nearer to midnight I kept doing laps around the ice. The city went quiet around me, but streetlights reflected off the late winter snow, making everything seem cozy and safe.
I couldn’t seem to stop. As long as I kept skating I could stay in this blissful state of being in Norway.
I don’t remember how long I stayed out there, skating on the ice. Maybe it was only a couple of hours, but in the corner of my brain, where this moment is part memory and part imagination, I remember skating until 2 in the morning, before walking the silent streets back to my hostel and packing up to go home.
Twenty years later, every time I lace up ice skates at a rink, I still close my eyes and think of that silent night in Oslo, where the world seemed to stop for a few hours so I could skate one last time in Norway.
A book to read: The Mercies
My first book of 2024 was a re-read.
I read Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s THE MERCIES when it was first published in the USA a few years ago. I’d checked out the book from the library, read it, loved it, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Two Christmases ago, my husband bought me a signed copy of the book (along with another of her books - I’ll write about that one later). They are the fancy Waterstones Exclusive Editions, with gorgeous endpapers and everything. The shipping fees from the UK were probably more than the cost of the books.
However, I didn’t get around to rereading The Mercies until now. The book is just as gorgeous and chilling as I remember. Falling into Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s lyrical writing is always a decadent treat.
Here is the history: In 1617, on an island on the northeastern edge of Norway, a sudden storm tore past the island, killing nearly every man on the island (they were all out fishing). Also, at the time, King Christian IV was looking to establish Christianity in the North, which meant driving out the Sámi and accusing women of witchcraft. Ninety-one men and women were killed in the resulting witch trials.
The Mercies is the imagined story that takes place between these historical events. Maren, the main character, loses her father, brother, and fiancée in the opening pages as the storm blows through. The women of the island learn how to survive without men.
Meanwhile, in Bergen, a shipbuilder’s daughter is married off to a Scottish commissioner. Ursa and her new husband sail up the coast of Norway. When Ursa and Maren meet it’s a bit of a country-mouse/city-mouse vibe. They become close and everything else tears apart as accusations and superstitions swirl across seas and through the heather.
A lesson to teach: Socialism vs Capitalism
Re-reading this book makes me want to create a lesson on indigenous people around the world. I teach a bit about the Taíno, who are indigenous to the Caribbean islands when I teach about Haiti. We also study indigenous Africans surrounding our imperialism unit. Of course, my students learn about various indigenous Americans throughout their education.
However, my students never learn about Sámi, aboriginal Australians, the Maori people of New Zealand, First Nations people in Canada, and countless other groups of people who have been subjected to imperialism, assimilation, and cruelty. Someday I’ll write an amazing lesson wherein students choose an indigenous community to learn about. Then they’ll all teach each other what they’ve learned, make insightful connections, and collectively rise up and save the world. It’s going to be amazing. I promise I’ll share this life-changing lesson just as soon as I write it and teach it.
For now though, all I have is a measly few slides about capitalism and socialism. As part of our “Changing Economic Conditions during the Industrial Revolution lesson,” I describe an economic continuum, with pure capitalism on the right and pure socialism on the left. I tell students that each nation falls somewhere along this line. The US is a bit closer to the “capitalism” side and Norway is a bit closer to the “socialism” side based on the (overly simplified, I know) fact that the USA has relatively lower taxes and provides fewer social services while Norway has higher taxes and provides more social services.
The last 5 slides here compare the pros and cons of socialism in Norway with the pros and cons of capitalism in the USA. After the mini-lecture, I have students write about which type of country they’d like to live in. It’s usually a pretty good split between wanna-be capitalists and wanna-be socialists. Only at the end of the lesson do I attach political parties to the economic beliefs, revealing that Democrats tend to lean towards socialism and Republicans towards capitalism.
I’d love to visit that part of the world some day, especially after reading you write about it. My family on my dad’s side has Swedish roots, so maybe it’ll happen! I’ll have to add The Mercies to my reading list. Thanks for the recommendation.
I don't know if An Inspector Calls is in the canon where you are, but it's a socialist play from the early 20th Century that's a huge part of the UK English Lit curriculum (probably about 75% of my friends studied it at school as teenagers). When we were taught it, my teacher took us into the school hall to play the 'left right game' - she'd call out a statement and if it was left wing we'd run to the left hand side of the hall, and if it was right wing we'd go to the right hand side of the hall. Completely genius! (I borrowed it years later when I had to do a presentation and run an activity in my German language class that was based on my degree subject)