From Arnanipa
Above the city, on the way up Ulriken
Top of Ulriken
Bryggen in Bergen
Lyngseidet, in Northern Norway
Bergen in November
Christmas morning
Kvamskogen
On May 17, 1814, the Norwegian constitution was signed declaring Norway to be an independant nation, although it was still under Swedish rule at the time. A big part of the celebration are the "tog" (literally, train) or parades, that take place all over the country. Kindergardens and different community groups parade around, and lots of people dress up in bunads, national costumes.
I went out on the night of May 16th; it's a common night to go out and party, as well as the last night of Russ celebrations. On the 17th we went and watched a bit of the parade in Arna, then visited some family of my host family.
It was pouring rain a few minutes before the parade started, hence all the rain gear
Different regions of Norway have different bunads, old fashioned dresses/suits for men. They cost like $5000!!!
Some pictures of bunads from google, since I didn't get many pictures:
A picture from Wikipedia of the children's parade in Oslo
A random dressed up kid getting russ cards from a russebil
Russebil
The bigger parades in the city were earlier in the day, but we just made it to the smaller one in Arna. There was an impressive amount of people walking in it, considering that it was raining like crazy right before.
Host parents and me
Afterwards we went to my host parents son's parents in law (got that?) for a very Norwegian meal of Rømmegrøt and "spekemat".
They like to pair foods together here; when you have baked salmon, you have cucumber salad. Raspeboller (thick potato flour balls) go with bacon and kohlrabi.
I don't entirely understand this combination though, dry papery flatbread with salted meats, and sour cream custard with sugar, cinnamon and butter. You don't actually mix the meat and flatbread with the grøt in any way, but they always have the two together.
Spekemat
Rømmegrøt
The first time I tried Rømmegrøt, in October, I wasn't exactly a fan. I wrote this in my blog post:
"Eating Rømmegrøt (sour cream porridge) for the first and hopefully last time. A thick custard of sour cream, milk and flour, which would be fine as a small amount of sauce with something else, but an entire bowl of it was overwhelming! You sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on it, and if you're a true norwegian, a giant glob of butter (typical). It was like eating a bowl of cheese sauce/cheese cake filling/glue."
A giant bowl of cheese sauce/cheese cake filling/glue? not so appetizing sounding haha. I've had it twice since then, and grown to like it, I just have to take less and put lots of sugar and cinnamon. Maybe the dry bread and salted meat they eat with it are meant to counter the sweet fatty custard? It's a mystery to me.
May 17 is a big deal in Norway, and it was neat to see! Now I need to go try and find a cheap Norwegian flag on sale that I can get people to sign before I leave.
I just got my Norwegian "heldagsprøve" or test results back, and got a 6! That's the highest mark you can get, although I'm pretty sure I had slightly different marking criteria than the others haha. The question was "what does it mean to be Norwegian?" and you were supposed to compare two texts, but I mostly just talked about my own experiences. It was actually kind of fun; as you can probably tell from this blog, I love writing about my impressions of Norway.
At one point I confused the word for "influence/affect" (påvirke) with "arrest" (pågrep), so wrote "...Norwegian culture is arrested" instead of "...Norwegian culture is influenced". haha oops
One last language note, when a kid asks if they can hold your hand, they say, literally translated, "can I rent you?" I love little strange translations like that.
So that was 17 Mai. I'm so glad that I've had the chance to be a part of this country for a year!!!
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