Surviving in a Strange and Foreign Land
Norway in the days when oil was something surrounding sardines in a tin.
In 1882, James A. Lees and Walter J. Clutterbuck published a book about their holiday in Norway. It’s basically a diary written by a couple of digital nomads ninety-nine years before the internet was invented and illustrated with 59 author-drawn sketches. Think,
in pre-Substack times.The book is called “Three in Norway, by Two of Them”. Thanks to the Gutenberg Project, everyone can read it for free.
The “Three’s” journey began on July 11 sometime in the mid-to-late 1800s. They arrived in Christiania, now Oslo, Norway, from Hull in England. They returned to England in mid-September the same year. Whose employer grants two-and-a-half-month vacations today? Yes, maybe France, but who else?
Norway stood still in the century from when the “Three” enjoyed their vacation in the Northern European country they described as shaped “something like a tadpole with a crooked irregular tail” until I arrived there in 1978.
My early experiences were eerily similar, although I will admit I didn’t often sleep in a tent or do much hunting or fishing. After all, I was on a gap year, not a holiday!
Fortunately, two things happened a few years after I arrived. The internet was invented and Norway’s GDP became driven by fishing oil and gas out of the North Sea instead of fishing for cod, sardines and salmon. The former solved my homesickness, the latter lifted Norway to the top of the world’s rich list.
Unlike the “Three”, a Canadian canoe was not part of the luggage I packed. My backpack was stuffed with clothing purchased in Portland back when the Canadian dollar’s purchasing power made everything in the US cheap.
Another difference between the “Three” and me was our approach to language. I was fortunate to have an older brother who had been to Norway before me. Unlike me, he dutifully returned after his gap year. He taught me how to say “hei” and “takk” and how to count to ten in Norwegian. I also spent the first month after arrival at a language camp organized by the Sons of Norway.
As explained in their book, the “Three” made no effort to learn the local language.
“It is customary when writing a book on any foreign country to scatter broadcast in your descriptions words and phrases in the language of that country, in order to show that you really have been there. We propose to depart from this usage in the course of this work; but if at any time the exigencies of narrative seem to demand the use of the foreign tongue, we have little doubt that the English language will provide an equivalent, which shall be inserted for the benefit of the uninitiated.” - from Three in Norway by Two of Them.
I’m unsure how old the “Three” were when they visited Norway. I was eighteen when I arrived. On the bus to the language camp, I met a fellow Canadian of a similar age. He was from Kamloops and had come over on the same charter flight that the American students came on. In the homone-fueled mind of a teenager, he had spent his time on the plane wisely. One of his first sentences to me was,
“I calculated that there are 40-some girls and only five guys at the language school. We’re going to be swimming in ladies all summer!”
One of the “Three” was also interested in spending time with girls during his holiday.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the “Skipper” who first had a female bed partner during their brief, 2.5 month vacation. One of the others brought a companion home on a rainy eve and, seduced by his French, she stayed with him that very night, probably because her schoolgirl French didn’t capture the full meaning of his pickup line. (Or maybe she did understand it and that’s why she stayed. Read the book and decide for yourself.)
I stayed for twenty years and, ever the wallflower, a few of them would pass before I could say the same.
The “Three” survived on a diet of fish and game. The meals served to me during my first year at a “folkehøjskole” were similar. Lots of fish, some game and some days the “natives”, that’s what the “Three” called them, even fed us “rømmegrøt” which translates to sour cream porridge. For the record’s sake, the translation of “folkehøjskole” is not prison. Still, porridge was a regular occurrence as the main course in our school dinner diet.
Even with some language skills, communication with anyone not standing next to you was as challenging for me as it was for the “Three” a century before I arrived.
I came from a country where every household had multiple phones. Granted, they were all attached to a wall in one way or another. Some had dials that you had to turn seven or ten times before you could hope to be connected to the person you were calling. “Modern” phones had buttons you could push. We had three phones, but they all had the same number. Often, when I was chatting with a friend, I could hear one of the other phones get picked up. In afterthought, I probably should have enquired whether the person picking up one of the other phones was in distress and needed to call 9-1-1. Instead, my immediate response was to yell “I’m on the phone! Get off the phone!”, loud enough for it to be heard in every house on our street.
Still, compared to the Norwegians, I was privileged. Just like when the “Three” visited, most homes in Norway didn’t have a phone when I arrived in 1978. I was told there was a seven-year waiting list to be granted the opportunity to buy one of the grey, rotary-dial phones that were the only ones on offer from the state telephone company.
So, like the “Three”, I was forced to use the postal service to communicate with anyone that couldn’t hear me.
My dad often said I should become a postal worker since I was such a great letter carrier. That wasn’t a Dad joke. He had noticed that the few times they did receive a letter or a postcard from me during my decades abroad it was dated weeks before the postmark on the stamp.
If I did need to spend what little money I had to phone someone, I usually had to stand in the rain until the payphone box on my street became available. If the girl next door had a new boyfriend, my wet wait could last hours.
You may have seen pictures from Norway with beautiful blue sky. Please keep in mind that digital photography makes anything possible today.
Take it from the “Three”,
“A curious accident happened to-day; there was no rain.”
Trondheim’s inhabitants often told me that there was no place on Earth as beautiful as Trondheim when the sun shone. For most of them, it was probably something they had been told by their grandparents, whose grandparents again were the last people to have actually witnessed sunshine there. I remember sitting on a bus the day the sun shone in 1981. People were lined up, backs to the walls of buildings, soaking in the warming rays. No wonder people invented sun gods, I thought.
I highly recommend you read “Three in Norway, by Two of Them”. If nothing else you’ll hopefully gain a new appreciation for everything I, too, endured during the first years of my life in Norway. In the days before telephones and cars and in the times when oil in Norway was something that surrounded sardines in a tin.
Today, Norway is one of the most modern, well-developed countries on Earth and its people are blessed with a society that takes extremely good care of them. I wish the “Three” were around to see what became of the country they vacationed in back in the 1880s.
The final sentences of their book hold true today.
To-morrow, alas! we commence again a life of gilded misery and gloomy magnificence. Give to us the untrammelled freedom of ‘Gammle Norgé,’ and the humble crust of fladbrod——with JAM.
Those sentences resonate with me today, too.
When introducing #3 of the “Three” the book explains that “‘John,’ so called for no better reason than the fact that he had been christened Charles…. He is tall and straight, with a colossal light moustache. He generally wears his hat slightly tilted forward over his forehead when engaged in conversation; and the set of his clothes and whole deportment convey an idea that he is longing to tell you the most amusing story in the world in confidence. He is no gossip, and the anecdotes of his countrymen, of which he has an inexhaustible supply always ready, are merely imparted to his listeners from philanthropic motives, and because he longs for others to share in the enjoyment which he gleans from their mental dissection.”
John’s motto was:
DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS!*
“WHILE WE LIVE, LET US LIVE!”
Words to live by indeed!
Stay safe, Always Care
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All of my stories are personal, authentic, and unashamedly enhanced by imperfect memory and literary creativity.
In addition to writing stories, I love to tell them.
As a multi-award-winning corporate leader in hospitality and global security, captivating keynotes, compelling coaching sessions, and edutaining, motivational workshops are all part of my repertoire.
Email me at paul@alwayscare.ca.
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Fascinating to get a taste of what Norway was like back then!
"We’re going to be swimming in ladies all summer!” The kind of line Hollywood gave to young men in old movies about hooking up...