Hey everyone,
I've been meaning to update this blog for about a week and a half now. So, fair warining, it's going to be a little long. Sorry. Scroll to the bottom for a TL;DR recap. 😊
So now working our way backwards to last Friday, February 2nd. I attended a play at the National Theater in Oslo. I saw the production of 'Little Eyolf' by Henrik Ibsen with my classmates and professor from my Ibsen Studies class ( I bet you can guess what the first play we are studying this semester is). And this was a very cool experience to be sure, but it was not the highlight of the night. The highlight wasn't the play itself, but rather who was in the audience with us. None other than King Harald V of Norway and his wife Queen Sonja of Norway were sitting, literally, one row in front of me and about 7 seats to the left. I was, unfortunately, unable to take a picture due to not wanting to be rude during a play (there were multiple reminders to turn off your phone).
But this experience served to highlight some of the HUGE differences between the US and Norway, and it even shattered some of my perceptions of, well, royalty. When the King entered the theater (which was quite small, only having about 12 rows roughly 20 seats across) he had exactly 2 bodyguards with him. This seemed like an incredibly small number to me due to my previous experiences with leaders of countries. I would bet President Trump can't even go to the bathroom without at least 3 secret service members there with him. What also surprised me is the fact that we went through exactly zero security to enter the theater. No metal detectors, no bag checks, they didn't even check our IDs at the bar.
So while my brain was trying to come to grips with watching the King of Norway causally stroll into this theater, I learned a lot about the average Norwegian's perception of their royal family. My only experiences with royalty before that evening had involved seeing the Queen of England on TV. And it seems to me that every time the Queen enters the room (on TV, of course), everybody in the room stands and "God Save the Queen" plays through some hidden speakers. But there was none of this. The only noticeable thing that happened was the crowd got slightly more hushed, but there was still a general amount of random conversations in languages I couldn't understand. In fact, the King's presence was of such little consequence that a fellow student of mine was seated next to one of the body guards and ONE SEAT AWAY (one row back and one seat to the right) from the King had no idea until I mentioned it to her after the show.
So the final thing I want to touch on is an experience I had last Monday, January 29th. Because I do not have class on Monday until late in the evening, I have taken it upon myself to get out of my room and explore a different museum every Monday. I have affectionately named this "Taco Tuesday"!
No wait-- That's not quite right. I mean "Museum Monday"!
Well I visited the Norwegian Resistance museum which tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Norway during WWII. This time in history has left deep scars on the psyche of Norway and I did not quite understand why until after my visit to this museum. At first I thought the museum was quite quaint, relying heavily on detailed models and newspaper clippings to tell the story of the first few months of the invasion. But as the museum went further and further on, the exhibits began to feature more and more weapons, personal artifacts and testimonies from resistance fighters, and a very large, very real, bright red Nazi banner with a German helmet sitting alone on a pedestal at the end of a hallway. I don't exactly know why, but this particular exhibit made me feel very, very uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because I was the only person in this museum which is mostly in a basement, but I think it was because of the way one had to walk down this hallway towards this symbol of evil which seemed to only get bigger as one got closer. I cannot think of a greater metaphor for the feelings these resistance fighters must have felt trying to use hit-and-run tactics on, what was at the time, the largest, most efficient military in the world. Or maybe it was the basement. Basements are spooky.
As a person who had never traveled to Europe before, the whole concept of WWII has always seemed like such a far away thing, both spatially and temporally. I mean, the conflict ended over 50 years before I was even born and the idea of all-out, ground based warfare is such a strange concept in this age where we can pilot attack drones from across the globe. But the fact that this wave of terror happened to very real people not that long ago really struck me when I read about an incident involving students at the University of Oslo during the occupation, the University I currently attend. I was suddenly able to put myself in the shoes of one of the students during that time, possibly not even aware of an attack. Then to have a group of German soldiers rounding up and arresting every student at the University-- I can't imagine the panic this would have caused. Keep in mind that this is after the Germans had rounded up Jews and political prisoners in a very similar way and sent them away to concentration camps in mainland Europe. If I was a student then, the only thought I could have would be that they were sending me away next.Another way the war was suddenly made very real was with a wall-sized blow-up of the picture below. It is a picture of members of the Norwegian Resistance force, some of whom stayed in Oslo or other large cities during the war, and others who traveled very far north to transfer supplies to and from Sweden, Finland, and Russia by ski. These men are marching into Akershus Fortress in Oslo after the German surrender in 1945. The building behind them in the right corner of the frame is the Resistance Museum today, and the ramp they are walking on is the very same one I walked up to get there. This is one of the very last things one sees as they leave the museum, a testimony to the brave men and women who refused to surrender in the face of evil.
TL;DR:
- Today is the national holiday of the Sami people, natives of northern Scandinavia. Listen to them sing:
- Me and the King of Norway are bffs, we went to a play together (he understood it, I didn't)
- Nazis suck and Norwegians are bad-asses
Sorry again for the length, hope anyone who made it this far enjoyed!!!
--Tom Farish
