Posts from December 2008

Freia sjokolade fabrikken….mmmmm

Posted by kari 1 Comment
Dec 9 2008

sjokolade!As an American student in Oslo, I had the pleasure of touring a chocolate factory-‘Freia Sjokolade Fabrikken.’  For some reason, I was put in charge of navigating the way to the factory.  There were about 15 of us in the group and I was appointed the navigator, which is hilarious because I am really terrible with directions.  After a long, cold, and winding walk from the center of the city, we finally arrived at our destination, tired, hungry, and salivating for sjokolade.  I personally have never been a huge sjokolade fan.  I like it when it’s mixed with something else, such as peanuts (peanøtter),  caramel (karamel), or is (ice cream), but usually I don’t like just plain sjokolade.  However, on this day, at this time, with lots of friends on a cold winter day after a long hike, I was ready for all the sjokolade that I saw before me.  The deal was that we each paid something like $15 for the tour and for MYE (a lot of) sjokolade. 

We were there for a couple of hours.  We had a really great, charasmatic guide who gave us more information aobut the sjokolade-making process than we ever wanted to know.  She literally walked us through the whole process and we got to watch people doing every part of it.  It was actually kind of gross to watch how it was made.  Huge vats of melted butter and giant containers of sugar.  And to be eating it the whole time….in every single room we entered the guide would come around and give us several samples of a new kind of sjokolade-dozens of kinds in all.  There was godteri (candy) comparable to our kit-kats (Kvikklunsj-literally quick lunch), Daim (similar to our choclate toffee), etc.  There were also kinds that none of us had tried before, or had tried, but thought little of, such as marzipan (which is apparently really popular in Norway) or raisin/nut filled sjokolade.

I’ll give you a little history lesson about Freia.  It is actually an American-owned Norwegian sjokolade brand that was founded in 1889.  The Throne-Holst family, who took over management in 1892 and made it successful, started an additional factory, Marabou, outside of Stockholm, Sweden.  The Freia name couldn’t be used because of Sweden’s trademark policies, so the Marabou stork was used as the name and as the logo imprinted in each piece of sjokolade. 

Now I have to tell a little story about this stork.  Of course Norwegian children love to eat Freia sjokolade, but there have been many instances in which they realize that the logo in the sjokolade is a bird and so they don’t want to eat it anymore.  I worked for the Concordia Language Villages Pre-K program teaching 3-5 year olds Norwegian and one of the little native Norwegian boys started crying because he thought that he killed the stork because he ate a piece of sjokolade.  It was quite cute. 

In 1993 Kraft foods bought Freia.  It is still the most popular sjokolade brand in Norway.  It is truly delicious.  So delicious that we all ate so much we almost vomitted after we left.

Brrrrrr! Det er kaldt!

Posted by kari No Comments
Dec 6 2008

It’s cold!  I don’t know about all of you, but I’m here in southern MN and it is truly a winter wonderland today.  We’ve had a pretty mild winter so far, but this week the mercury dropped dramatically and the snow began to pile up.  Norwegians are experiencing the same vær right now.  The following is one of the main headlines in a Norwegian avis (newspaper), Aftenposten (aftenposten.no): 

“Benytt sjansen i skisporet og akebakken – i morgen kommer minusgradene på Østlandet. Neste helg kan mildværet komme igjen.”

“Take advantage of the chance to ski and sled-tomorrow sub-zero temperatures will come to Eastern Norway.  Next weekend mild weather might come back.”

You might notice that my translation is not a direct translation from the Norwegian.  In case you are curious, the following would be the direct translation:  Take advantage of the chance in the ski path and sledding hill-tomorrow comes minus degrees in the eastland.  Next weekend can mild weather come again.

Which one makes more sense?  The loose translation, right?  Like all foreign languages, Norwegian can almost never be directly translated.  It’s simply impossible to expect two languages to employ the exact same grammar rules.

So, back to the cold.  Det er kaldt!  It is cold.  Det snør.  It is snowing.  Det er is på veiene.  There is ice on the roads.  And just to clarify, when the Norwegian newspaper writes that the temperature is going to be sub-zero….it means below 0 degrees celsius, so below 32 degrees F.  I don’t feel so bad for them.  It was 8 degrees F here yesterday and it’s supposed to actually drop below 0 F.  Yikes!!

kald=cold                 

glatt=slippery               

snømann=snowman   

snø= snow                

akebrett=sled                 

langrennski=nordic skiing       

is=ice                      

å ake=to sled   

veier=roads              

å gå på ski=to go skiing

It is believed that Norwegians are born with skis on their feet.  I think every Norwegian that I met while I lived in Oslo skis.  Both alpine and nordic.  Young and old, big and small, everyone.  In fact, I had quite an embarressing experience while skiing in Oslo.  My friend and I decided to rent nordic skis for the semester.  The very first time we were out the weather conditions were unfavorable for skiing.  It was a little too warm, so slushy icewater got stuck to the bottom of our skis and froze so we couldn’t move on them.  We were halfway around a lake, so we had to pick up our skis and carry them back to the starting point.  It was not a fun experience.  The second and last time we skiied we got passed by an old man that looked about 100 years old, just truckin’ along.  We felt so defeated that decided we were done. 

The truth is that nordic skiing is much harder than alpine.  You have gravity on your side with alpine skiing!  I actually plan å gå på ski tonight.  The only downfall is that in Minnesota we don’t exactly have mountains, so small hills have to suffice.�

Think, think, and think-why 3?

Posted by kari 1 Comment
Dec 5 2008

Tror, synes, tenker.  Think, think, think.

I usually say that Norwegian grammar is pretty easy, but one component for which I sympathize with beginners is the English word “to think.”  In truth, English employs many different words that have the same meaning.  For example, “to  weigh”  We can weigh a certain amount of pounds, or we can weigh our odds, or we can weigh something down.  The following is an example of one general meaning that is represented by 3 different words: tror, synes, tenker.  All three of these words are verbs that can be used to say express thinking.�

There are differences between the meanings of tror, stynes, and tenker that set them apart from each other.  Tror is used when the subject believes something to be true.  For example “I believe in God” (Jeg tror på Gud).  Synes is used when the subject has an opinion about something/somebody.  For example, “I think she’s nice” (Jeg synes at hun er snill).  Tenker is used to signify the action of thinking.  “I’m thinking about what they said” (Jeg tenker om det de sa.) 

Many beginners of the Norwegian language confuse these three words when they want to express something about thinking or feeling.  In addition to the few examples that I gave in the preceeding paragraph in Norwegian, there are many other different ways to use the words.  Jeg tror på Gud (I believe in God) or Hun synes at time er kjedelig (She thinks that class is boring) or Vi tenker på deg (we’re thinking of you). 

When it comes to these three words that describe different ways in which we think, it is always a good idea to consult a dictionary or a Norwegian grammar reference.

Not so homogeneous a population after all

Posted by kari 1 Comment
Dec 2 2008

As I mentioned in several earlier blogs, the Norwegian population isn’t as homogeneous as it used to be nor as most people believe it is.  Not everyone in Norway has blond hair and blue eyes.  A good portion of the northernmost part of the country is inhabited by a minority, indigenous population, the Sami people.  Samis inhabit the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia.  It wasn’t until 1990 that the Norwegian government recognized the Sami as a people with their own language, culture, and government.  Even though the Sami are a native minority (some of whom look quite different in physical appearance than a non-Sami Norwegian), Norwegians still seem to encounter issues with immigrants.

According to the Statistisk Sentralbyrå website (www.ssb.no), there are 460,000 innvandrere (immigrants) in Norway.  Of these, 79,000 are Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents.  Innvandrere in Norway represent 213 countries of origin.  Half of all innvandrere come from Asia, Africa, or Latin-America.  There are, however, many immigrants from northern European countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.  There is a strong presence of immigrants from the middle-east as well.  Surprisingly, every municipality in Norway is home to innvandrere.

Much like most of Europe, Norway is a very socially liberal country.  Norway is a constitutional monarchy which is governed by the Storting (the parliament).  Moreover, Norway is a welfare state that takes very good care of it’s people.  Relative to it’s population, Norway is one of the top givers of foreign aid in the world.  The development of the Norwegian welfare system was possible for many reasons, not least of which was because of the enormous amount of oil that was found in the north sea in the 1960s.

It might seem like Norwegians have no reason to be intolerant of innvandrere given their socially liberal tendencies.  What I have recently come to understand is that it is precisely these views that cause Norwegians to be intolerant of certain groups of outsiders who inhabit their country.

Many of the innvandrere, as I mentioned earlier, are from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  As such, these countries’ traditions do not support the equal treatment of men and women.  Equality between the sexes is most definitely a Norwegian ideal.  Norwegians do not approve of how men from male-domintated cultures treat women (i.e. men deciding over women and fathers over children) and therefore these innvandrere endure discrimination.

There are of course other issues that Norwegians have with immigrants, such as minimal financial contributions to the government and significant extraction of government services.  Lots of take, little give.  However, the inequality between men and women is one of the main reasons that discrimination and racism towards immigrants exists in Norway.

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