Posts in March 2009

Skandinavians - the skiing pioneers

Posted by Kari
Mar
31
2009

Seriously, what an awesome thing to be the first at.  The earliest carvings of skiing date back to 5000 B.C. in the region of Rødøy, Norway where there was an image of a skiier with a pole.  The earliest ski was found in Sweden and dates back to roughly the same time period.  I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the Birkebeiner nordic ski race, but it takes place in Wisconsin, my neighbor to the east.  Well there is a story that dates back to the early 1200’s that tells of an early medieval civil war between the Birkebeiners and their rival faction, the baglers.  After the chief of the Birkebeiners died, several fellow men protected the son of the chief on a skiing escape to Lillehammer.  Today Norwegians celebrate this historical journey with the Birkebeinerrennet, a 54 km cross-country ski race.  In case you’re curious, birkebeiner literally means birch legs.  For me, imagining what skis must have looked and felt like thousands of years ago, I almost imagine skis of birchwood and legs tougher than tough. 

I just got back from skiing in Steamboat Springs, CO-first time skiing in the mountains.  It was absolutely incredible.  You must remember I’m from MN, so what we call Lutsen mountain is simply a large hill.  Still fun to ski, but nothing like the mountains.  Å gå på ski i fjellene er noe annet-det er veldig spesielt.  To go skiing in the mountains is something else-it is very special.  It can take 10 minutes to get down a run, as opposed to the 30 seconds it takes in MN…in Steamboat we were lucky to get 1 foot of fresh powder that made skiing more physically difficult, but a ton of fun.  While eating lunsj (lunch) and enjoying some cold øl (beer), I heard the familiar sounds of northern Norwegian coming from the table next to us.  It was a family of four-mamma, pappa, og guttene (mom, dad, and the boys).  Not that they were the only young kids on the mountain that day, but they were certainly two of the younger skiiers.  There is an old saying that Norwegians are born with skis on their feet; I think this might be true.  I know very few Norwegians that don’t either cross country or downhill ski. 

Which brings me to my next topic of conversation…I was relatively unfamiliar with telemark skiing until I saw quite a few telemark skiiers with their funny looking boots and did a little research.  When I think of skiing, I usually think of either nordic or alpine (nordic is cross country and alpine is downhill, for those of you out of the skiing loop).  Little did I know how popular telemark skiing really is and how old of technique it is.  The main distinction with telemark equipment is the boot-the binding attaches to the ski only at the toes (just like cross-country skiing), which leaves the heels free to maneuver for arc-like turns, rather than the “stem christie” turn (named after Kristiania-the old name for Oslo), which is the parallel stop turn.  Telemark skis also allow for climbing in the wilderness.  Telemark skiiers who are quite adventurous use climbing “skins” (historically sealskin was used, but today the skins are either synthetic or mohair) on the bottom of the skis to climb uphill.

In addition to telemark, alpine, and nordic skiing, one can kiteski, para-ski, nordic jump ski, dry slope ski (when there isn’t enough snow), skijøre (ski while being pulled by an animal) and of course, waterski! 

Liker dere å gå på ski?

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Religion-tror du?

Posted by Kari
Mar
23
2009

Religion-do you believe?  Tror dere på Gud? Do you (pl) believe in God?  Any god?

One of the headlines on ‘aftenposten.no’ today is “Absurd å tenke at det finnes noe mer” - Absurd to think that there is something else (finnes literally translates to ‘is found).  The following excerpt comes from the article (which you can find at www.aftenposten.no) is not literally translated, but is very close:

På spørsmål om ungdomsskoleelever i Norge og Europa tror på Gud, svarer 40 prosent nei, 30 prosent ja og 20 prosent at det finnes en ånd eller livskraft, viser EU-undersøkelsen. To answer the question about junior high students in Norway and Europe believing in God, 40 % answer no, 30% answer yes, and 20% answer that there is a spirit or life force, shows the European Union study.

Religionsforsker Marie von der Lippe ved Universitetet i Stavanger sier muslimer har et klarere gudsbilde enn kristne. Religion researcher Marie von der Lippe at the University of Stavanger says that Muslims have a clearer image of God than Christians.

–97 prosent av muslimene i undersøkelsen sier de tror på en Gud. 97% of Muslims in the study say they believe in God.

Svarene fra kristne er mer varierte. The answers from the Christians are more varied.

–De kan godt krysse av på at de er kristne, men ikke at de tror på en Gud. They can very well check that they are Christian, but not that they believe in God.

Von der Lippe forklarer det med at mange er kulturkristne. Von der Lippe explains that many are cultural Christians.

–De er døpt og konfirmert kristne, men ikke praktiserende. They are baptized and confirmed Christian, but they are not practicing.

Flere muslimer går i moskeen og har et aktivt bønneliv hjemme, ifølge religionsforskeren. More Muslims go to the mosque and have an active prayer life at home, according to the religion researcher.

If you click on the link ‘Absurd å tenke at det finnes noe mer der oppe,’ you will read (på norsk of course) that in talking to students and analyzing the results of the study that Muslims are much more proud of their religion than Christians are.  In a sense, Muslims generally feel more strongly about their relgious beliefs than Christians.  The students that say that they are Christian, but don’t necessarily believe in God (seems like an oxy-moron, doesn’t it) say that when someone asks them about themselves, their religious beliefs are not one of the first things they mention, if they mention them at all.  One of the Muslim students says that it is something that he would definitely at least mention.

In short, Norwegians are becoming less and less religious, simultaneously as the United States does.  Has anyone seen ‘Religulous,’ Bill Maher’s documentary?  It’s quite interesting.

 
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Spring fever

Posted by Kari
Mar
22
2009

grilling in springtime Vårfeber er her! Spring fever is here!  At least for me.  This weekend has been gorgeous.  Det regnet hele dagen på fredag. It rained the whole day on Friday, so it’s been really nice to see sola denne helgen (the sun this weekend)!  Nå blåser det mye (now it’s blowing a lot/it’s very windy), men temperaturen er perfekt (but the temperature is perfect).  I går gikk vi på tur i skogen med hunden (Yesterday we walked in the woods with the dog).  Did you notice the inversion in that sentence?  Normally we would say ‘Vi går på tur… but because we have an adverbial phrase (i går), we rearrange the sentence structure so that the adverbial phrase comes first and the verb comes before the subject.  Anyways….

What kinds of things are fun to do when vår comes?

As I said before, ta hunden ut i skogen og gå på tur (take the dog out in  the forest and go for a walk),

jobbe i hagen (work in the yard) doing things like…

samle ved for å brenne (gather wood to burn),

klippe gresset (cut the grass/mow),

plante blomster (plant flowers),

rydde huset og  hagen (rid the house and the yard) of things we don’t use anymore,

sitte i sola og lese? (sit in the sun and read?),

og grille (and grill)!

Vår betyr at sommeren kommer (spring means that summer is coming) and vinteren er borte (winter is gone) til neste år (til next year).  For those of us that live in the northern latitudes, it also means that mange ting blir levende igjen (many things become living again) and dyrene slutter å gjemme seg selv (animals stop hiding themselves).

I absolutely love våren (the spring) because I become myself again after a long vinter and everyone comes outside.  The first few nice days are always a bit bizarre because I think to myself, where did all of these people come from?  The truth is they have all just been cozied up inside!

The best part about vår in my opinion is the frisk luft (fresh air).  Vår has it’s own scent.

Liker dere våren? (Do you (pl.) like spring?)

 
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norske adjektiver

Posted by Kari
Mar
17
2009

You were probably wondering when I would get into adjectives.  Today is your lucky day!  Don’t worry-they really aren’t that painful.  I’ve said before that pronunciation is the most difficult part of learning the Norwegian language and the grammar is the easy part.  Adjectives are no exception to this rule.  As long as you follow a few simple rules, you should be ok.

As you probably already know, there are 3 genders in the Norwegian language: female, male, and neuter.  When a noun is single and either feminine or masculine, the adjective remains the same.  For example, if you want to talk about a red car (en rød bil), red remains rød and in ei blå klokke, blue remains blå. 

However, if the singular noun is neuter and you want to describe it with the adjective ‘big’ (stor), in the case of a big tree et stort tre (a big tree), stor becomes stort.  Let’s try another example of a singular neuter noun: et kjøkken (a kitchen) that you want to describe as long (lang), you would say et langt kjøkken.  So the rule is that if you want to describe a singular neuter noun, the adjective will get a ‘t’ at the end.  Don’t ask why it’s a ‘t’ because I’m not sure there is a good reason.

Now, let’s move on to the plural form of nouns and how that affects adjectives.  If we want to describe two red cars (notice this would be indefinite plural since we are not specifying which 2 red cars), we will add an ‘e’ to the adjective and an ‘er’ to the end of the noun (as long as the noun is feminine or masculine-remember neuter nouns in the plural do not obtain anything extra in the indefinite form) –to røde biler.  Another example would be 3 blue clocks-tre blåe klokker.  If we want to describe 4 big children we would say fire store barn (note the lack of added letters to the word ‘barn‘). 

So what about describing nouns in the definite plural form?  Whether the noun is feminine, masculine, or neuter, the format is going to be the same.  The yellow balls (de gule ballene), the nice men (de snille mennene), or the mean women (de slemme kvinnene).  Notice the ‘de’ in front of the adjective-this represents ‘the.’  The ‘ene’ at the end of the adjective just reaffirms that we are talking about the definite plural form. 

Pretty simple, huh?  The only thing that gets a little confusing is the exceptions to the rule.  You knew there would be exceptions, right?  One example that comes to my mind is the adjective vakker (pretty).  In the singular form, the adjective remains the same regardless of the gender of the noun.  However, when you make the adjective plural, it becomes  vakre.  There are several other irregular adjectives like this, but you will learn them as you go.  I promise.

 

 

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Hvordan er været?

Posted by Kari
Mar
15
2009

Hvordan er været, hvordan er været, hvordan er været i dag? 

Hvordan er været, hvordan er været, hvordan er været i dag? 

Ja det regner ute, regner ute, ja det regner i dag.

This is a song that I taught to little kids at the Norwegian pre-school I used to work at.  It is a very simple song and a great way to teach a Norwegian phrase about the weather. 

How is the weather, how is the weather, how is the weather today?

How is the weather, how is the weather, how is the weather today?

Yes it’s raining outside, raining outside, yes it’s raining to day.

Of course, we had these great, colorful, weather puppets that we could play around with…

Hvordan er været i dag?

The weather where I am has taken a fairly substantial step towards spring.  It got up to 60 degrees, up from -2 degrees on Wednesday.  Pretty significant temperature increase.  Jeg er lei av snø.  I am sick of snow.  

Usually the weather is a topic you want to master as best you can when learning a new language.  The following phrases are phrases I think are important to know if you want to engage in conversational norsk:

-Hvordan er været?  How is the weather.

-Det ………. It…followed by the following such verbs i.e. regner (rains), snør (snows), blåser (blows), fryser (freezes) stormer (storms), er (is).  Norwegian does not use verbs in the present tense in the same way that English does.  In English one can say ‘It rains,’ but ‘It’s raining’ is much more common in everyday language.  Only recently did some Norwegians begin to Americanize the language a bit and use ‘ing’ at the end of a verb to express an action or condition in the present. 

-Sola skinner.  The sun shines.

-Det er ______ replaced by an adjective such as ….. kaldt, varmt, iskaldt (cold, warm, ice cold).

-Temperaturen er _______ (The temperature is….)

-Det er ______ grader (It is_____degrees).

-Luften er _____ (The air is…tørr or våt or fuktig-dry, wet, or damp).

-torden (thunder) lyn (lightning) regn (rain), snø (snow), sol (sun), vind (wind).

Hvordan er været where you are right now?

 

 

 

-If you w

 

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