TSPMI SMD tinklaraštis

Norwegian identity

Erasmus kampas Naujienos

Algirdas Acus

I present my most favourite quotes about Norwegians as a nation. I hope this mosaic, which consists of short flashes, will provide a view of Norwegian nation. And most importantly – will teach us all a little, but important thing – not to fear to be Lithuanian.

The presentation is based on “Thomas Hylland Eriksen Being Norwegian in as shrinking world: Reflections on Norwegian identity. In Anne Cohen Kiel, ed. Continuity and Change: Aspects of Modern Norway, Scandinavian University Press, 1993.

I totally agree, that the weakness of this publication – time. It is quite old. But let’s assume, that there were no major changes. For example, Norway still lays outside European Union.

Nationalism

Nationalism is a kind of ideology which proclaims that the political boundaries should be coterminous with the cultural boundaries of a given territory; in other words, that a state (a “country”) should only contain people of the same kind.

The idea of the Norwegian nation was born the moment a few people decided that:

(i) the area contained a distinct culture

(ii) the area should have political self-determination.

Neither of these assumptions were evidently or “naturally” true at the time. During the formative stage of Norwegian nationalism in the mid-19th century, Norwegian nationalists had to compete with Scandinavianists, who regarded Scandinavia (or at least Norway and Denmark) as a single cultural area.

Nationhood is a social fact in so far as the inhabitants of an area believe in the existence of that imagined community which is proposed by the nationalists. They hold that they have something profound in common, which could be phrased as metaphoric kinship, with a great number of people whom they will never know personally.

It must be “imagined” by its members – in order to exist.

In the case of Norway, Norwegianism was eventually to win out over Scandinavianism, and by today, surely, few Norwegians claim that they belong to the same nation as Danes, or Swedes, for that matter.

The nation is, in other words, a historical and cultural fact; it is not a fact of nature.

We should therefore be aware that history is a product of the present, not of the past.

Norwegian identity seems to be contradiction-ridden. The Norwegian language issue is a strong indicator of this. Since the invention of the Norwegian nation in the mid-19th century, the country has been divided into adherents of Nynorsk (New Norwegian) and Bokmål (literally, “Book language”) or Riksmål (State language).

In a small country such as Norway, nothing unites the population more strongly than the general interest in “Norway”.

Now we will look at what is considered to be typically Norwegian.

1. Egalitarian individualism.

“Thou Shalt Not Think Highly of Thyself”

2. Consensus, compromise and formal justice.

(i) they tend to be unwilling to accept disagreement;

(ii) they stick to the facts and avoid including personal or other formally irrelevant aspects into the situation. Norwegians would tend to prefer a poor compromise to a violent quarrel – even if they were eventually to emerge victoriously from the latter: They strongly wish to agree.

In other societies, people might buy each other drinks, cups of coffee or meals without demanding an immediate return of the favour. In this way, they establish a lasting relationship. In this country, it is uncommon that people do not split restaurant or bar accounts, pay their own entrance fees, and so on – even if they know each other well. Are Norwegians afraid to develop informal commitments or obligations vis-à-vis others? Are they simply afraid of making friends? Since honesty and sincerity are important values in Norwegian definition of self, it could be argued, the Norwegians may be afraid of making promises of friendship which they might break in the future.

3. The rural connection

“You can get me out of Valdres, but you cannot get Valdres out of me,” writes the native social anthropologist Tord Larsen (1984) as an illustration of the intimate identification of Norwegians with their place of origin, even if they have long since migrated from their native valley or fishing hamlet.

Even some of the most urbane and sophisticated members of the Oslo bourgeoisie leave the city for Christmas in order to visit a remote mountain valley where their kin group originates. Norwegian identity, as it is generally defined by Norwegians, is primarily a rural identity, not an urban one. Foreigners sometimes complain that Norwegians are difficult to befriend; that they jealously guard their personal space and seem worried and slightly afraid when confronted with strangers. It has been claimed that most Norwegians rarely address strangers unless drunk or if for some reason or other they either really have to.

A self-perception common among Norwegians conforms to this view: they do not regard themselves as a cosmopolitan and easy-going people, but rather as somewhat private and introvert. Lacking the mannerisms of sophisticated urbanites, they might argue, they compensate through a sincere and trustworthy character – and this is a characterisation of Norwegians also commonly invoked by foreigners. The British expression “Norwegian charisma”, used to describe people entirely devoid of grace and charm, confirms this image.

4. Nature and culture

Instead of drawing on grand cultural traditions or a proud military history, Norwegian patriots (and surely, visiting foreigners) may talk of their beautiful mountains, clean lakes and breathtaking fjords. A great number of people own cottages (hytter) in some remote valley, forest or mountain area, and many spend the majority of holidays there – it has been estimated that over half of the population has easy access to a hytte. Rather than seeking contact with other people, or exploring foreign cities, they regard the holiday as an opportunity to “get away from it all”, which means spending it with the nuclear family in a remote place where they can fish, walk or ski. These cottages, although many are well furnished and equipped, are expected to signal an ideal of simplicity in lifestyle – an aspect of Norwegian self-definition.

One need only compare the Royal Castle in Oslo with the rather more spectacular ones in Copenhagen and Stockholm to see the point. As the national anthem goes, “Hytter og hus, men ingen borge” (“Cottages and houses, but no castles”).

“Small red house in the country” is widespread enough to have become a cliché.

Few Norwegians admit that they love the city.

Since it is impossible to move the city to the mountain valley, one tries instead to move the valley to the city.

5. Decentralisation

A peculiar characteristic of Norwegian society lies in the fact of 47 airports (actually, the number is 53) for a population of four million.

A roadmap of France would indicate that virtually all main roads lead to Paris. Frenchman have accustomed themselves to seeing the main seats of finance, politics and higher learning located to the capital. As regards Sweden, that country, like Norway, had a very scattered population at the turn of the century. From the inception of the modern Swedish welfare state in the years after World War I, there was an increasing awareness that it would have been extremely expensive to offer the same rights and benefits to people in remote Norrland as to people in the Stockholm area. Many of the erstwhile inhabitants of Norrland – the northernmost third of the country – have later moved to newly erected housing estates in central areas. The Norwegian picture differs starkly. In Norwegian politics, it is a widespread notion that people should be able to live in the place where they grew up, if at all possible. Subsidies, generous tax deductions and other economic benefits have been channeled into Utkantnorge (“Peripheral Norway”) to ensure this; expensive bridges and tunnels connect small islands with the mainland, and Norwegian agriculture is, along with Japanese and Swiss agriculture, the most heavily subsidised in the world.

Language is decentralised to the extent that every valley has its own, semi-officialised dialect in which at least some of the inhabitants take great pride.

6. The unsophisticated, but practically minded farmer

The nisselue, the red woollen hat worn (particularly around Christmas) by the gnomes (nisser) featured in local folklore, has in recent years become an ambiguous symbol of Norwegian nationhood. “Pulling the nisselue down one’s ears” refers to isolationist tendencies in Norwegian society. The anti-EC movement has actually used the nisselue as their symbol. During the German occupation in 1940-45, the nisselue was a symbol of resistance, and was actually prohibited by the Germans.

To wear designer-made Italian clothes, to own a sleek but impractical luxury car, and to relish the bouquets of fine wines and champagnes, would be considered emphatically un-Norwegian. There are heavy taxes on “luxury goods”, and wine and liquor can still only be purchased in state monopoly stores at exorbitant prices.

National identity in a changing world.

It has thus been argued that Norway became an integrated nation in the 1960s, when national TV was introduced and virtually everybody – from Hammerfest to Lindesnes – began watching the same TV news at the same time every day.

Deconstructing national myths

This does not mean that the Norwegian nation does not exist, but it reminds us that it is a cultural invention – and a fairly recent one at that. Since Norwegian history can be reinterpreted, the content of Norwegian identity can be changed. This, some have argued, is called for in our day and age, marked by two strong tendencies which apparently run counter to some currently held conceptions of Norwegian nationality. These tendencies are the emergence of a poly-ethnic Norwegian society, and the globalisation of culture.

Are the Saami Norwegians?

What is the actual content of the national identity; who should be included in the nation and who should be excluded from it; and what kinds of demands should be placed on inhabitants who are not members of the nation? Until the late 1950s, Saami identity had been strongly stigmatised. The Saami language, threatened by extinction as late as the 1960s, has been revived, and it is now the main administrative language in those parts of Finnmark county which are defined as Saami core areas. In 1989, a Saami parliament with limited but real power, Sametinget, was officially inaugurated by the late Norwegian king Olav V. Only a generation ago, many Saami were about to become assimilated into the Norwegian ethnic group, while others were politically passive, poor, culturally stigmatised and largely uneducated. Their success has proven that it is possible for a well-organised aboriginal minorities to reinvent and indeed strengthen their identity in the face of fast social and cultural change, and that there need be no contradiction between modernisation and ethnic identity.

Non-European immigrants and Norwegian identity

The overtly anti-immigrant groups, some of which are openly racist, are small and politically marginal in the country. But suspicion, fear and myths, especially targeting Muslim immigrants, abound.

Perhaps the future will even see an alliance between Norwegian cultural patriots and Muslim immigrants – against the onslaught of American mass culture?

The relative isolation of the society, which among other things entailed the absence of a powerful landed gentry, has had substantial effects on its ideology, social organisation and self-definition. On the other hand, Norwegians are also proud of their large merchant fleet (which, it is sometimes claimed, can be traced back to the Viking age), and during the past century, Norwegians have been a very extrovert people; they are well travelled, have recruited many Protestant missionaries in Africa and Madagascar, and are among the strongest supporters of the United Nations.

The globalisation of culture in Norway

MTV waves and hamburger outlets are present all along the Norwegian coastline. The farmers of Gudbrandsdalen travel to the Canary islands in July, just like everyone else. Norway is today a country whose inhabitants probably eat more hamburgers than fish balls, where Jackie Collins’s novels are more widely read than Bjørnson’s peasant tales, where well over half of the population can make themselves understood in slightly broken American English.

The impact of the current globalisation of culture is visible even in remote parts of Norway, where local shops may have American names and everybody wears jeans although the climate suggests otherwise.

“McNoreg”

Norwegian resistance against membership in the European Community – a movement unique in Europe – is simultaneously an expression of such a fear, and an indication of a strong and enduring cultural self-consciousness. Which other European country would in the early 1990s prefer to stay outside of that safe haven of abundance and protection that the EC offers?

National identity and cultural change

As a general rule, it is when the carriers of an identity feel that it is threatened from the outside that it becomes most important to them. So for the Norwegian farmer of the 1840s, there was no reason to stress his social identity. He could take it for granted; probably, he did not even reflect about who he was. To people living in modern, complex societies, the situation is quite different. Their way of life is different from that of their forebears, and that it resembles that of the neighbouring peoples, but the feeling of a continuity with the past may still remain important. They are now constantly brought into contact with people whom they define as different (foreigners, immigrants, etc.), and are thus brought to reflect on their identity. They must be able to explain why they describe themselves as Norwegians and not as Swedes, Pakistanis, etc.

People felt just as Norwegian after the introduction of the TV as they did before. Since the 1970s and 1980s, on the other hand, the presence of a few thousand Muslims in the country has been perceived by many Norwegians as threatening to their identity, and they have taken measures to end immigration.

But what will it look like as we approach the coming millennium? We do not know. But we may hazard the guess that Norwegian identity will remain proudly Norwegian.

Whereas the Danes stress the intimate relationship between their national history and that of Europe, and the Swedes underscore the importance of “Norden”10 as a cultural unit; while the Finns and Icelanders promote general humanistic and intellectual values instead of glorifying their national identity, the Norwegian school curriculum is markedly nationalist.