Had a lovely evening Saturday at the home of one of my colleagues, Anne Karin, and her husband Sigmund Ro, who recently retired from teaching American studies. He showed us a DVD of clips from Norwegian ski races dating from the 1930s to the present and described how skiing helped forge Norwegian national identity; the king of Norway skied in these races in the same gear as the locals.
Sigmund's grandfather had come to the U.S. in the 1880s, tried farming in northern Minnesota, but, when grain prices plummeted in the 1880s, he struggled, and returned home to Norway, declaring, so the story goes, that America was all toil and little reward. Examples of his grandmother's lovely rosemaling appeared throughout the house.
We leave for Oslo on Wednesday for a series of Fulbright lectures and then to Lillehammer on Friday for skiing.
Men venleg helsing,
Martha and Bill
No comments:
Post a Comment