chief

It's been a very stressful week, on so many levels. I've got my first exam to finish by Monday, I just completed the Project Overview for my EuroWeek team – due today.* I still have a norsk litteratur oppgave to finish next week, and I still haven't gotten any further with my thesis paper than I was at the end of Spring Break. So I'm taking a break from writing with a little bit of writing. Makes sense, right?

Among other dubious distinctions this week, I've become the official Team Leader for my EuroWeek team instead of just the de facto leader. I'm not entirely sure I wanted this position, but as I've been doing the work, it's nice to have the title to go with it. I am the team secretary and head writer as well, being the only native English speaker.** The writing position I'm quite satisfied with, seeing as it's about the only strength I have to contribute, not being a business student to conquer the theory and project design or being proficient enough in Norwegian to interview Norwegian businesses for the case study or the survey that the team has designed. So I'm the last person to get all the information and get it in order for the deadlines, so I suppose that puts me in a good position to lead. I know when I need to demand information by in order to get things written in good time. And maybe it will make me look extra shiny and brilliant on my grad school applications. Maybe it will help me get funding. So I guess I do want the Team Leader position.

What I'm not sure I like, one of my team members called me "Leader" – with the quotes and capitalization – in a recent e-mail. I'm trying to take it as recognition and a compliment, but being being cynical and worn out I'm struggling not to interpret it as sarcasm. Especially in light of my peppering chat messages with large amounts of encouragement and smilies when I start getting very frustrated by being misunderstood or not getting data and other information when I need it. I love the internet. I can privately growl and scowl as much as I need to and then give people happy faces when I have to explain something for the third time.

In other news, my kvedarkurs had a concert for some of the kindergarten kids on Monday morning. It went slightly better than can be expected, seeing as I didn't know which songs we were singing until Sunday night. Oh, the dangers of taking an early break. I had missed the last class meeting before Påskenferie because I was traveling in the UK then. At least I didn't forget the songs I had to sing on my own. Though I honestly don't remember if I sung well or not. And then, of course, I heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech and it combined with all the rest of my stress to completely freak me out. Not that it doesn't upset me anyway. But I'm not sure I would have sent out an e-mail asking my college friends to send me some words if I hadn't already been on the edge of breaking down. Much thanks to all the friends that responded, especially those who had done so by the next day. It seriously did something to calm me down. Unfortunately, getting the news on Monday prevented Lill and I from practicing the Scottish folk song that I wanted to sing for the last åpenscene. She was going to accompany me on guitar. We did manage to get a second practice session in on Tuesday night, but ended up not preforming anyway because we were both just exhausted on Wednesday. I did, however, still sing in her choir and did a not to bad job of it. Especially seeing as I was late to the practice right before and didn't get to warm up with everyone.

And I finally got some Magnet and Sivert Høyem. Yay! New music! What's more, Blogger had learned Norwegian. So cool. Of course, I pretty much know most of the new words by knowing their position in the layout rather than really thinking about what they mean and understanding them, but that way I can leave them på norsk and get used to them. Now that I am leaving in 5 weeks...***

*Both of my exams are take-home exams, which means that they are 6-8 page essays. At least, the first one is and I assume the second one will be as well.
**The British are free to argue with this and say that I am actually a native American speaker, but it amounts to the same thing. Though not to be confused with a Native American. It all gets rather complicated, doesn't it?
***Blogger switched me to Norwegian automatically. Otherwise I would have missed out on this delightful new feature.

answering my own questions

I realize now that is a completely obvious question. Really, because I've been wondering about a term related to sociology, I should have known that I can trace the word's use to its origin through the theories, and because identity is a theory based on symbolic interactionism (in many cases, and the related theory, social identity theory is similar enough that it probably grew up along side identity theory though I haven't researched this enough to know for certain), it can't go back any farther than Mead (1930s), and is most strongly developed by Styker and Burke, in identity theory and social identity theory respectively, so it's probably something around the 50s to 60s. And everyone shakes their heads because they are disappointed that I missed something so completely obvious, or because they have no idea what I'm talking about. And I shake my head because I realized on Wednesday that I had read, in its entirety, the article I have by Styker and Burke, and not only had I forgotten all of the content, I'd forgotten that I had read anything more than a page or two.

Oh sociology, the science of describing that which seems obvious after it has been pointed out, and then proving that it is not only obvious but true.

Sami Children's Easter Show

I occasionally watch children's programming not because it is intrinsically interesting – because let's face it, nothing will ever be as good as the Muppet Show – but out of an interest in the cultural education provided to children through television. Thus, children's programming is interesting in an "I'm really geeky" sort of way.* So when I was taking a break from my thesis writing with a spot of television about the life of Roald Dahl, the Sami Children's Easter program followed and I had to stay tuned. Thankfully, it was short, because it brought about two rather conflicting responses in me. The first was that it wasn't just cheesy, it was rather painfully dreadful. This is not to say that I don't think Sami people can make good programming. It's that, in a land of low-budget programming, this was really low budget, reflecting more on the Norwegian government's spending on this sort of programming than on the creativity or talents of the show's creators.** After all, there is a delicate balance between creating programming that is interesting to young children and builds their self-esteem by praising the general talent-levels of the audience without being patronizing. I've also watched single episodes of children's programming with significantly higher budgets which seem to be aimed at the same age group – Barney or Elmo-generation Sesame Street – and can say from these experiences that they are only marginally better.*** One can only pity parents who are exposed to this sort of thing on a daily basis for what one must hope is no more than a couple years. I suspect that if I get kids my favorite age for them will be once they are old enough to have a twisted sense of humor, but before they start smoking weed and generally being prats.

Back to the Easter program, the other response was of a more positive note. This was a Sami language program being broadcast nationally, though I'll grant this was on a state-owned channel and as special programming rather than regular scheduling. Really though, how many Sami children speaking a Sami language are there living in Telemark right now? While the show presented silly antics, as does any children's program, it also featured Sami kids playing in a rock band (where they sang in English, but that is another matter as many a Norwegian rock band of any cultural background choose English for their lyrics) and a young girl joiking.**** In a country where assimilation efforts tried to wipe out the Sami language, joiking was demonized and the type of drum that the girl was playing was collected by authorities and burned, this is still rather remarkable. It is remarkable, not least, because it demonstrates that the language is still actively being used and laws passed in the 1990s (oh, so long ago) are not merely politically correct window dressing. In order for such a program to be made and aired, there must be people who speak the language and in this case children who speak the language to participate in the staging of the program, and there must be children who understand the language that would be an audience for the program, not across the nation, but at least in parts of the country. This might seem self-evident to Norwegians, but without having traveled to Sami-speaking parts of the country a visitor can remain quite unaware of this official, though minority, language of Norway. It is probably also true of the program, that it is as much about keeping Sami language in active use as it is about the language actually being in active use.


*I personally prefer the word geek even though I'm such a nerd that I know that the more appropriate appellation would be nerd. Nerd, having the meaning of someone who is socially handicapped by their desire to know entirely too much information and the need to then disseminate that information to people who couldn't care less. For some reason, I prefer the old definition of "scary carny that bites the heads off of small animals" that the word geek carries, while still marking the bearer of the name as "incapable of being elected homecoming queen and thus in the same social circle as nerds" by contemporary usage.
**I have to add this contradictory statement, because I've recently discovered The Receptionist's YouTube shorts, and if there is anything more low-budget than a man with his work computer's built in camera, lots of construction paper, and the occasional use of ketchup-blood, I don't know what is. Yet, Mr. Betz creates some really bizarre and entertaining shorts, though admittedly entirely inappropriate for young children. Among other things he fantasizes in verse and graphic detail about being President Lincoln with foreknowledge of his own murder and about cannibalism on the Oregon Trail. Note that I said it's inappropriate for young children. Ten-year-olds would love this stuff, though their mums might not like his use of the word "fucker."
***Also, in sharp contrast to my peers, I never liked Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. I did watch it occasionally as a child, but more out of rebellion than enjoyment. My mum had banned it along with Pee Wee's Playhouse from out television selection, as I remember it, because she found the hosts of these programs sort of creepy. And I don't care what anyone has to say about what a wonderful man Mr. Rogers really was, because I found him to be disturbingly "nice" and creepy too. I will, however, agree that it wasn't really a bad show, and it gave kids some degree of insight into kid-interesting things like balloon factories and cake, as well as how to be a decent person on a daily basis. A creepily nice person, but decent all the same. I do, however, think Blue's Clues is a good show for kids. At least, I did back when they still had Steve on the program, before the Steve as muder-victim on Law & Order controversy, when Blue was still a girl. It appealed to my feminism, Blue being a female and thus breaking the gender-color stereotyping of all things blue being for boys and all things girl being pink. And it had puzzles, and I approve of puzzles.
****On the unlikely chance that anyone reading this is not my mum or well versed in Sami culture, this would be a traditional singing style not unlike some Native American chanting traditions.

can't concentrate anymore

I seem to have an unorthodox method of paper writing. I don't write outlines or crazy bubble-flowcharts of whatever it is that I'm suppose to be writing about. Instead I spend a bit of time becoming generally aware of the topic through research and then I sit down with my articles and a cup of tea and I start writing the paper. This doesn't sound all that strange yet... OK, I sit down with my articles that I have not yet marked in anyway and many of which I have not yet read and I start to write my paper while reading the articles and getting inspired to write paragraphs on whatever my reaction to the article is based on my previous knowledge of the topic. It's more like journaling. I react to a collection of articles and continually edit those reactions as I continue to write. This may be why I ended up with what I believe is a very good sociology final paper after going through the paper and informally reverse outlining it in order to rearrange it into a more logical flow than the original version. I did this as a small concert at the King Club last spring. From what I understand, the concert was someone's final project for a class. Strange. My TA must have believed the paper was good too, as it earned me an A and was one of only two papers that he felt really deserved more original research on the thesis.*

The thing is, I've tried writing papers the way that teachers have tried to instruct me to write. Outlines. Writing up notes with references on index cards that can be rearranged at will. Flowcharts of one form or another. Flowcharts on paper and flowcharts on my computer. Outlines in notebooks and outlines on my laptop. I have to admit that while I really like the OmniOutliner program that came loaded on my macBook, when I tried using it to write my second peacebuilding paper I didn't feel like it did anything to effectively help me write my paper, certainly not more than my usual style of paper writing would have done. Truly, basic word processing programs are the best things that every happened for me. The ability to effortlessly rearrange whole paragraphs or pages is indeed awesome. The one place where I'm not sure of is if the electronic version or a piece of paper is preferable for the articles that I have to read.

*the purpose of the paper was to review printed literature on the subject, so original research was outside of the paper's parameters. Fortunately or unfortunately, original research is not outside the parameters of the thesis paper that I'm working on.

I would very much like to know

When did identity become such a central concept? Specifically, I would like to know when the word came into common usage in sociological texts, but also when it achieved popular usage as well. The text than I'm reading from the '60s doesn't make use of the word, but I'm not sure if that is because it wasn't used then, or if the author didn't see it as useful to his text. The more recent book I'm reading uses the term identity regularly. The other question would be, was there discussion of a markedly similar to that which we now call identity, or is the concept of identity relatively new? And which contemporary definition of identity does a possible identity-like term match?

kiitos paljon

Last night was "Frigg: thesis concert 2, or I go and have a fun night out and call it school work, continued." I like Finnish fiddle music, but it's a bit circular I don't always get into it as much as other things. The audience continued to be predominantly young, though I did enjoy seeing a couple of grannies at a close table. And I had friends who saved me a seat. Yay friends.

Starting to read Fiddling For Norway, I was thinking about the changes that folk music underwent in this country since religious movements began to associate fiddling and dancing with sin. Fiddlers either set aside or destroyed their fiddles, or they began disassociating their music from dancing and moving into concert performance. Fiddling for an attentive audience rather than active dancers meant that they could start increasing the artistic flourishes and reflect an understanding of classical training. Without dancers the music got more complicated. So what does the pietist movement in Norway have to do with Finnish fiddles? Well, I'm not as familiar with religious movements in Finland, but it seems logical that if there was such a reactionary sin-hunting movement in Finland there might have been something similar in Finland. I don't know. What I do know is that Finnish folk musicians are trained in a folk department at the Sibelius Academy, Finland's only school for higher education in music. I'm wondering if the virtuoso fiddling of Finland is heavily influenced by this formal education, or how far back the complicated fiddling styles go in Finland.

Less academic: I had an easier time understanding the band this time. For starts, the Finnish guys spoke English. I was rather surprised, as I had expected that they would know Swedish. It is an official language of Finland, and Swedish is close enough to Norwegian that the Norwegian audience would be able to understand it. Perhaps they do know Swedish, but are not as comfortable using it, and as an internationally touring band, it might serve them better to be well versed in English instead of Swedish. I did understand the Finnish that they used too, though it was limited to "Terve, tuolla." and "Kiitos paljon." "Hi there" and "thanks a lot" respectively. There was also a string of curses or some other random muttering that I missed, because I didn't hear it clearly. He was changing a broken string and not really talking to the audience, though to be honest, I probably would not have understood anyway. What did really please me, is that I had an easier time understanding the Norwegian spoken. My friend says that I am getting better at conversing in Norwegian, and she is doubtless correct, but as far as differences between the first show and the second, Harv speaks Swedish.

Peace of Mind

For some reason, every time a professor asks to speak with me after class I get slightly nervous. I have no explanation for this, because I can't think of a single instance in which a prof asking to talk to me has meant anything bad. So when Prof Torvik asked me to wait after class today my first reaction was "but I was going to walk with my 'cousin'" followed shortly by, "what did I do?" I worry about everything though, even when I know there is no reason to worry. And in fact, talking to her gave me greater peace of mind today. I got tapped for a project. A project that will count toward my study points for next spring. Awesome.

Euroweek is a forum for building international cooperation between students, mostly in Europe, but the project I will be working on was proposed by a professor from Columbia. Six students from three countries investigate a topic and give a 45 minute presentation and create some sort of display and write a short paper. Then they get judged. Getting a special project might send me into a panic, no matter how cool it is. Because I have my big ugly thesis paper to write. And I haven't gotten started organizing the thesis into something that might eventually become a paper. Or done anything more than some preliminary research. And I panic about everything. But I feel pretty good about all this right now, because I also got some more information on my spring courses today.

My Euroweek project will count for 5 of my 30 study points in spring. My thesis will get to take up 5 more of my required points. Yay! I get time to work on my thesis. And I'm an impetus to get another program that the school has been wanting to do started. The international office has been wanting to try to get foreign students (this might just mean the American exchange students, I'm not sure) who have studied Norwegian previously into regular Norwegian classes, but with a lower competition level. The literature class that St Olaf's and I have been following as an independent study has been a proving ground for the project, so in the spring I'll be taking the other half of this class as a more integrated student, earning 10 study points instead of just 5.* And my independent study points remain available for my thesis work. Things are still not settled at all, but if this all works out it makes some things easier and everything more interesting. The Euroweek project will be a great thing for preparing for grad school, and hopefully help me get in to a good grad school as well.

*The class I am in now is lit before 1900, the spring class is after 1900. Both classes are covering credits that I need for honors in scan studies major.

permission to laugh

Humor requires a mutual understanding. An understanding that, even when people can speak the same language, it can be hard to establish. Sometimes it is cultural reference points. Sometimes it is an understanding between the parties that it is okay to laugh at language mistakes. It is absolutely essential to my mental health that I laugh, truly and deeply. The kind of laughter that bubbles up from your soul, like a popped bottle of champagne. I've been getting stressed out over various things recently, mostly the intense amount of work that I have to get done. I was having a crisis. Completely crisis girl. But yesterday I was studying in the kantina, starting to read up on identity theory again, and get all those sociology words working in my head again. I was not enjoying this. But then one of my Norwegian classmates saw me and came over to talk. She was post oral examing. This would mean giddy. She was giddy, getting over the anxiety that an exam in practical english can induce in a person. This was excellent. There was a great amount of giggling. I needed giggling. It also led to my having someone to go to a concert with. The concert was for part of my thesis research. Really. I shouldn't be dreading working on schoolwork so much when part of it means going to concerts. How much more awesome does studying get?

So I went to see Harv play at Grillen last night. As part of my thesis/sociological observations. The concert drew a relatively large crowd, but I'm not sure how many, because I'm really bad at estimating things like that. It is possible that I can get an accurate head count from the concert organizers. I spoke to them briefly at a table in the school on Wednesday, and they thought it was cool enough that I'm here in Bø that they introduced me to the band. Sweet. I got to shake the hand of Magnus Stinnerbom. He's played with Hedningarna. Though Harv has been getting more interesting in recent years too. And it makes a difference to see a show in a Scandinavian country. There are jokes based on cultural reference points that they can tell. I'm guessing that there were about 50 people in attendance; probably more than half of them were between 20 and 30-ish. And so far as I could tell, everyone was really into it. Two of the Danes I've met here even danced. They were good dancers too. The band sang a song well known to all Norwegians, though I didn't get it, my classmate should be able to explain it to me a little better. It was a really fun tune at any rate. I'd like to learn it. They were also telling jokes about Norwegian dialects, actually speaking in the dialects. The crowd really enjoyed this, and most surprising of all to me, they demanded two encores, and got them. Both aspects of this surprised me. And awed me. Of course, they were selling their cds, but because I'm on the NorthSide buyer's service, I already had the disks. The exact same disks. I don't understand completely why the band would be selling NorthSide cds in Norway, but they were. So I didn't buy a cd, and thus I didn't get a signed cd out of the evening. Instead I loaned my classmate 150 kroner so that she could get a cd to have signed. But she didn't get introduced to the band.

After the show there was much laughter and joking with my classmate. We discussed making her my Norwegian cousin, because her family is from a place about two hours away from the area that my great grandmother emigrated from, and I don't know my Norwegian family. Also, the job coordinator from Kroa was there, skipping the fattigmannsdisco to see Harv, but she had to go back to work afterward. And I met a couple of my classmate's friends, who dragged us over to the Bull Inn (O'Bulligans as we Americans have renamed it), for a final drink for them, and some water for us. On the way back home, back to climb up our kjempe big hill (or small portion of a mountain), we saw the Danes still sitting outside Grillen talking. They hailed me as we went past. It was nice. Vennelig, koselig, deilig.

kvedarskurset

I've joined a singing class (kvedarskurs) as part of my thesis research. I feel childishly happy to say that I am doing "participatory observation" as part of my research. So far, this means being somewhat confused and singing norwegian dialect while not being certain that I have all the words down right. It's fun. The class consists of 13 to 15 students (not completely certain how many yet), ranging from early twenties (3 counting myself) to maybe 60s? I'm not sure how old the eldest members are. The class is informal, and is as much a social hour (make that 2.5 hours) as a class.
Having less to do with my thesis research, it is yet another example of how to interact with Norwegians. It really does help to know some of the language. After that, join things, feel okay with feeling awkward/confused, and maybe do it alone. I'm not sure if it is that I am less intimidating when I'm on my own, or if it is that I'm forced to be more open to others when I don't have someone who I can talk to easily with me.* I have it pretty easy in this class, because one of the norwegian girls from the Midwestern Texts lecture and one of the Americans that isn't here on exchange are in the class. And the one I assume to be the oldest member of the class is completely adorable and very sweet. When I asked her if she knitted her shawl she tickled me with it, which I might have taken as an invasion of my space, but found charming instead. I've completely forgotten what kind of goat it is. It's not cashmere. Something that starts with an A, I think. Very soft yarn. Apparently there is a farm near Notodden from which the fiber came. As a knitter, I find this very keen. Some how Slow Knitting doesn't carry the same effect as Slow Food, but the meaning of the latter is what I am interested in with my fibers whenever possible. This is, however, secondary to my lust for really fabulous natural fiber. I still want to get some qiviut.**
*many are shy about their english, which is still much better than my norwegian.
**qiviut is fiber from muskox, making the softest and warmest of textiles.