Concerning historians writing about the history of other countries than their own, I read with great interest a book about the campaign in Norway in 1940, by the French historian François Kersaudy (one of the interesting things about this book is that he was able to read primary sources in all the languages of the countries involved (that is, having troops in the field), including Polish).
Charlie @ 18:
Concerning Scottish films, I remember hearing that the film Gregory's Girl from 1981 was dubbed for the American market (but not with American voices, however, but by Scottish actors with less pronounced dialect). Don't know if this is true.
Per
Rikibeth # 200 and 202:
I get the picture. In my part of fandom we have quite a few people who feel entitled to repeat performances of their equivalent of the gripe/grape joke. (On the other hand, we have quite a few people who enjoy that sort of humour, and who might well have gone something like this: "Oh, I hope that fun guy with the grapes turn up this year as well.")
Per
(I am, of course, aware of the possibility that there might be people in fandom having "Oh my, did Per do that again?!" conversations...)
inge @ 139
Yes, anti-clericalism has certainly played its part in French, Spanish and Italian politics, and Germany has of course had its Kulturkampf.
Anticlericalism and official secularism in predominantly Roman Catholic countries is one of the things that at first is a bit bewildering to people (like me) who've grown up in a predominantly Protestant country, since the people who work against religious influence in the public area here are often freethinkers and/or anti-religious, while anticlericals could be mainly just anti-church, without strong opinions on the religious teachings of the church (of course, sometimes, especially in Spain, they had both).
inge @ 96:
Yes, it was that brand I was thinking of.
In fact, I didn't know that Helly Hansen had had trouble in Germany, but I can see that an HH logo might pose problems in that market.
I remember that a lot of Swedes found this guy a rather unlikely character - with jokes such as "In Sweden, even the ultra right wing is integrated", etc.
As to attitudes towards Jews, someone I know who has studied the post-WWII far right, once told me that there has been a major disagreement between those who cling to the original theories about the Jews, and those who have developed a sort of "we were a bit wrong about the Jews, after all, they are white too" attitude. Not that either wing is nicer than the other, of course.
As to (ab)use of flags, there is a German men's clothing firm that has a Norwegian theme, with Norwegian personal names and names of towns, and, of course, our flag. The problem was that since any historical Nazi symbols are banned in Germany, those that lean that way are always searching for other symbols to use in their stead. The firm is alleged to have been started by people sympathetic to that movement, and - regardless of that being true or not (I do not know) - was embraced by individuals belonging to that movement. Needless to say, the Norwegian government wasn't that happy about this, and went to the German courts (don't know what kind of case they had, though). I do not know what recent developments, if any, there might have been.
On the lighter side, one thing that amuses me and my friends is that, although we Norwegians may be said to be flag-wavers too, we do not use the flag in exactly the same way as Americans do. For instance, Norwegian government offices do not have a display flag behind the desk, nor do we commonly have a flag behind the bar in a cafe or pub. So when we see that in a film or TV episode stated to take place in Norway, we have a bit of fun at that (of course, I realise that this is also a kind of TV and film shorthand for "We are not in the US anymore, but in Norway").
John Hawkes-Reed@71&73:
I just read a book by a Norwegian writer about how the Chinese restaurant became a fixture in even small rural communities from the late 60ies onwards. The book also has some choice examples of what restaurant meals were before "Our friends the Chinese" (the translation of the title) came (and after them, other "ethnic" cuisines), not the least how stuffy and inflexible the owners and staff could be.
As to Scandinavian cooking (at least Scandinavian-Scandinavian as opposed to Scandinavian-American, I do not know that much about the latter), one thing I do remember from my childhood in the 70ies is that nothing was considered a proper dinner unless it was served with boiled potatoes. It did not matter whether the dish was really, err, potato-friendly. I still remember with horror a certain kind of tinned spaghetti with meatballs that I was served sometimes by elderly relatives (who subscribed to this principle, but were otherwise very kind), and the way the orange tomato sauce lent a metallic taste to the boiled potatoes. I did not like the rubbery meatballs and small sausages either. (Unlike a lot of people in fandom, at least in my fandom, I am not a picky eater, but this I hope never to eat again.)
Per
Me @ 63:
Just to remove some ambiguity:
I did of course mean 2.50 for a 2.45 euro purchase.
Martin @ 55 and Roy @ 59:
I can't remember where, but I once saw someone comment that one of the reasons Norwegian and Swedish mysteries (both books and TV series) were popular, even surprisingly so, in Germany is that they took place in countries similar to Germany, but with space to spare. Apparently, continental readers and viewers were intrigued by low income people having spacious flats and middle income people living in sprawling villa areas, like very rich Germans, and humongous amounts of nature just outside the towns and cities.
Since we're discussing Amsterdam and the Netherlands, I've got a question, by the way, about something that puzzled me, and that was that shops etc. seemed to have rather little coins and small bills the one time I went there (a few years ago, but after the euro came), and a disinclination to part with any change they might have. For instance, the bus driver at the airport hadn't brought any change, and still wanted an amount that was not payable in euro bills only, and at a small convenience shop I was asked for the exact amount when handing over 2.50 for a 2,45 euro purchase. Etc. Was this just a blip, or was it this way when the Dutch had their own currency as well?
Admittedly, I do not travel as much as a lot of science fiction fans in Europe travel, but I visited another eurozone country a couple of years ago (Ã…land, the Swedish-speaking and largely self-governing archipelago off Finland), and I didn't have any trouble getting change when purchasing something there.
Some of the observations about Dutch people in the article are not unlike the observations made about Norwegians and Swedes in similar reports.
I remember an American coworker at a previous job commenting that Norwegians seemed so shy of conflict in the workplace that they overemphasised consensus building and soothing language of the "we prefer it our way, but that way may also turn out to be all right in the end" type. According to her, she was more used to "that is the right way, this is the wrong way to do it" kind of feedback. I've also heard foreigners complain that we often just pretend to be very modest, while we of course want promotions and pay raises, just like everybody else.
On the other hand, I've seen other Europeans, especially from countries down on the continent, state that Norwegians are tiresomely individualistic, or at least brash, and one kind of folk hero is, after all, the kind of guy that is affronted by a decision by local government, and then spends a large part of the rest of his life fighting the municipality with formal complaints, petitions, letters to the editor, maybe even lawsuits, (and recently) blogs, etc. etc. If I may be permitted a small joke and exaggeration, this kind of person even has his own party in Norway, the Progress Party (there have even been some observations that Norway is rare and contrary to expectations in that the kind of discontent party that thrives in other countries during an economical or political crisis, gets less support in our country in such times, but the more so when most things go well...).
Stefan Jones @99:
I was also a bit surprised to find that quite a lot of the Russian spam a work account got was about rather heavy agricultural equipment. Of course, there is a lot of agriculture in Russia, but it agricultural machinery is not excactly over the counter commodities.
I remember that one of the first spam messages I got, back in the early 90ies, was a mail from a private eye in West Virginia, who said that she could investigate my enemies for me (I believe she'd probably harvested e-mail addresses manually, and I was even so naive as to actually answer the mail, telling her that I wasn't interested, especially as I lived across the Atlantic). Apart from the fact that I do not know of any enemies (at most, minor nuisances), I think that having a private investigator from West Virginia come to Norway would hardly be a discreet way of dealing with them (nor would getting a Norwegian private investigator to travel to West Virginia, if I were a citizen of that state, presumably).
The 'vaccinations are counterproductive, if not dangerous' fallacy has hit Scandinavia as well, including Asperger's and autism support groups, according to the update I get from the blog and mailing list of our equivalent of CSICOP (called Skepsis). There has also been some information about measles parties and such being common among parents who send their children to Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) schools in Scandinavia and German-speaking countries. This is allegedly because it is a tenet of Steiner education that children should go through certain phases, including childhood diseases, in order to emerge a full adult (this is also why they at certain ages emphasise artistic development, and deemphasis asking questions about what is being taught). One problem those who critisise this is that at least in my country Steinerism is a kind of obscurantism that upper middle class people subscribe to, that is, you get fairly influential people against you if you speak out against this.
The Church of Norway used to dress that way as well (as part of the common heritage of Denmark-Norway), but decided in 1980 to discontinue the use, which meant that the black robes and special collars were phased out gradually, as ministers retired. The reasons cited were some dissatisfaction with the old look among the younger clergy, as well as economic factors (difficulties getting these kinds of vestments made, not to mention that the collars need special equipment to clean and starch, or so I gather). Still, bit of a shame, really.
I also hope that the participating clergymen saw the incident as humour as well, and did not feel that it had ruined their procession.
Oh dear, I started watching the 80s BBD adaption of The Box of Delights (to get into the Christmas spirit), thought of the title of this thread, and started to giggle.
As to over-interpretation of the behaviour of people from other countries, there was a newspaper report from a training course for policemen in my country, in which it was stated that one of the lecturers, who'd lived part of his life in an African country, had stated that Africans are very afraid of visits after dark, because such visitors let evil spirits in, and that calling policemen should bear that in mind. This may of course be misrepresented, but even leaving aside the fact that there is no such thing as a pan-African culture, do really anybody, Americans and Europeans included, enjoy or welcome police calling during the night? I certainly do not.
I also remember when I was part of some field work in Russia, which included calling on a community of Old Believers. One of the other members of the party started recording the inside of their chapel with a video camera during a service, but was stopped by one of the natives. I first thought that they did not want modern technology to disturb the holiness of the situation, or some other form of over-analyzing the situation, but I later on got the explanation that they had some valuable icons, and they wanted knowledge of that fact restricted. Which left me a bit red-faced. We also generally saw that they were very much aware of the modern world, even when their lifestyle was traditional.
## 121, 139, 142
I agree that there is a lot of scaremongering in Europe (as to the parallels to American history, there are for example some that claim that Scandinavians at best will end up on rural reservations, like Native Americans, while the remainder of their countries will be provinces of a reborn caliphate).
Nevertheless, there are some troubling attitudes in academia and on parts of the European Left (please note that this is not Left-bashing as such, I belong to the Labour party of my country). One wrong-headed attitude (in my opinion) is to assume that everything that is wrong in the world is the responsibility of the outgoing US administration, so everyone in the thirld world who is anti-Western gets the status of Useful Ally. Another problematic viewpoint is the opinion that different communities should have different rights, even be governed by different laws that the majority population. This is not just limited to religion, I've also seen for example 'spokesmen for the gay community' seemingly advocate different rights for gays than for straight peoplem, and special and semi-official roles for 'community leaders', etc. I do understand that integration is not easy, and that earlier attempts to make minorities with different customs into majority members have been misguided, but I am sceptical to community rights as opposed to individual rights. For example, what about those who belong to the community but are outsiders? I grew up in my country's equivalent of the "Bible Belt", but moved away after high school (and was very happy to be able to do so). Should the society at large leave me to "my natural leaders", the preachers?
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