Scandinavian Insight

I just love ice cream! I do eat it at any time of the year, but as most of us, I eat more in the summer. Hot chocolate or tea is more appealing when it’s really cold outside than ice cream.

The time has finally come! After a long winter we are well into spring and summer is upon us. Here in Virginia the spring has been very wet compared to the last few years. It is very green and pretty, but I would love some more sun soon. The pool is finally open, and I would want to spend some more time at the pool side.

With spring and summer the craving for ice cream grows, especially for me.  I have always loved it! In Norway we have some different kinds of brands, Diplom is and Hennig Olsen is. I don’t know which one is my favorite, I have favorite kinds with both brands. I looked up all the different brands of ice cream today, and I found out that Diplom Is is sold in Sweden and Denmark too. I did not know that. Another kind of ice cream that is really popular in Norway is soft is, I guess you could compare it with custard ice cream that they have here in the US. But I think soft is is a little bit better. Just my personal opinion.

I have been to Sweden and Denmark, so I have had ice cream there too. I can’t remember what the ice cream in Denmark was like, because it’s been so many years since I’ve had it. It’s been a while since I have had ice cream in Sweden too, but I do remember when we were kids we would compare Diplom is to GB and we weren’t too excited about GB ice cream…. Sorry! But as I said, I have not had it for many years, so I don’t know how it is now. Maybe it has gotten better.

When I moved here to the US one of the first things my husband introduced me to was Cold Stone Creamery. I was a little confused when I got there the first time; first I had to choose between the sizes: “Like it”, “Love it” and “Gotta have it”. And then they had all these flavors I had never heard about before: cotton candy, cheesecake, cake batter and so on. And then I had to choose the kind of candy that I wanted to be baked into the ice cream. Amazing! And it was so good! Everyone that visits me from Norway has to come with me to Cold Stone, and I don’t think anyone hasn’t loved it. If you have not been to Cold Stone before, you really need to try it out. Click here to find a location near you.

I realized today that I have not tasted Ben & Jerry’s yet. I am not sure how that has happened, I’ve lived here for 4 years now. So I went by the store and picked up 1 pint of Pistachio and 1 pint of Chunky Monkey (I love banana!) I always look for pistachio here, because that’s one of my favorite flavors. But every time I see something green it’s always mint. I always get disappointed. So when my friend told me that Ben & Jerry’s had a really good pistachio I just had to try it. And they were both so good! I know what kind of ice cream I’m eating this summer

I made a poll to see what brand of ice cream is your favorite. Click here and give us your vote!

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As I have mentioned before I do like to bring it up if I see something from my home country here in the US. I was so behind on my Oprah recordings and I sat down this weekend to watch a bunch of them.

I am not sure how I missed this, because I read VG online almost every day. But as I was watching the show Oprah had on young talents from around the world I was surprised to see that one of them was a girl named Nora. She is 13 years old and has a beautiful voice. I started thinking back and I do remember seeing her name on VG every now and then, and when I searched now I found articles about Nora being on Oprah.

Nora Al-Jabri became known in Norway after uploading her videos to VG’s page, www.snutter.no. And last year she entered Norway’s Got Talent and got all the way to the finale, but ended up in third place. But seeing as she got a spot on Oprah now I don’t think that matters too much.

I just wanted to share this with you if you did not see Nora on Oprah last week. You can also read more about Nora here.

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The US has a lot of holidays that we don’t celebrate in Scandinavia, Memorial Day being one of them. I am still trying to learn them all and when they are, but I can’t seem to keep track. I do know Memorial Day and Labor Day, because the pool opens on Memorial Day and closes on Labor Day And I know that you are not supposed to wear white pants after Labor Day, although I have no idea why that is. So I just wear white pants whenever I want.

I do think Memorial Day is a nice Holiday though, but I think a lot of people forget what it is all about. It is to remember all the troops that have given their lives to keep this country safe. Even though I am not an American I am very grateful to everyone who risks their lives every day by being in the military, and I keep in mind all the time that if it wasn’t for the American troops we don’t know what would have been the end result of World War II.

Every year on this day the president of the United States visits Arlington Cemetery to lay down a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Since I live right outside DC my husband and I visited Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day a few years ago. But we didn’t arrive early enough to even get close to the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, but we did get to see the President drive by. And it is something special about seeing all the American flags at every gravestone in the cemetery. So if you are in the DC area on Memorial Day one year, you should definitely visit Arlington Cemetery to experience this.

This was President Obama’s first time to lay down the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Several thousand people had found their way to Arlington Cemetery to try to get a glimpse of the President. To read more about this, click the picture.

However you celebrated this Memorial Day I hope you had a wonderful day and weekend with friends and family! My thoughts are with the troops and their families.

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A few weeks ago my husband and I started talking about graduations. It came up because our nephew is graduating from High School this month and a friend of mine told me about the gift she got for her college graduation. A lot of students are graduating from high schools and colleges as I am writing this.

I have been to one college graduation since I moved to the States. It was a very interesting experience. I had never seen anything like it. A huge stadium filled with people and when names were called out their family and friends would scream out and wave their banners and flags. A lot of schools don’t have that much space, so they will only give a certain number of tickets to each student. So who do you give these tickets to? How do you choose if you have a big family?

I started thinking about all this and thought back to my high school graduation. And I couldn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. Here in the US graduation is a huge thing. They have an amazing ceremony and they have their gowns on, it really does look pretty. I had a friend in high school back in Norway that spent a year over here, and got to do the whole graduation thing. I remember watching movies growing up and wished that I could wear a gown like that to my graduation. After the ceremony they have parties with their families and get gifts! Some people even get cars!

I never got anything for my graduation. I wasn’t even there for the ceremony, because it really isn’t a big thing in Norway. I have lots of friends that have graduated from college and I don’t think any of them had a party or got gifts. I really think the American way of doing this is a lot better! I have never really thought about it, but now I feel like I missed out on something. We do have the tradition of “russetid” in Norway and that is a very special tradition and it was a lot of fun. And we get to celebrate for a long time. But we are still in school while celebrating. And when we are actually done nobody is celebrating us.

Since I haven’t graduated in Sweden or Denmark I didn’t know what the traditions were like there, so I did some research and found that they have great graduation traditions. In both countries they get student caps and they dress up. We have “russe” caps, but it’s really not the same. In Sweden their families will make signs for them, with pictures from when they were kids and when they come out from the school after getting their diploma they will find their signs and they’ll have a huge parade. Then there are parties with their families and friends to celebrate their graduation.

In Denmark they have very similar traditions. The students will get drinks and signs from their friends and family and then have a huge parade through the town. They will also have parties for their graduating students. In Copenhagen the students will be out in the streets  cheering, drinking and celebrating while people happily congratulate them!

I am sure a lot of US students would be jealous of Scandinavian students, because they are allowed to drink when they graduate high school, even in public AND people are cheering them on! I guess it’s hard to say which tradition is the best one. I think everyone enjoys their graduation because they are with their friends and family. And they graduated! And later down the road if they see tradition in other countries they might wish that theirs were different. You always want what you don’t have. The important thing is to look back and remember how much fun you had with your friends, and it doesn’t really matter how you celebrated, but that you did. I just wish I could have gotten a nice gift and that our tradition calls for dresses and suits instead of overalls

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A friend of mine sent this to me in an email not too long ago, and I wanted to share it with everyone here. I have never seen this cartoon before, but I guess she watched it growing up. It’s pretty funny! Now it makes more sense to me why people were so amazed that we were regular people when I came to visit the US when I was 12 years old. They actually asked us if we had normal clothes in our country…

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The big news in Norway this weekend was that Alexander Rybak won the Eurovision Song contest! Congratulations! My mom sent me a text to tell me about it when I was on my way to the 17^th of May party. He didn’t just win, but broke the record for the number of votes he received! 387 points! I guess the 12’s had just kept on rolling in. Every Norwegian I have talked to since have mentioned it and everyone was so excited on Facebook, but they all agreed on one thing: that unfortunately now they have to listen to the song even more! It’s not that they don’t think it’s a good song, I just think it has been played so much on the radio since February that they are just sick of it

So next year the Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Norway. They were hoping that it would be around the same time, so that the visitors and press would get to experience 17^th of May, but I guess some soccer thing (the finals of Champions League) is scheduled for the same weekend. So they are probably going to move Eurovision. I am sure everyone will enjoy it either way. They have not decided where in Norway the contest will be held yet, but there are a lot of cities that are in the running. Some have even started groups on Facebook to get support. The last time Norway was the host for the contest was back in 1996 and it was held in Oslo. Tromsø, Bergen, Hamar, Stavanger and Oslo are among the cities who want the Eurovision Song contest to come to their city. It will be interesting to see who “wins” this contest.

The other big event for Norway this weekend was of course our Constitution Day, 17^th of May. Personally I think this is bigger than Rybak winning the Eurovision Song Contest, but when I visited the newspapers to read and see pictures from our National Day I found maybe one or two articles and probably 15 about Rybak.

They had beautiful weather most places in Norway this year on 17^th of May, and everyone had a wonderful time celebrating. I can’t wait to go back soon and celebrate there. Unfortunately I didn’t feel like it was 17^th of May at all this year. I wasn’t able to go to the celebration in the park with all the Norwegians in the DC area. But we did enjoy some Norwegians hot dogs and I got my flag out for the day. I also watched some of the celebrations on www.nrk.no.     I guess that’s something. Oh well, there is always next year!

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I know I’m a little early, but I’m going to be so busy this weekend, so I wanted to get a congratulations out to all my fellow Norwegians here in the US today! 17^th of May is coming up on Sunday and it’s the most important day for us Norwegians. The day our constitution was written at Eidsvoll!

I have not spent 17^th of May in Norway since 2003 and I really miss it. Just the excitement of the day and how happy everyone is! I don’t think you can explain the day to anyone who was not experienced it.

I remember when I was a kid I could hardly sleep the night before. And then I would wake up and hear that canons in the morning. And then we got to dress up and walk in the children’s parade, barnetoget. My school was a bit outside of town, so we had to walk very far. But we did it every year and there were people everywhere to cheer for us. And we sang songs and my teacher would always have candy for us, and she called it our “gasoline”. Very smart to have that so we kids would not whine about how far we had to walk. We would arrive in town and all the other schools with their marching bands would be there and the real parade started. The sidewalks were packed with people and you would always look for familiar faces.

After all the walking we got to go home for the party with hot dogs, ice cream and cake. And then we would go back to town for the citizen parade, borgertoget, with all the organizations of the town. We would also get balloons, more ice cream and candy. And after that it was time for “russetoget”. This part is hard to explain to Americans. It’s the Norwegian tradition for the seniors in high school, and we are russ for the final months of high school and we get to wear overalls to school, either blue or red ones. There is also a lot of partying involved and we drive around in our beat up old vans and some will have buses. It is a very fun time, and 17^th of May is the last day of the celebrations before the final exams.

As I got older 17^th of May wasn’t that much fun anymore. I was very happy when we got to the age where we could choose if we wanted to be in the parade or not. I choose not to. I am not a morning person and it was so nice to get to sleep in. But since I have moved to the States I have missed not seeing the parades. So I can’t wait to spend 17^th of May in Norway again and to show my husband what it’s all about.

I know there are a lot of 17^th of May celebrations around in the US this weekend. Here in the DC area there will be a celebration in Carderock Park in Maryland, and there will be a parade, speeches, hot dogs and games for the kids. The Norwegian Ladies club that I am a part of will have a party tomorrow night. It’s always so nice to celebrate with other Norwegians. In New York there will be celebrations the whole day at the Seamen’s Church, with a parade, open house, entertainment and a 17^th of May speech by Hanne Krogh. There are lots of celebrations in Chicago, IL, Wisconsin, Brooklyn, Seattle, Ohio, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Minnesota, Iowa, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Visit the Norwegian Embassy’s website, www.norway.org, and check out the events calendar. Please check out the list of organizations on the link page and see if an organization in your area is celebrating this very special day!

Have a wonderful 17^th of May! Hipp hipp Hurra!! 17. Mai!!!

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Last Thursday I went down to DC to attend the performance of His Majesty the King’s Guard, who was visiting from Norway. I got the invitation from the Embassy a few weeks ago. I was pretty sure it was not going to happen, because the weather has been pretty bad here in the DC area the last couple of weeks. And the King’s Guard actually had to cancel some of their performances while they were here. I called the Embassy earlier in the day to see if it was still on. The event was going to start at 8pm. They informed me that it was. So I got ready and started heading down to DC, and as I was driving there was a major down-pour. I was thinking about turning around, but I decided to keep driving and hope that it would let up.

And it did! When I got down to the Marine Barracks in DC the sun even came out for a little bit. I was greeted by Marines in their dress uniforms, and they were very helpful and showed me where to park. When I got to the gates I met a lot of my friends from the Norwegian Ladies Club. We got pretty good seats, but we were a little bit disappointed that we hadn’t been invited to the VIP reception that the Embassy had.

The performance was amazing! And I am so happy that I did not turn around. We didn’t get one rain drop! The Norwegian King’s Guard performed first. It was really cool to see up close. I have only seen it on TV before. They were great!! Especially with the grass being so wet and slippery. One guy almost fell over!  Then the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team came out, and they were very silent. Except for the sound of their guns when they were drilling them, throwing them to each other and stomping them in the ground. It was so precise! Awesome! The last performance was the United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps. They played some really great pieces of music for us. The wonderful event ended with the colors coming out, and all three groups performing together. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and I am so glad the Embassy invited us and that the weather Gods were with us.

A friend made a video from the performance, so please check that out. And I also added a clip from the Norwegian Military Tattoo in Oslo back in 2004. Hope you like it!

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I got a text from my mom earlier today saying that Norway’s hope for the Eurovision Song Contest was going to be on Oprah today. I looked it up on vg.no and found this article: http://www.vg.no/musikk/grand-prix/artikkel.php?artid=572703

I watch Oprah almost every day, so I had it set to record. The article states that they are not sure if he will actually be featured on the Oprah show, but they were asked to send in his music video.

The Eurovision Song contest is a huge event in Europe and have more viewers than the Super Bowl has here. In Norway we actually call it Grand Prix. The first broadcast was back in 1956 and has been on TV every year since then. The contest has also been broadcast in countries outside of Europe and since 2000 people from all over the world can watch the contest online. Denmark’s debut in the contest was actually in 1957, Sweden is 1958 and Norway’s first year was in 1960. One of the biggest stars that have won the contest is probably ABBA, with “Waterloo” in 1974. I was surprised to learn that Celine Dion won the contest for Switzerland one year too, back in 1988.

The Eurovision Song Contest Final is this coming Saturday, May 16^th. To learn more about it and to watch it online, visit: http://www.eurovision.tv/page/home

So I was very excited to watch my recording of Oprah today. Unfortunately Alexander Rybak, the Norwegian hope, did not get a lot of airtime. They did show a very, very short clip of his music video along with some other contestants. And then they talked about the history of the contest and showed a performance of the German finalist by satellite.

I thought it was great that they talked about the contest on Oprah, even though a lot of people back home will not speak highly of this contest. There are years there have been very bad songs performed. I think it is one of those shows that everybody says they don’t watch, but everybody actually does watch it 

I am glad I saw the story on contest, and to learn more about it. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be one of the people around the world watching it online!

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As most Scandinavian children I grew up watching a lot of Astrid Lindgrens characters come to life in movies. My favorite is “Vi på Saltkråkan”. Watching Tjorven, Pelle, Båtsman, Farbror Melker og Skrållan can only put a smile on ones face. I have as an adult collected all of the DVD’s and I get them out now and then to watch them.

Since I moved to the States I always have to think about weight and size of things on my wishlist for Christmas. So I found that the perfect gifts are the Astrid Lindgren DVDs. Over the past four Christmases I have completed the “Pippi Langstrømpe”, “Lotta” and Emil” collections. I am missing one of “Bullerbyn” and one of “Madikken”.

The movies are so wonderful too and I have “Ronja Rövardotter” and “Brødrene Løvehjerte”. Next Christmas I am hoping to get “Rasmus på loffen” and “Mio min Mio”, and hopefully I can complete my collection. I have never seen “Kalle Blomkvist” though, maybe I should add that to my wishlist too. I watched “Karlsson på taket” when I was a kid, but for some reason I was not a huge fan.

Astrid Lindgren was a wonderful author and made up so many great character and stories for children. And I am sure my generation won’t be the last to make Pippi, Tjorven, Emil and all of the others a part of their lives.

I searched on amazon.com and found the Pippi DVDs in the English version. They also have several books translated into English.

To complete your collection of Astrid Lindgrens Best, have your family or friends in Europe visit www.cdon.com to buy the DVDs for you!

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