Author: eskaftun

On the “untranslatable”

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Photo courtesy of Maren Eline Nord, Nittedal, Norway Three grads take part in Norway’s russefeiring, the traditional high school graduate celebration that coincides with the national day, in 2014. There is no corresponding thing in America, so we have no word for it.
Photo courtesy of Maren Eline Nord, Nittedal, Norway
Three grads take part in Norway’s russefeiring, the traditional high school graduate celebration that coincides with the national day, in 2014. There is no corresponding thing in America, so we have no word for it.

Last fall an article started to go around, written almost exactly a year ago for Matador Network, called “10 untranslatable Norwegian terms” (matadornetwork.com/notebook/10-untranslatable-norwegian-terms). A quick search will turn up many such lists, all with different words and terms, in basically every language you can think of.

It’s true, of course, that translation is an imperfect art. Continue reading “On the “untranslatable”” →

Postcards: Northern perils

eskaftun
Postcard of strange rock formations on Norway's coast
Dear Claudia,

Day 10 of my surf Norway trip, and we came upon a coastline with strange rock formations. Theorizing that they were caused by intense tides, we got ready to shred some surf. The water was calm, but we waited. We paddled out and enjoyed the area’s placid, bewitching beauty.

One wave swelled in the middle of the bay.
An odd wave, pushed from below. “Whale!” I shouted, for I’d seen that before. This I had not.

The creature was longer than a whale, sinuous like a snake. It tore through our group and right up onto the shore, slicing through rocks like a hot knife through “smør” (as the locals say). When it had eaten its fill of us it disappeared back into the glassy water, never to be seen again. Only I survived, and only by luck.

I will be returning home soon. The ocean no longer seems inviting.

Sincerely,
Robert
Postcard of the Fram stuck in ice
Dear Huw,

I guess the mission was a success. Save the arctic, right? Sea ice, polar bears, all that good stuff. The tech was experimental but it had worked in test applications from Coast Guard icebreakers. Icespreaders, they now were.

Maybe it was something to do with the wooden hull of this old relic that caused the reaction to go all Ice-9 on us.

Polar bears love it. We hear them stalking around on the frozen expanse. Good stuff.

I hope the Coast Guard icespreaders can still break when they need to. Otherwise it will be a long winter.

Sincerely,
Roald
Postcard of a stone monkey holding its weiner
Dear Gillian,
You’ve seen my 3 brothers: they pose eternally, bewitched by the same sprite that cursed me. You see, one day they saw a bear chasing a monkey. My first brother gawked, enjoying the spectacle. The second couldn’t stop blabbering long enough to hear the monkey’s screams, while the third egged the bear on (the monkey owed him money). The bear ate the monkey, and the sprite wept (they’d had a thing). She blamed my brothers. All of us, really. See, I would’ve been there, and I would’ve helped, but … something distracted me. So now they don’t see, don’t speak, don’t hear. And I? Well, I got the best of the bewitching.
Sincerely,
A monkey whose relationship to evil shall remain undefined
Postcard with illustration of trolls in mountains
Dear Molly,

My family came over from Norway some 100 years ago. I don’t remember that. I live in the U.S., and the time before is only a story told so many times I now believe it.

So back I went to find my family. They weren’t what I expected. Norwegians on TV are always beautiful, sleek and smiling. These… weren’t. They laughed at me: “What has America done to you?” But what were they—or I—to do? Family is family. So we go over the hills to meet the rest. Or so they say. I can’t shake the feeling that something is amiss.

With mild trepidation,
Nils Anders Wik
Postcard of very high snowbanks with a road cut through
Dear Ginny,

This is the last known photo of the skiers. They’d lived in Norway all their lives, but even they could see that the snow was deeper than usual, piled sky-high along the sides of the road, turning the road itself into a mere pathway in an ant farm.

Have you ever seen what happens when you shake an ant farm?

The avalanche that buried the road was ruled a natural occurrence. But no one has ever satisfactorily explained what happened to the skiers’ bodies. Or what made those large prints in the snow—bigger than a man, bigger than a bear!

I will always wonder what sort of creature is toying with us insects.

Sincerely,
Susan

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Have we been there yet?

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Photo: Amy Lietz We spent about five minutes at Gullfoss in Iceland. Does it count?
Photo: Amy Lietz
We spent about five minutes at Gullfoss in Iceland. Does it count?

Lately a thing has been going around social media: a map of the U.S. called “States I’ve Visited.” Visited states turn a vibrant pink, bragging to all Facebook friends how well traveled one is. It’s a digital, national version of a gift we recommended last Christmas, a map of the world you can scratch off to show where you’ve been.

I think these things are fun, and I’ve even given the physical versions to a couple of people as gifts. But I must confess I have a hard time filling them out for myself. My hesitation comes from an uncertainty about what it means to have been to a place. Continue reading “Have we been there yet?” →

A summer tour in the Holy Land

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Ancient yet modern, safe yet violent, Israel is a land of contradictions

Photo: Emily C. Skaftun An example of the ancient ruins of Roman aquaduct outside Caesarea, a port city built by Herod the Great.
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
An example of the ancient ruins of Roman aquaduct outside Caesarea, a port city built by Herod the Great.

Since returning from a hastily planned trip to Israel this summer, everyone’s been asking me how it was. Did I have fun? And I don’t entirely know how to answer. Many of the experiences one has in Israel can’t be filed neatly under the heading of “fun,” but it is definitely a trip worth taking.

The most prominent feature of the region is religion; therefore your experience with Israel will vary depending on your religious beliefs. Continue reading “A summer tour in the Holy Land” →

Lit by poetry: Dinerstein’s “The Sunlit Night” illuminates

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Frances grew up in a tiny New York apartment with her parents and younger sister, where they all still live even though both girls are in college. “Everything about my family was small,” she tells us, enumerating the smallness of their aspirations, physical stature, and living quarters: “Our apartment unfurled itself…the sofa bed opening up for my parents, filling the living room until it was nothing but a man and a woman in bed, with no room left, the foot of the mattress reaching just to the knob of the front door.”

One can just imagine a loving family surviving such conditions, but the love is gone.

Continue reading “Lit by poetry: Dinerstein’s “The Sunlit Night” illuminates” →

Postcards: Wish you were now

eskaftun
image of an old car in Havana
My Dear Love,
Writing this is pointless, as you will never read it. If you had lived long enough to receive it, I’m sure I would have seen you already. The car stalled. I am marooned in what must be a dystopic future. This apparently once-great city is crumbling, as though this were not the future. The locals are familiar with automobiles of the sort the time machine is built into, but they cannot help me repair it. I will keep trying, but time being what it is I know that I have already failed. If I had not, surely my breakthrough—time travel works!—would have changed the world for the better. Surely, it could not have produced this world.
Yours in time,
Emmett
Postcard of bunks in Bergen's old bryggen
Dear Time Travel Tours,
I tried calling your toll-free number, but my cell phone just wouldn’t connect. I must have the wrong type of sim card. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I am not a happy camper. Sure, Bergen’s Bryggen is impressive this way, bustling with traders instead of troll figurines and moose underwear. But the accommodations leave much to be desired, and the tourist activities are tedious and repetitive. Back breaking, one might even say.
I know it may take you centuries to get this postcard, but when you do, please send for me right away.
Ready to go home,
A dissatisfied customer
Postcard of a stave church in fall
Dear Tom,
My time travel adventure is going very well. I’ve watched pyramids being built and Stonehenge assembled. Following the builders has been tricky—wouldn’t have managed it in the old DeLorean time machine, even with hover conversion, so thank you for souping this baby up.
The builders are about to move on from this site. I overheard one of them tell the locals they were heading to China to build some more of these churches, and maybe a big wall. At least I think that’s what they said. It was hard to hear over the whirring of their warp drive.
Sincerely,
Doc Brown

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Are you feeling independent today?

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Photo: Pixabay Sparklers are okay, but I always crave big fireworks on Independence Day. Photo: Pixabay
Sparklers are okay, but I always crave big fireworks on Independence Day.

I have high expectations for the Fourth of July, which were instilled in me before I can even remember properly by perfect celebrations at my childhood best friend’s farmor’s.

Farmor lived next door to them in a beautiful house on a lily-pad-choked pond almost entirely encircled by houses in Seattle’s north end. Together with my friend’s three siblings, I spent many a summer day in that pond called a lake, swimming and diving off farmor’s dock and even fishing, but for some reason the Fourth was special. I suspect that reason was FIREWORKS. Continue reading “Are you feeling independent today?” →

Following the king for a day: eight observations in no particular order

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Photo: Emily C. Skaftun Press passes make me feel so official!
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
Press passes make me feel so official!

1. The king is super punctual. I don’t know if the trains run on time in Norway, but the king certainly does. I was given a fairly detailed press schedule ahead of time, with some non-standard times (7:29 p.m.?). I was thinking of it as more of an estimate, but I’ll be darned if it wasn’t dead accurate.

2. Covering an event as official “press” is boring. Continue reading “Following the king for a day: eight observations in no particular order” →

Kvikk Lunsj v. Kit Kat: A comparative analysis

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Photo: Emily C. Skaftun I decided to see how Kvikk Lunsj and Kit Kat stacked up, literally and figuratively.
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
I decided to see how Kvikk Lunsj and Kit Kat stacked up, literally and figuratively.

Emily C. Skaftun
Norwegian American Weekly

Around this time last year I learned of the Norwegian Easter phenomenon that is Kvikk Lunsj. It seemed that the country went wild, yearly, for this… what was it? I’d never heard of it.

The name threw me at first. It’s a lunch thing? Like maybe an energy bar?

Coworkers scoffed at me. I did more research, turning up photos. Oh, it’s a Kit Kat! Continue reading “Kvikk Lunsj v. Kit Kat: A comparative analysis” →

Tomato, tomat, tómatar

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Photo: Henrik Omma / Wikimedia Commons You say “tomato,” I say tómatar.
Photo: Henrik Omma / Wikimedia Commons
You say “tomato,” I say tómatar.

It’s been a while since I worked in education (teaching composition to mostly indifferent first-year college students), and even longer since I was a student in the full-time sense, so today when I think about education I think about language. You see, about a year ago, having begun work at something called the Norwegian American Weekly, I started learning Norwegian.

I never picked up much beyond “tusen takk” and “klem” from my Norwegian family Continue reading “Tomato, tomat, tómatar” →