Category: articles

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”” →

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” →

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” →

Blame Loki for your bad luck

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons “Loki taunts Bragi” (1908) by W. G. Collingwood, used as an illustration to Lokasenna in Olive Bray’s English translation of the Poetic Edda. This sort of behavior does lend credibility to the idea that Loki makes a lousy dinner guest, but in my opinion it’s a big stretch from there to “any 13th guest means someone will die in the next year,” and an even bigger leap from there to demonizing an entire number.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
“Loki taunts Bragi” (1908) by W. G. Collingwood, used as an illustration to Lokasenna in Olive Bray’s English translation of the Poetic Edda. This sort of behavior does lend credibility to the idea that Loki makes a lousy dinner guest, but in my opinion it’s a big stretch from there to “any 13th guest means someone will die in the next year,” and an even bigger leap from there to demonizing an entire number.

Today is Friday the 13th, a day for bad luck and fear. Does anyone know why? Continue reading “Blame Loki for your bad luck” →

You have one week to live

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How’s that for a sensational headline? But according to some, Ragnarok, the “Viking apocalypse” is due on Feb. 22. The countdown began when the horn of Heimdallr was blown on Nov. 14th in York. According to legend the god himself would have blown the horn to warn that the end was a mere 100 days away. At which point, theoretically, the Vikings would have thrown the biggest party the world had ever seen.

Putting aside the question of who decided it was a good idea to blow Gjallarhorn, I have a few problems with this.

Photo: Wikimedia Heimdallr with Gjallarhorn. Artwork by Lorenz Frølich. Published in Gjellerup’s Edda in 1895.
Photo: Wikimedia Heimdallr with Gjallarhorn. Artwork by Lorenz Frølich. Published in Gjellerup’s Edda in 1895.

Continue reading “You have one week to live” →

House: You’ve Gotta Shank Someone on the First Day, or They Don’t Respect You

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If you missed even one episode of the previous season of House — the last one — you might not have recognized “Twenty Vicodin” as part of the same show. That guy looks like House, you might have thought, but what’s he doing in that blue shirt?

Some things change.

After the season finale cliffhanger that left us with House on the lam in some tropical place after smashing his car through Cuddy’s living room, it seemed like there was nowhere left for the series to go.

Except, of course, for jail.

Continue reading “House: You’ve Gotta Shank Someone on the First Day, or They Don’t Respect You” →