Norwegian Independence Day Style. . .

A bit of a chill in the air this early morning here in Mid-Michigan, hence the corduroy jeans and Norwegian fisherman's sweater. Very appropriate, as luck would have it, for May 17th, which is Norway's national day.

On this day in 1814, the Norwegian constitution was signed by participants in Eidsvoll, ending more than four centuries of Danish rule over the country. Norway became part of a dual monarchy under the Swedish crown until 1905, but with considerably greater autonomy than it enjoyed as part of Denmark.

For my purposes, Norwegian independence in 1814 gave rise to the eventual language controversy, which was/is an important part of Norwegian cultural life. Various Norwegian nationalists, most notably self-taught linguist Ivar Andreas Aasen, determined that their country needed is own written language. An orthography that better reflected actual Norwegian speech than did the written Danish that held sway in educated and administrative circles up to the 19th century.

The end result of all this is that Norway has two forms of the written language, a Dan0-Norwegian variety that is used most places, and a dialect-based form of the language most popular in the western part of the country as well as a few places further north. You can wake up now!

In any case, the linguistic history of Norway is a fascinating and complex piece of Norwegian culture, and in a former life I had hoped at one time to make it the focus of my own scholarly work. I still have a couple of book boxes of illicitly photocopied texts by early women authors (late 19th and early 20th century), who crafted their idealized fiction in the early version of landsmaal -- 'Language of the country'. . . Later rebranded as nynorsk or 'New Norwegian') orthography.

Maybe one day, I will be able to do something with these carefully husbanded materials?

As they say, however, life throws you curve balls now and again. And with any luck, you learn to adjust, modify your approach as necessary, land on your feet, and keep moving forward. Intellectual agility for want of a better term.

That said, God syttende mai alle (Happy May 17th everyone)!

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Comments

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

Search This Blog