Yesterday my friend Nash and I decided that we're "eating our way through Europe"... which is slight exaggeration, but entertaining nonetheless. Tonight two Italians from our program are having us over for a delectable Italian feast and last night our friend Hege took us along to a Norwegian feast at the local Norwegian Seaman Church of Copenhagen.
Copenhagen is a pretty "blond" space... but this was extreme. It was almost all women so the straight blond hair was just EVERYWHERE. Nash is a black man. With a loud English accent. I am blond, of course, but with an overenthusiastic American laugh and strange command of Danish with a somewhat random accent (I've heard Polish, Swedish, German... and of course American). Lotta is a Swedish Finn, so she has her own issues there. And Laura is a pretty enthusiastic Belgian who was an hour late - which doesn't seem to be a very "Norwegian" thing to do. SO we integrated pretty well is what I'm trying to say. The past week or so in our course we have been studying Diasporas from various angles... and then we realized we were right in the middle of one!!
After a hardy - and I mean HARDY - meal of lamb, cabbage, potatoes the priest announced that there would be a "cosy time" in the adjacent room with coffee, dessert, and a trivia quiz. I swear, the Norwegians practically SPRINTED to clean up the dishes so they could get on to their cosy time. I've never seen a band of young people clean so efficiently. We didn't thrive in the Norwegian quiz setting but Hege did what she could for us. Of course Danish and Norwegian culture/tradition aren't insanely different... that was part of what made the whole thing funny. It was so explicitly NORWEGIAN even though much of what was happening could have been elsewhere in Denmark... just without people identifying with being Norwegian together. The language is a bit different of course. And Hege would probably want me to add that they had some Norwegian snacks and chocolates. But mostly the distinction seemed like a collective identification with not being "from here" - so in that way I wasn't really pretending. Hahahah no, I'm just kidding, we were total Norwegian posers.
Copenhagen is a pretty "blond" space... but this was extreme. It was almost all women so the straight blond hair was just EVERYWHERE. Nash is a black man. With a loud English accent. I am blond, of course, but with an overenthusiastic American laugh and strange command of Danish with a somewhat random accent (I've heard Polish, Swedish, German... and of course American). Lotta is a Swedish Finn, so she has her own issues there. And Laura is a pretty enthusiastic Belgian who was an hour late - which doesn't seem to be a very "Norwegian" thing to do. SO we integrated pretty well is what I'm trying to say. The past week or so in our course we have been studying Diasporas from various angles... and then we realized we were right in the middle of one!!
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