Norwegian Saga

Greetings all.

I haven’t much new to report so I’m going to simply give you a run down of some recent news, most of it boring.

I’ve started going swimming again. 700kr buys a gym membership to a fantastic gym from January to August, an awesome deal.

The daylight is returning and that’s given me a tremendous amount of energy somehow, that and the fishoil . The daylight means I’m more in the mood to work on my creative projects (ie. the thesis). The thesis itself is coming along nicely. I still haven’t approached a certain professor about formalizing a student-advisor relationship though I’ve seen him a few times regarding my thesis. I’m told if he wasn’t interested he wouldn’t have even let me into his office so I suppose I should be encouraged he’s taken as much time as he already has to talk with me.

Recently, an essay for another class has been gathering momentum. For awhile I was utterly lost but after a meeting with the prof things are on track. It actually looks like it’ll be a very fun project. I’m doing an analysis of medieval English nautical (eg. seafaring) language in an attempt to discover relationship characteristics between England and the nations from which it borrowed words. So in other words, what types of relationships did England have with whom.

The theory is somewhat simple, certain types of words borrowed into a language tell us things about the relationship between the participating nations. For instance, broad words of a military nature, “Glock, Panzerfaust, Blitzkrieg” etc. can lead to a conclusion that the nations didn’t have close or peaceful relations. While in the same genre but different words could lead one to other conclusions if for instance the words traded were “firing pin, bullet casing, rifled barrel” etc. Chances are such specialist language wouldn’t be known to someone getting shot at so the lingo must have been learned through peaceful means.

That’s the theory, and it probably doesn’t come across as well because I don’t know the first thing about guns. I will be doing this project as I mentioned with medieval languages (Old Dutch, Old Frisian, Low German, Old Norse, Old English, Middle English, Old French) and nautical terminology. There will be some syntactic and functional analysis as well. It’s just a fancy way of saying I’m going be looking at words and their functions to see which ones came from where and trying to draw some sort of conclusions from that. Well see what happens, and there’s lots of work to be done and not so much time in which to do it. My professor even tried to convince me to learn Old Dutch and Old Frisian to which I replied that I was an historian and coming from that sort of background not from a linguistic one. Though he’s a philologist and the course is “England: Language and Settlement” so he’s trying hard to sway me. Jump in the deep end, that’s how you learn, he told me. Then tried to inspire me by telling me that he’d learned Anglo-Saxon in three weeks to read Beowulf when he was in school… I’m still an historian, not a linguist.

It really is odd being around so much cranial talent. I don’t usually feel cowed around people but some of the professors I’ve come into contact with really are inspiring. If I haven’t mentioned already the “pompous British weenie” professor I have (the linguist) has grown on me. His hypercritical nature, though quite useless, is so very like my own.

Enough about that, I’ve also met a number of friends one could call them. I don’t make friends easily and that’s because most people bore me. I’ve stopped trying to analyze why, I just accept that most people are not for me . That was the case more in Canada for me. Over here though it’s different. Ostensibly I’m in the same kind of environment, that is to say university, but the people here are just so much more interesting. I actually enjoy being around them… weird, I know. They’re all from my English class and my Norwegian class. I even got in on an Old Norse reading group where we read sagas in Old Norse and try to translate them, it’s a lot of fun.

I had entertained thoughts of trying to accelerate my thesis and finish by December but I’ve dropped those ideas. I’m going to follow my original plan which has me completing the thesis in May 2010.

So those are the broad outlines. I know it was a lot to read for not a lot of really good bits but hey, no one said it was going to be roses all the time . With the warmer weather coming I’m hoping to get out to take some random photos.

Til next time.

Where does the time go. I had meant to post this update much sooner, a few days after Monika left not over a week later. Alas, here it is with my apologies for taking so long. I really will try to do better. With the sun coming out more there’s more to do and more photos to take.

So the second part of my sister’s visit was spent doing a lot of walking. First we went to a place called Vigeland park. As the photos show, it’s a beautiful but strange place, at least as far as the statues go. Why strange? Well because there are so many statues and they’re all of the same theme/topic. It’s like being surrounded by the past, but a human past. When walking in the park you’re not looking at cars or abstract art or even animals, but people. Every single statue has something to say to everyone. But not only is the theme moving but the execution is great. The statues are almost lifelike but not, yet they are tremendously emotive.

The next place on the list was a walk through Oslo sentrum. We visited the royal palace and Akershus slott (Akershus fortress). Since everything in Oslo is fairly close together we also saw the opera, the Stortinget (parliament), the national theater, and the Oslo rådhus (city hall). Once again I will point you to the photos to check it all out (though I don’t have photos of everything). The coolest thing in my opinion of course is Akershus fortress, started in 1100, which was built to overlook the Oslo fjord with additions throughout the following 700 years (or more). Sorry about the lack of photos of these places but both my sister and I had cameras and I only have access to the photos on mine, she took hers back to Canada before giving them to me.

After this Anne Marit joined us and we took a lovely bus ride to Bærums Verk (the ligature “æ” is pronounced similar to English “ah”). This is a little sub-town of a small town just west of Oslo. For those who know Ontario, it’s Norway’s version of St.Jacob’s. Here they sell all the stuff you’d expect from a former cottage industry hamlet; art, home supplies, handmade stuff, chocolate and candies, etc. are all available. If you have a lot of money it’s great.

From Bærums Verk it was back to Oslo and a dinner at Peppes Pizza which serves the best chicken pizza I’ve ever had.

Sorry for the radio silence folks. Monday afternoon my sister arrived in Norway to visit me for a week, so it’s been kind of busy. As part of my tourist guide duties we went to two museums (a third one is outside nearby but due to the cold we skipped it).

We were to take a tourist ferry ride from the Oslo harbour to Bygdøy but it wasn’t to be, the fjord was full of ice. So we had to bus it which was less fun.

The first place we visited was the Viking Ship Museum which I think I’ve mentioned before, and if I haven’t I’m going to be making another trip there so I will get plenty of photos for you then. A few facts about the ships for you, they were far advanced for their time (c.900AD). They had a full length keel, they had a low length/width ratio and a relatively low to the water construction which gave them a very shallow draft. The plank joining method also resulted in grooves under the ship which formed air pockets which in turn reduced friction and added buoyancy. The construction technique also allowed for the ship to be very flexible and I don’t mean in capability, I mean physically, it flexed with the waves. The ship was sealed with a unique mixture of materials that helped keep it clean so junk wouldn’t glue itself to the hull, as well it wouldn’t crack which helped the ship to flex without leaking. So these ships really were quite impressive. Of course many modern scholars try to play this down claiming that every culture had these kinds of vessels but they just haven’t been found yet; a point impossible to argue.

The second museum which I hadn’t been to previously was the Polar Ship Fram. The ship had sailed three voyages, two to the north pole and one to the south pole. The ship was massive, not in length but in thickness. It was fortified against the ice and so forth. The museum itself was very interesting as well. The entire ship was inside a triangular prism type of building and you could walk around the ship on three levels, then at the highest floor there was a boardwalk across to get onto the ship where you could explore the behemoth. It was great. Enjoy the few photos.

Later in the evening we went to dinner at Anne Marit’s parent’s place. Where I think my sister felt somewhat at home with all of the political arguing and debating. The entire evening was spent talking about politics so I’m hope she wasn’t bored.

This post covers the 23rd and 24th of February. Next post will be about the rest of the week.

Cheers all.