Norway

I have noticed that November is a hard month. And however optimistic the mood, at times it is difficult. Now darkness, now rain. A cultivated habit of always doing something gives no rest. So a gloomy November morning I begin with a cup of coffee and reading in Norwegian a nearly local newspaper. There is such a town Arendal, 30 km from my house. The town is densely populated, they have their own kommune, hospital and so on. And every morning we receive a newspaper called Agderposten, which is published in this town. I read and try to understand. It is hard for me to work out Norwegian, but I try — I develop. And then I am under the impression of what I have read. Probably I will be able to “impress” and outrage you who are reading too. ...

When I was preparing to come to Norway on a guest tourist visa for 3 months, I imagined how I would live in this family, would help Ivan “about the household.” And it turned out that he was used to doing everything himself, not drawing the daughters into housework. He prepared breakfast himself, always made sandwiches for the daughters for school. This is called in Norwegian “matpakke.” They did not always eat these matpakker. Quite often I saw that uneaten sandwiches ended up in the rubbish bin, and also even uneaten fruit. Accustomed to treating food with respect, I felt a sense of guilt before the thrown-away food. ...

At last I have decided what to tell about. A theme everyone understands. I think that women of my generation, born in the Soviet Union, know how to cook and possibly take pride in their skill. I am sincerely glad when the food I have prepared is liked by those around me. From about 14 I started cooking. My first successes were home baking. And then I mastered all our Slavic dishes, and cooking was never a burden to me. In life food was the main item of expenditure both in the Soviet Union and after. ...

So autumn has come and the Norwegian husband decided today to take the boat over to point B, and there they will store it and “cherish” it the whole winter. I take a modest part in this undertaking. My task is to drive the car to this very point B and wait for my husband on the shore. Since I am not a born sailor, I always feel anxiety letting him go to sea alone. And of course, at my request he takes as companions his younger daughter, and the daughter took with her a dog of that strange hard-to-pronounce breed Chihuahua and a new boyfriend. And I am calmer that way. ...

Today I read a post on Facebook in Norwegian, without indication of authorship. I decided to make a translation, because there are people who cannot work out what elections in Norway are, but many newcomers have the right to vote. Including me, I have an invitation to take part in the elections. I offer my translation of a Norwegian article of humorous content. But as people say, “In every joke there is a share of joke.” ...

Sometimes I am surprised. Yesterday, for example, I watch the news on NRK (the state Norwegian television company). I watch attentively, so as to understand Norwegian (I have that age-related thing). They show a respectable-looking Norwegian who has in some way broken the law. Anyway by a court decision he must sit in prison, serve his sentence. But there are no places. He has to wait…. three years! I think: “I didn’t understand something.” I ask my husband: “Where is he supposed to wait? At liberty? That is, continue to live and work, is that it? And wait until they ‘put him away’ 🧐 Anyway, all the places are taken! I remember they used to rent places in the Netherlands. Apparently it has become expensive to send the lawless abroad. ...

I found the statistics of what the population was in 1850 in Norway — 2 million 200 thousand. And I already wrote in the first part that for this population already at that time two literary languages were taking shape!!! And by the beginning of the 20th century the languages needed modernisation, therefore four language reforms of the “rural language” — landsmål — were carried out, which brought its norm closer to the specifics of the dialects of Eastern Norway, the most populated part of the country. Three reforms were also carried out with riksmål. Danish orthography was replaced by Norwegian. ...

I put this title in quotation marks because I did not invent it myself. I have already written that I often use a large two-volume dictionary edited by Valery Berkov. I always keep the dictionary “at hand,” or more precisely on the shelf under the coffee table. That is how I nicknamed it the under-table dictionary. Oh what a heavy “brick,” but such a beloved one! So today I read an article in the so-called Appendix 5 on a brief history of the Norwegian language, and I fell to thinking… I sit all pensive like this and cannot sleep. Anyway I am writing a short synopsis of the article about the language, and you can draw your own conclusions about your native one. After all, everyone has their own, the one mama spoke. In Norwegian this sounds very precisely as morsmål. One can translate it as “mama’s voice” or native language. ...

Today I read an article in the newspaper with this title: “Ina (23 years old) is chronically ill. The problem is that nobody sees it.” They placed a colourful photo of a pretty girl, out walking with a dog. Her problem is that she can do nothing — neither study nor work. There is no energy. If you told this now to my mama, who on 26 March is to turn 92, she of course would not believe it! I know what she would say: “well we survived in the war, teenagers worked round the clock, and still got a clip round the ear from mother if they did something wrong!” And now this girl is not alone in her problem. Young people are ill. ...

Well, for the first time I “ran into” such an un-Norwegian situation. And it was like this. Every Sunday we try to spend with benefit for health — to swim our lengths in the pool. And it is best to arrive there at opening, at 10 o’clock, while not all the people have woken up. True, at Aquarama (the water palace) there is enough space for everyone, but still we prefer to swim each our quota at a pace and quickly return home. This has already become a Sunday habit. ...