I finished my second full day back in Stavanger, and it has been marked by almost continuous nostalgia. I have been away this time five years, but this city, where I have spent a decade of my life, is the closest thing I have to a home. I have been “watching” myself and my reactions to things very closely and I have also tried to look around me with a much more critical eye. Overall, however, it feels great and very natural to be back here.
There are a flood of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that have been having a really strong effect on me. Some of them are obvious, like the beautiful sunsets on the sea and the way the evening sunlight colors the two sides of my fjord Hafrsfjord. Also tonight, as I walked home from my bus stop just after midnight, the sky was a dozen shades of dark blue, with a touch of white sunlight just barely emerging from some black clouds on the western horizon.
Other things are less poetic, like the texture of the bread for my sandwiches, the strong after taste of the kirsbær (whatever berry that might correspond to in English) drinkable yoghurt, and even the sound of the heavy door closing at Olsokhagen 8.
Today I even rediscovered old feelings of not belonging. Saturday night in downtown Stavanger turns into a massive party. People of all ages prance around the dozen or two most popular bars and nightclubs, hopping among those most hip for their age group. The sidewalks are filled with hot dog stands, smoking groups of extremely drunk people, and the streets are jammed with taxis either unloading heavily perfumed and extravagantly dressed piles of youngsters or loading up people on the verge of passing out. I never got into this, I never understand what exactly the point was. I think the fact I don’t drink has a lot to do with this but tonight, I relived every Saturday in high school I ended up downtown and didn’t exactly know what to do with myself. I wandered the charming old streets of white houses and at one point stared for ages at an ancient cheese store I was amazed to see still surviving despite the fact that every other store on the street had changed. I bought one of every candy I used to love at a 7/11 (7/11 has completely conquered downtown Stavanger since I left) and devoured them all as I sat on the steps in the old vegetable market. I descended into my own kind of Saturday night debauchery.
Before taking a bus home I was stopped by a passing drunk who asked, “Are you from Stavanger?” I was born and lived over a third of my life here but that is a slightly more complicated question than I think he will ever know. I answered, “Yes,” confident that I would probably know any place in town he might be looking for. He then asked me the location of a small but popular bar. It just so happened that Glenn had told me only a few hours earlier where this bar was located so I gave him some directions. He laughed and said, “Haaa, you’re not from Stavanger! You gave yourself away!” He then thanked me for the directions and stumbled off towards the bar.
I spent the next half hour wondering what part of my directions “gave away” the idea that I was not from Stavanger. I went over every word I said. The obvious answer is that my lack of dialect gave me away. With the exception of question words, I don’t speak the Stavanger dialect and I bet my “r” sound, which is closer to the standard Bokmål or the Oslo dialect, than the Dutch sounding “spitting” r-sound that the Stavanger dialect (and my younger sister) uses was the biggest give away in my answer to his question (The r-sound is in fact one of the only sounds I have in common with my mother’s dialect which is supposed to sound like this but when I hear her talk, sounds more to me much closer to this dialect supposedly centered further to the south. (If you want to compare some of Norway’s other dialects, click around the map here. Check out the really cool northern dialects that I am seeing a lot on Norwegian TV and radio these days).
Of course, I could have said something just plain wrong. Ever since I was a kid I sometimes say things in Norwegian which are a direct translation of something from English but it is never conscious, I just say what I think is the thing to say. When I worked tech support for Norwegian Telecom and dealt with hundreds of customers per week from all over Norway I’m sure there were lots of times my Norwegian was less than perfect. I was almost never questioned about it though, except the occasional jerk who asked me if I was from Sweden or something (a natural mistake derived from the usually dependable rule that IF someone says a lot of weird stuff THEN they must come from Sweden). Anyways, I was annoyed at the guy’s comment, because, well, I am from Stavanger. And then I got annoyed for being annoyed because who cares? Why do I need to attach myself to this city? Why do I care if he mistook me as someone from Oslo or even Sweden? Why do I have to belong to this community and be recognized by them as its member? I head back to Tokyo in June, move to Boston in the fall, why does it matter?
May 23rd, 2004 at 0:26
I know this feeling well and sympathize. I’ve experienced the same thing ever since leaving Norway when I was fourteen. For the entire first year I spent here in the states I thought of nothing but going home to Stavanger again. Then, when I arrived there for your graduation the following summer, I realized that I didn’t really have as much in common with that life and culture anymore. Each time I go back I feel more and more like a visitor and less like a native so I keep wondering how it is I can keep telling people I’m from there when they ask and continue identifying with a culture I obviously know less and less about. This is all exemplified by the fact that I can’t speak the language very well and communicate very little with the locals when I’m there, finding it easier to just pretend I’m an american tourist. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that when I was living there, I was living the life of an expatraite, not a native. I went to a private school with other expatriate children. We were supposed to be an international school but in truth it functioned and depended more on the American school system than anything else. We had lockers, we had basketball and baseball, we had choir and band, we had only two recesses per day, etc. For me, once I no longer belonged to the school, once all my friends had long gone, I no longer belonged to Norway. I was hoping I could move back there one day and find a way to get in better touch with that part of me again. But I’m at the point now where I refuse to identify myself with one culture or the other. I will never be anything but something inbetween and I’m slowly learning how to be happy with that. Despite how foreign I feel when I’m there, one thing will always be true. I was born in Stavanger, Norway. No matter how much it has changed or will change in the future, it will always be a very important part of my life.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:08
I happened to read this post and the comments Carleen and your mom had left. It seems that three of you are tightly connected to the same feeling of nostalgia and multicultural identity.
As a person who hasn’t moved to as many other countries as you and not stayed in foreign countries more than a year, I have always admired the nomad’s life. Even with the two chances of living abroad, my life has been full of desire to escape from where I am now ever since I lived in Geoje island.
Even if I live in somewhere in Europe one day, I don’t think I will live in the place for the rest of my life. I’m now at the point where the new road will be in front of me soon. To whichever direction the path leads me, one thing for sure is I will make the best of it and fall in love with the place.