Muninn | But I fear more for Muninn…

Create Yojimbo Note: Applescript for Apple Mail

My last few postings have all been tech related. Since most of my history related postings are also Asian history related postings, I post those increasingly at Frog in a Well. I’ve been in a hacking mood in the last few weeks, especially since I’ve been working on some new projects at Frog in a Well in my spare time. My last two scripts are essentially shortcuts for creating iCal To-Dos. The first provides a fast way to use Quicksilver to create To-do items without leaving whatever application you are working in. The second provides a way for you to email yourself To-dos that then automatically tell iCal to create a To-Do with content from the email.

The script below is not related to To-Dos but is also aiming to increase my organization a bit. I use a program called Yojimbo (it is a great program but I think the title and its Karate Kid icon are both cheesy) made by Bare Bones, the same people who make BBEdit, the essential text editor for web programmers and coders of all stripes. Yojimbo is a program which keeps snippets of notes, web passwords, serial numbers, and best of all: you can drag and drop any web page you are viewing onto a little tab it keeps at the side of the screen and Yojimbo will download a static copy of the web-page and store it along with all your other notes. Great for when you think you might be away from the internet and want to keep the content handy for later searching.

Sometimes I’m away from my laptop, and as in the case of emailing myself To-Dos that I want created automatically in iCal, there are times I jot down notes from something and want to email myself those notes. It would then be nice for Mail to automatically detect those emails, and create a new Note in Yojimbo with the appropriate title and contents. I hacked together a little script which does just that.
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Create iCal To-do: Applescript for Apple Mail

In my last posting I shared a script I put together to use with the shortcut application Quicksilver to quickly create To-do items in iCal. I am now using this all the time. I have separate scripts, based on the same which create a medium priority “READ: ” to-do for things I want to put on my reading to-do list, a “LOOKUP: ” medium priority script to remind myself of things I want to look up at some point (assigned to a different color calendar), and a high priority to-do script in its own iCal calendar.

Now, what if I’m away from home, am without my laptop computer, but have access to a nearby terminal with an internet connection, and I want to create to-dos for myself. I synch iCal with my Palm pilot so I could easily write down the to-do directly into my Palm. However, Palms are still not fun to use when you have a lot to write down. Today, I was in the Fung library reading some Chinese historical journals and wanted to remind myself to look up a few things I found there and come back and read some articles I didn’t have time for today. There were internet terminals all over the place so instead of entering the titles (in Chinese) on the Palm, which is a pain and time consuming, I emailed myself some email messages with the subject “LOOKUP: ” or “READ: ” and then what I wanted to lookup/read. In the body of the email I put more information, such as a URL or notes to myself. I decided that tonight when I came home I would hack up an applescript that used Apple’s mail filter to automatically find those messages as they arrived in my inbox, create the appropriate to-do in iCal (like the Quicksilver script) with the subject line of the email, put the body of the email into the todo’s notes, and then move the message into an archived folder. The results are below.
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Create iCal To-do: Applescript for Quicksilver

While waiting for a plane here at the airport I got bored and decided to make a little Applescript for Quicksilver. For those of you who don’t already use Quicksilver and use a Macintosh computer, I recommend it as a way of significantly increasing your productivity. It is hard to explain what it is but it acts like a launcher and provides easy ways to give shortcut commands for all sorts of tasks.

My simple goal was this: I want to be able to add a “To-Do” item to iCal very quickly. I don’t want to have to switch to iCal, press Command-K, then type in my summary (sometimes this is slow in iCal and the focus doesn’t always jump to the new item correctly, I find), and then choose “High Priority”

Instead I: a) Use my keyboard shortcut to activate Quicksilver b) Type “.” and the text for the To-do item, c) press “Tab” and start typing “todo” (the name of the script) d) press enter.

The number of steps may seem the same but it is all through the keyboard and iCal adds the to-do item in the background so I have found it to be very handy. The script adds the to-do item to the “Home” calendar to keep it simple. I may one day expand the script so you can first time a number, corresponding to the number of days until the to-do’s “due date” but I can’t be bothered.

You can download the script I wrote here. Full text of the script below:

UPDATE: There is a much more powerful script which can do much more for those who want a more advanced but more comprehensive solution. See this Hawk Wings entry for an explanation of Benjamin Harley’s new iCal action.
Continue reading Create iCal To-do: Applescript for Quicksilver

甘口カレーという問題 (Or, on the problem of the so-called “sweet” curry)

I love curry. I love curry from many countries and in many colors and consistencies. However, I am a firm believer in the basic principle that curry must be spicy. I know that the Oxford English Dictionary describes curry as:

curry, n.2 A preparation of meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavouring, esp. for dishes composed of or served with rice.

but seriously, I think it is time for us to take a stand and reserve the use of the word for the spicy curries that truly deserve the name. One of the first to go should be what the Japanese call 甘口カレー, or sweet curry. It is simply shocking that this can decorate the shelves of grocery stores in Japan along side “moderately spicy” and “very spicy” curry blocks. “Not very spicy at all,” this I can accept, but “sweet” curry does violence to the word it modifies. Curry has to be more manly, more aggressive, it has to have bite! If anything it has to mean something slightly closer to another, now obsolete, use of the word curry also listed in the Oxford English Dictionary:

curry, currie, n.3 The portions of an animal slain in the chase that were given to the hounds; the cutting up and disembowelling of the game; transf. any prey thrown to the hounds to be torn in pieces, or seized and torn in pieces by wild beasts: see QUARRY.

You see, at least that has much more punch than “a quantity of bruised spices”!

Today I was reading in the Harvard-Yenching library with Sayaka. She abandoned studying for a time and with her headphones on watched Youtube movie clips of Downtown, her favorite pair of Osaka comedians. The silence of the library was disturbed by the occasional muffled chuckle emerging from her side of the table. After we left the library I asked her what was so funny. The Downtown clip she showed me was brilliant: Matsumoto Hitoshi basically laid down the law on this ridiculous concept of 甘口カレー. For those of you who understand Japanese, you can view the clip here: 甘口カレー Downtown Clip.

Tragically, however, like so much other extremely rare and otherwise completely unobtainable video content now or until recently available on Youtube, I doubt the link above will last long.

Jesuits on Treason

In order to procrastinate a bit on my fellowship applications on this slow Friday evening, I’ve been poking through some old books found on Google Books in search for works on treason trials and definitions of treason (back when it was a crime against the royal person, rather than the nation at large). Lots of great stuff, including downloadable versions of several volumes of Cobbet’s Complete Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason… published in the 1820s.

Another book I have particularly enjoyed looking through is The Principles of the Jesuits, [translated? edited?] by Henry Handley Norris and published in 1839. As far as I can tell, this is a piece of anti-Jesuit propaganda designed to collect quotes by various Jesuit writers saying objectionable things, conveniently organized into categories of evil acts they condone. An early footnote even mentions that Jesuits have responded with the accusation that the collection of quotes are “studied fabrications” but that the editor has checked, where he could, the citations within. Thus, the contents of the work should be read with great care. I find this kind of work especially interesting though, because the Jesuits, with their Catholic universalism, are portrayed in such works with much of the same condemnatory language that has been directed at Communists (as well as their fellow travelers, or just anyone on the Left) for their treasonous internationalism.

A few passages are below. I especially am interested in the one by the Jesuit historian Juan de Mariana, which is quite famous for the fuss it created. It opens with an interesting appeal to general opinion and a proposal for a common meeting to determine whether a ruler is a tyrant. Also, in everything I have read, eradicating treason in 20th century is frequently described in medical metaphors (and certainly this is not something limited to treason), to cut away a tumor or cancer from the national body. But here we see the opposite, the treasonous act of regicide itself described as severing a putrescent member from an infected body.

Section 17 contains alleged Jesuit writings about High Treason and Regicide. Most of the quotes in this section of the work argue one of the following 1) the power of the pontiff to lawfully rob tyrannical or unfaithful kings of their sovereign powers, and thus absolves all traitors of their crimes against them, 2) the idea that the clergy is not subject to the jurisdiction of the king. 3) tyrants may be justly overthrown, without explicit reference to papal powers.

Here are a few examples, along with a good chunk taken from the Mariana piece that was included:

p218-19 – 1594 John Bridgwater “If [kings] … violate the faith which they have pledged to God and to the people of God; the people are not only permitted, but they are required, and their duty demands, that at the mandate of the vicar of Christ, who is the sovereign pastor over all the nations of the earth, the faith which they had previously made with such princes should not be kept.”

p221-25 – 1603 Francis Tolet “…the language of St. Paul is not opposed to it, who means that all men should be subject to the higher powers, but not to the secular powers: for he does not deny to spiritual ministers the power of exempting all, as many as they shall choose, from teh secular power, whenever they may deem it expedient.”

p248 – 1659 Anthony Escobar “What is sedition? The disagreement of citizens: a special offence against charity. If the state is drawn away from its obedience to the prince, it is a crime of high treason. If it extends but to the deposition of magistracy, it is only sedition. But when it is in opposition to a tyrant, it is not a sin, neither is it properly sedition; because a tyrannical government is not directed to the general good.”

p223-24 – 1640 [1599? 1598?] John Mariana “It is necessary to consider attentively what course should be pursued in deposing a prince, lest sin be added unto sin, and crime be punished by the commission of crime. This is the shortest and safest way: if a public meeting can be held, to deliberate upon what may be determined by the common consent; and to consider as firmly settled and established whatever may be resolved by the general opinion…But what you will ask, what is to be done if a public meeting cannot be held? which may very commonly happen. In my opinion, a similar judgment must be formed; for when the state is oppressed by the tyranny of the prince, and the people are deprived of the power of assembling, the will to abolish the tyranny is not wanting…I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favouring the public wishes, would attempt to kill him…Thus the question of fact which is contested is this, Who may deservedly be considered as a tyrant? The question of right, Whether it is lawful to kill a tyrant? is suffficiently evident…

…Still it is useful that princes should be made to know, that if they oppress the state, and become intolerable by their vices and their pollution, they hold their lives upon this tenure, that to put them to death is not only lawful, but a laudable and a glorious action. The life of a tyrant is evidently wretched which is held upon the tenure, that he who should kill him would be highly esteemed, both in favour and in praise. It is a glorious thing to exterminate this pestilent and mischievous race from the community of men. For putrescent members are cut off lest they infect the rest of the body. So should the cruelty of that beast in the form of man, be removed from the state, as from a body, and be severed from it with the sword.”

Interesting to note that Mariana’s support for tyrannicide is used in this work to portray Jesuit support for treason, since Mariana’s views were condemned by his own order in 1610 (same year Henry IV of France was assassinated). According to this page, his views were later even used to justify excesses in the French Revolution. See the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on Tyrannicide for more on Mariana’s condemnation and for more on his life, the same encyclopedia’s entry and of course, wikipedia’s entry. The Austrian school of libertarian radicals also appear to look up to him as a hero for his works on political economy and taxation.

Notes from Iceland

On my way back to Boston I’m staying two nights in Reykjavík. I’ll takes some notes while I’m here and post them when I get back in town:

Sept 6

– In only a few hours this island has really caught my interest. However, I clearly need to come back with a whole lot more money. Unless you just want to hit the “blue lagoon” heating swimming area on the way from the airport, be prepared to rent a car or spend serious money to get to any of the beautiful areas on all the postcards. Come to think of it, the same is true for Norway.

– Even in the short fifty or so kilometers from the airport to Reykjavík and the view from the edges of town I’m already fascinated by the Icelandic landscape. In some areas it looks like the tundra of Northern Norway, in others the rocky but bright green grassland of Jæren south of my hometown. In some places along the coast it is all rocks covered with lichen and mosses of many colors. Barren and pointed hills rise out of nowhere, and you can catch glimpses of massive asteroid crater like pits of dark sand, or shaded black fields dotted with bright white pillars of steam. From the town’s harbor you can see a towering mountain hanging over the waters edge off to the North. That mountain looks so familiar, as if it were a cliff along one of the fjords back in my own Rogaland county. However, it seems darker and somehow more impressive. When I returned to my room after an early evening walk I caught a glimpse of it again in the distance, but only as a completely black background to the city, disappearing into a soft blanket of white clouds above. Everything contributes to a kind of desperate but somehow empowering feeling of loneliness, which I really find moving. Like I said, I really need to return with more money so I can visit the many different areas of the island and perhaps hike some of its hills. As for a place to live though, I think I would miss the forests too much.

– Reykjavík, or at least the center of it, doesn’t feel any bigger than any medium-sized Scandinavian fishing town, but imagine if you will a medium-sized fishing town where everyone dresses way cooler than you.

– Laugavegur The “Main shopping street” (which they kindly announce in English on signs at either end) Laugavegur reminds me a lot of the main shopping street in Sandnes outside my hometown. It’s cute, but not exactly impressive. There are, however, a number of cute coffee shops, fancy clothes stores, and delicious smelling Thai restaurants.

– Internet The “Kaffi vín” towards the eastern end of Laugavegur has an unprotected open wireless network, you can download your email here from the pavement outside. There are lots of internet cafes around but why pay?

– Gothic Is it the “desperate but somehow empowering feeling of loneliness” I was talking about the reason Reykjavík seems to be a mini-gothic capital of the world? Or is there just some kind of gothic get-together going on this week?

– Food Icelandic bread isn’t the greatest, but otherwise the stores are stocked with many if not most of the same things (and in many cases even brands). Lots of yoghurt products…yummm… Prices in the grocery store ranges from (Norwegian prices +10%) to (Norwegian Prices +100%), that is to say, expensive.

– Icelandic, with its close connection to Old Norse, is easily one of the most bad-ass languages in the world. I also feel like I’m in some kind of weird drugged dream whenever I hear it spoken. Often times I catch the beginning or end of a sentence or a conversation and I could swear they are speaking regular Norwegian. Then when I tune in for the rest, their perfectly understandable speech degenerates into complete nonsensical combinations of familiar sounds, which just adds to my fascination. Add to this the fact that Icelandic gains instant sexiness from its frequent use of the letter ∂, with a slash through it. Oh ya, the funky p (which I can’t figure out how to type on this keyboard) is also kind of neat but ∂ is still my favorite and I think we should all reintroduce it into our own alphabets.

Sept 7

– Bicycle Rentals and Hitler You can rent a bicycle at Hverfisgata 50, which runs parallel to Laugavegur. They rent out mountain bikes with a lock included for 2000kr per 24 hours which I found to be great if you want to bike around the town’s back streets and visit its parks and museums. I would have used it for a day ride out of the city but today the weather was terrible in the morning. The door to the mountain bike store had strange yellow index cards wedged into various posters hanging there. If my Icelandic-guessing engine is functioning, each card posed strange open-ended questions like, “Is Israel part of Europe?” and the more bizarre, “Was Hitler evil?” (Var Hitler vondur?). This reminds me of the kind of tactic used by any cause trying to problematize some widespread idea, e.g. “Did evolution happen?”

–Back-streets and Houses I spent the morning biking around the west and northwestern areas of Reykjavík. The older houses often have a pretty normal scandinavian color and design found in other towns, but as to be expected there is much less wood. Instead, what looks like wooden boards from a distance on closer examination turns out to be sheets of metal siding. Newer houses and larger structures in the town mostly seem to be made of stone. There is a surprising amount of graffiti in a town of this size, both downtown and in the neighborhoods. There is much the same in many places in Stavanger, Oslo and other Scandinavian areas but I somehow expected there to be less here. There quite a high density of schools and lutheran (the state religion) churches in the city given its small size. They also have quite a few parks, both in the interior of the city and along its coastline.

– The Culture House The Culture House can be found at Hverfisgata 15. It houses an exhibit of Iceland’s prize medieval manuscripts, information on the history of the Sagas, and an area dedicated to the history of book writing. There are also temporary exhibits on the 2nd and 3rd floors, a gift shop and a small cafe.

The “Medieval Manuscripts: Eddas and Sagas through the ages” on the 1st floor was wonderful. It gave an interesting overview of the history of the sagas, and had many of the rare manuscripts on display, but at least half of the exhibit was historiographical. There were sections on the role of these various texts in the romanticism and nationalism of Iceland and the North, their appropriation by the Nazis for its Aryan crusade, role in pop culture, and even a description of how the street names and layout in Reykjavík were structured to mirror the sagas and nordic myths (see separate posting). Translations of captions into English were available throughout with Danish also in the manuscript display rooms (many of these manuscripts were returned by Denmark in the early 1970s). Most of the manuscripts on display are early 13c and almost all in Old Norse. Latin works were quite rare in Iceland, which probably has to do with the particular relationship between Christianity and society on the island and perhaps the generally non-Latin educated nature of much of the writing class.

I really think the exhibit was great for several reasons: 1) It had a tight narrative which combined history and historiography in a way that the visitor never felt patronized. 2) It combined informational captions, maps, displays, lighting and artifacts skillfully. However, it also made good use of documentaries shown by TVs, the occasional iMac set up for visitors to check out online resources (For example: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi (If you understand Icelandic, check out their online section of Folklore recordings here and their Digital Manuscript Collection) and a flash story site called “Europe of Tales“). Perhaps the only thing I could complain about was the use of some images without providing context. For example, when describing the medieval parliament, they used a painting depicting it made during romanticist movement of the 1800s. That would have been nice to include for context, because the image and the way it portrays the parliament are useful in understanding the nationalist idealization of Iceland’s independent commonwealth period prior to its subordination to the Norwegian (late 13c) and later the Danish crown (14c).

Currently the 2nd floor has a fantastic exhibit “Reflections on Iceland” which I really enjoyed. It had put maps and travel literature about Iceland on display from throughout the centuries. It was interested in giving the visitor glimpses about what others had to say about the island and its people throughout the ages, both good and bad. The descriptive captions were in Icelandic but along the wall was a packet of laminated sheets with English translations of everything. What made the displays especially effective was that they lined up the works roughly chronologically and put works which referred to each other in juxtaposition. For example, one caption would describe how one writer, who may never have actually been to Iceland, said this, that or the other, then next to it we would find the next publication by some author determined to refute the slanderous writings of his predecessor. I only wish that much of this display’s information and captions were available online, something I will have to check when I post this and get online.

The 2nd floor also had an interesting exhibit dedicated to the Mormons of Iceland and, in particular, the migration of over 400 Icelandic Mormons to Utah. It followed their history from conversion to their long and troubled journey via England to the United States.

– Outdoor Picture Exhibit Throughout the downtown area there is currently an outdoor picture exhibit. These are a great way to give visitors and residents a feeling of connection to the past. The pictures dated from around 1905 through to the 1970s and offered scenes of importance and the every day often with interesting trivia added about the development of a particular sector of the city, and important events that had left their mark by pointing out things in the background.

During World War II Britain invaded Iceland and would have done the same to Norway if the Germans hadn’t gotten there first. They later turned control over to the US, which became the only military defense for the island until this year (the American Icelandic Defense force is shutting down completely this month, I believe). In one picture around the time of the 1944 declaration of an Icelandic republic, which finally severed the final tie that the island had to the Danish crown, I was surprised to learn that the Danish king, then in his own German-occupied Denmark, actually sent a letter of congratulations to the Icelandic people. It is not the benevolence of the king which surprises me, there isn’t much he could have done about it, but rather that he could do such a think while he was in a post-1943 (when German control strengthened in Denmark) occupied Denmark sending congratulations to the inhabitants of an island occupied by his occupier’s enemy.

– Kaffitár The rain compelled me twice to seek the comfort of coffee shops. I spent a few hours today continuing my reading the second volume of Ingar Sletten Kolloen’s biography of Knut Hamsun. In one very nice coffee shop on Laugavegur, Kaffitár (a chain I also saw at the airport and shopping mall, unless it just means generic cafe), I was surrounded by Macintosh users downloading their internet from the cafe’s free internet connection. If you buy coffee, and you are faced with several options, the one starting with “Sel…” something is “Dark Roast”

– The National Museum After more biking around in the early afternoon I paid a good 3 hour visit to Iceland’s National Museum. My notes on this got long enough for a separate posting which I’ll upload separately.

– See some pictures from my two days in iceland via the picture page, or directly here.

UPDATE: Nathanael of the Rhine River blog has a few notes on the Gothic architecture of Reykjavik.

Iceland Wins The Viking Wars

– These first two street signs are to be found in my hometown of Stavanger, Norway while going for a walk in my neighborhood last week. I wanted to start a little collection of pictures showing how Norway is crazy about its viking past. However, I just have to concede that Icelandic national identity has completely out-done all the other Scandinavian countries in their endless use of viking images, words, and symbols. There is everything from Viking beer to Viking hotels, and every other thing seems to have the words Saga, Edda, famous vikings, or one of the Norse gods in it.

If you want street signs examples, there are plenty of them. I’m sure the whole Nordic pantheon must be represented within just a few blocks of the downtown area of Reykjavík. I’m not always familiar with the spellings, but I’m pretty sure they are the same guys. It would actually be great fun to teach kids some of the old myths, and then drag them through the town to look at signs and have them identify things. For example, “Hey kids, what is the name of this health food store from?”

Then you could cruise up on the hill to that funky Lutheran church and point at the massive statue in front and say, “Hey kids, who is this big hunk of a viking? I’ll give you a clue, he wasn’t no Lutheran, and he sold a map to Columbus…Hey no cheating…nobody is allowed to look at the names on any of the streets connected to this roundabout or the name of that bed & breakfast across the street…Hey Jón, I didn’t say you could read the inscription on the back…”

The Culture House (which I mention in my posting on my “Notes from Iceland”) had a great little section talking about just this phenomenon in its great historiographical section:

“In the first half of the 20th century, street names in Reykjavík drew heavily upon the sagas, and the layout was even intended to reflect their plots. Skarphé∂insgata (“Skarphedin’s street”) lies east and south of streets named after his parents, Bergpórugata and Njálsgata and between the couple is Barónsborg kindergarten, recalling their fate when they lay down to die in their burning farmhouse with their grandchild Thord Karason between them.”

Ok, so imagine working at the kindergarten and giving some new parents the tour, “Oh ya, did I mention that our kindergarten is conveniently located in such away to remind everyone of the burning corpses of Bergpóru (sp?) and Njál?” Above the caption was a map to show some of the examples:

Iceland’s National Museum

Yesterday afternoon, I paid a visit to Iceland’s National Museum, located just next to its largest university, the University of Iceland. The museum is in nicely designed church-shaped concrete structure with three floors, a gift shop and cafe. The upper two floors are the permanent exhibit with temporary exhibits on the first floor.

Like many nationalist historical museums, the permanent exhibit tries to describe the centuries needed to accomplish “The Birth of the Nation” which, appropriately, was the title of the exhibit. The structure of the Icelandic national historical narrative is very similar to that of the Norwegian one (and dozens of other national narratives around the world). There is a glorious, if violent golden age which is celebrated as the source of national virtues, symbols, and heroes. This is followed by a decline and corruption of this noble tradition, followed by a long dark domination by a foreign power when the culture and independence of the nation are suppressed. The nation then emerges once again from the darkness as its glorious past is remembered and the national spirit awakens during its struggle for freedom from its oppressor.

In the Norwegian case, the Viking age, when we raped, burned, and pillaged Western Europe are the “good old days.” Mongolian nationalists know exactly what I’m talking about when they think of their own “good old days.” I mean, this was the period when we showed the world what it really meant to be Norwegian. This is the age from which the national symbols, stories, and heroes are taken. This is followed by the “500 years of night” when we were under the control of the Danes and our language and culture were suppressed by those evil Danish overlords. Apparently nothing of any real consequence happened at night, except that Reformation thingy. We then have a century of a kind of pre-dawn frost under Swedish domination, during which Norwegian nationalists rediscover their pure language and culture and rant about those horrible centuries of damaging Danish dominion and followed by full independence in 1905.

The Icelandic case shares much of this story but with less raping and pillaging, more democracy, and Norway gets to play a brief role as the bad guy. The roots of the Icelandic nation, if I have absorbed the narrative correctly, is to be found in the democratic and individualistic glory of the Commonwealth period, dating from the settlement of Iceland in the late 800s until it finally came to an end with Norwegian domination in the mid 1200s. The democratic legislative/judicial role of a kind of parliament (the althingi-mabob, can’t remember how to spell it) is a central source of pride. The next great source of pride is the incredibly rich production of literature – which all of Scandinavia and Germany have shown their great respect for. This glorious age was followed by the dark ages of domination first by Norwegians and then the Danes. Lots of nastiness ensued, granted, not all of it Danish. The Black death came late in the early 1400s and carried off half the population. The Reformation thingy went really bad. A Danish monopoly on trade for two centuries begins in early 1600s. Volcanoes erupt in late 1780s, including one under a glacier which all caused a terrible mess. Then, by a series of steps towards independence beginning in the late 1800s and later in 1905, 1918, the nation finally completed its lengthy birthing with the founding of the republic in 1944 while, perhaps a bit ironically, under US wartime occupation.

The museum was wonderful, especially since the population of the entire country is smaller than the last Tokyo suburb I lived in. Like the Cultural House, they did a fantastic job of presenting the materials with lots of little subject-specific areas. They also had about two dozen short documentaries available for viewing at screens place throughout the museum. Each screen had 1 to 3 mini-documentaries, which in turn were divided into 2-5 chapters. Each chapter in turn had supplementary pictures and texts covering aspects that were mentioned during the documentary chapter. It was interesting, effective, and in case someone is hogging a screen with documentaries you want to see, at the end of the 2nd floor there is a “Reading Room” with half a dozen computers that have all the documentaries viewable (unfortunately, all the books in the Reading room were in Icelandic, and thus, unreadable). They also had “touch and feel it” rooms with various clothing and other items. They had little telephones you could pick up which would tell about the daily life and stories of one particular individual (such as a fisherman). They had examples of their four kinds of national dress.

I was also impressed that the visitor was not treated like an idiot (although the little cartoon-like figures in the documentaries were slightly cheesy they helped the viewer recognize and identify players in the sometimes complicated power struggles described). I’ll give one cute example. One of the mini-documentaries surrounded the theme of Christianization of Iceland around 1000. The documentary faithfully described the process as it is recorded in the sagas (I can’t remember which, but every documentary had a “references” button with a full Icelandic language bibliography). It basically says that the entire country converted together (allowing pagan worship in private) because that was the reasonable thing to do. “An unlikely story,” I thought to myself. Then I noticed the title of the last chapter was, “Is the story true?” When it started playing, the English language voice started, “An unlikely story?” It then confesses that we cannot always trust the stories handed down but that overall, the process of Christianization did proceed quickly and with relatively little violence. How many Korean, Chinese, and Japanese museums have I visited where I wish I could push the “Is the story true?” button…

The only disappointing thing about the museum is perhaps partly due to the fact that the theme of the exhibit was “the birth of the nation.” You see, once the nation is born, there isn’t much else to say, is there? This means that the 20th century, as in the case of many other historical museums got very little space. I get the feeling that the museum’s designers just took all their 20th century material, put it in a pile and said, “What should we do with all this stuff?” Then, after a few desperate moments of silence, perhaps someone piped up with the idea, “Hey let’s put all this stuff on a kind of revolving conveyor belt, kind of like in the airport baggage claim or like one of those sushi restaurants!” Apparently everyone thought that was a good idea because that is what happened to Iceland’s history in the 20th century. I was a bit depressed to see a little pile of items labeled “World War II” as its place on the conveyor belt creaked slowly by me. There was a little more than just the conveyor belt, but considering the huge changes on the island in the last hundred years, a lot more space could have been given over to it.

Losing Your Language

Another book I looked through today was a fascinating memoir by a Osvald Harjo Moskva kjenner ingen tårer (Moscow knows no tears). Harjo was raised a Communist in northern Norway. Even before World War II his family often housed Russian intelligence officers and helped them transmit intelligence back to the Soviet Union.

During the war Harjo, who spoke both Norwegian and Finnish, worked with anti-German communist partisans in the north and continued to help Russian radio operatives and other spies get their intelligence back to the Soviets. Another captured partisan gave up Harjo and his father’s name to the Germans. He was arrested, tortured and interrogated for weeks by the Gestapo before finally escaping thanks to the help of a sympathetic Norwegian policeman. Harjo then fled to the East with partisans and eventually crossed into Soviet controlled territory.

This is where the tragedy of Harjo’s memoirs begin. He had the audacity to send Stalin a letter early in 1943 with some minor complaints about the conditions in the North, suggesting that there were perhaps some administrative problems he might want to look into. Very soon after Harjo was arrested and accused of being a German spy. Later charges were brought against him for leading the Germans to a Russian radio operative, which Harjo claims in his memoir was impossible since he had not worked with the operative he was supposed to have given up.

The rest of the book traces the more than a decade Harjo spent in Soviet camps until December, 1955. It seems as though pressure from the Norwegian government, including pleas from labor party prime minister Einar Gerhardsen during his visit to Moscow in 1955 were instrumental in his release. He tells of his final meeting with a Russian officer who asks him if he was “dissatisfied with his experience in the Soviet Union.” Harjo writes that he replied, “I have sat in prison camps for 13 years, convicted of crimes I did not commit.” The officer says that upon review of his papers, he realizes that the conviction was a mistake but that Harjo should never have admitted to the Gestapo (under torture) that he had spied for the Soviet Union and that he hoped that Harjo would only tell the truth about the Soviet Union upon his return to Norway.

The book was unique among the Norwegian war memoirs I looked through but was nowhere near as eloquent or powerful a work as some of the other memoirs of Soviet gulag experiences I have read. Clearly the horrors of the experience gave him deeply bitter feelings about the cause he dedicated his life for until he was imprisoned and this does come through clearly. Harjo notes in his final chapter how, in contrast to the active support he received from the anti-Communist labor party in power then (as now), the Norwegian Communist Party had no interest in helping him.

There was one short passage in the book that interested me more than anything else and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the books main themes. Harjo writes that one day in the “grey monotony of camp number 14″ he suddenly met with a surprise:

Jeg våknet og satte meg opp i køya. På gulvet framfor meg sto det en kortvokst, lubben kar. Han spurte på russisk hvem jeg var. “Jeg er nordmann,” svarte jeg. Da kom det på syngende Finnmarksdialekt: “Æ e’ også fra Norge, æ e’ fra Kiberg”. Det var Otto Larsen. Jeg hadde ikke sett en nordmann siden 1944. Vi snakket litt sammen på norsk, men vi hadde vanskeligheter med vårt eget språk, så vi gikk over til russisk…”

Harjo had woken up one day to find himself face to face with a new cellmate. The man asked him, in Russian, who he was.

Horjo answered, “I am a Norwegian.” Then he replied in a singing Finnmark dialect “I am also from Norway, I’m from Kiberg.” It was Otto Larsen. I had not seen a Norwegian since 1944. We spoke together a little in Norwegian, but we had difficulty with our own language and switched over into Russian.”

I have posted previously about my fascinating with code-switching, or switching between several languages in daily communication, not the least because I do it frequently myself. What is described in the above passage, the loss of full command and comfort in the use of one’s native language is another phenomenon I’m interested in. I first encountered it with my first girlfriend in college. I met her upon her return from several years of living with a German family in Germany, and for a number of weeks she had trouble putting her thoughts into normal English sentences, even though English was her native tongue. My mother, who is a native Norwegian speaker also sometimes switches into English when we speak Norwegian together either because she feels more comfortable with English or finds speaking Norwegian tiring.

Here we have another example of this phenomenon. Two Norwegians from northern Norway meet in a Russian prison camp and after briefly speaking to each other in their native tongue switch into Russian because of “difficulties” with their native tongue.

Unfulfilled Expectations

This afternoon, my last in Stavanger before I leave for Iceland and soon after Boston, I have been skimming through some old Norwegian memoirs from World War II. One interesting book entitled Med Guds ord i fiendeland: Fra Sjømannskirken i Hamburg 1940-45 (With God’s Word in an enemy land: From the seaman’s church in Hamburg 1940-45) by Conrad Vogt-Svendson, focuses a lot on Norwegian prisoners in camps and prisons in Germany and their eventual release, much thanks to (neutral) Swedish intervention. However, the book also has a fascinating chapter on daily life in Hamburg during the war.

In one passage he discusses the frequent visits of Norwegian women who had married or wanted to marry Germans:

Ikke sjelden ble vi oppsøkt av norske piker som var gift eller skulle gifte seg med tyskere. Noen kom innom på gjennomsrreise fra Norge. De var temmelig kjepphøye. Enkelte av dem og atskillige andre kom innom etter å ha vært i Tyskland en tid. Da var overlegenheten gjerne sporløst forsvuunnet. Bare den dypeste tragedie var igjen. Hva de hadde ventet seg da de reiste ned til Tyskland, vet jeg ikke, men hva de fant der nede fikk vi tydelig rede på. Hvis de ikke ble presset til arbeid i krigsindustrien, sørget den tyske svigermoren eller svigerinnen for at de ikke var uvirksomme. Forholdene de levde under var også på andre måter helt forskjellige fra dem ektemannen hadde forespeilet dem. Og det verste av alt for dem var at deres Hans eller Otto ikke var den romantiske krigeren de hadde truffet i Norge. Temmelig typisk er historien til en som kom fra en Østersjøby for å søke tilflukt og hjelp hos oss. Hun var over den første ungdommen og den andre med, og da hun traff sin tysker, tok hun ham som sin siste sjanse. De ble gift, og hun fulgte med ham ned til hjemmet hans. Det viste seg å være delvis i ruiner. Svigermoren var en slavedriver. Og da hun og ektemannen hadde solgt stakkarens klær og eiendeler, fikk hun en grundig omgang juling og ble jagd på gaten. Så kom hun til oss, met et blått øye, flere tenner slått ut, og blå og gule merker langt oppover arrmene. Det kan sies om henne som om så mange andre at det gale hun hadde gjort var hun blitt straffet grundig nok for. Og når det var mulig, hjalp vi dem til å komme hjem. (132-133)

Essentially this passage reports that these Norwegian women, who would be ostracized and abused in the aftermath of the war for their treasonous liaisons if they returned or stayed in Norway, often met with tragedy in Germany when they followed their husbands back. They would have all their expectations shattered, both those related to life in Germany and for their “romantic warrior” husbands. He brings up as a typical example a Norwegian woman who married a German when she was getting up in years, “as a last chance.” She followed him to his home in Germany and found it partly in ruins. Her mother-in-law was a slave driver, sold her clothes and other belongings, beat her and threw her out onto the streets after which she went to the Norwegian seaman’s church with a black eye and several teeth knocked out. Vogt-Svendson concludes that her beating and treatment served as sufficient punishment for her wrongs, presumably referring to her nuptial treason. However, as in so many other countries, for thousands of Norwegian women who associated with or had relationships with German soldiers however, the worst would come when the war was over…