Raindrop's view

I suspect that most environmental history classes at some point present a question like this one to students: Are people really going to line up for sewer maps the way that they line up for National Park maps? 

The question is not rhetorical.  It is provocative. If everyday people in the industrialized world are going to take better care of the Earth, they probably need to pay more attention to where our waste goes and where our energy originates.  By “pay more attention”,  I mean become fascinated, become obsessed, become curious.  The problem, of course, is that mapping our energy and our waste do not always grab our attention the way that mapping our transcendence and our bravado do.  Are people really going to line up for sewer maps the way that they line up for National Parks maps?  Not unless we find a way to make those sewer maps pretty interesting.

Norway doesn't have all the answers.  But they seem to be on very good track with their manhole covers.  That’s right.  Manhole covers.  Most of the cities that I visited in Norway had a unique manhole cover, one that drew my attention even faster than the admonishment one sees so often on other street covers: “Storm drains to sea.”

I first noticed the covers when one of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants mentioned that she was considering making a documentary film about them.  I was a bit more curious after she mentioned them.  I found this disturbing article about their manufacture, a good reminder that being curious about the conditions of nature often means being curious about the conditions of labor.

I started taking pictures whenever I visited someplace new.  Some mimicked the city crest, like Oslo's shown above.

And Stavanger's

and Kristiansand's

and Trondheim's:

I always imagined a mirror city underground, with all the same personalities of the town somehow reflected -- like Nightmare Before Christmas or, maybe, to be a bit more Norwegian: Bakvendtland.

 

Some celebrated the area's landscape and architecture, like Drammen:

Bergen:

And Ålesund:

Covers like Ålesund's sent me looking for more, and I learned that Norway does not have a monopoly on the concept. Canada has some great manhole covers.  And I'd like to go to Japan for the manhole covers alone!

As spring began, I became a bit obsessed.  “I need a picture of the sewer drain cover!” I told one teacher in Sandefjord.  “Everyone has their thing,” she replied dubiously.

My very favorite appeared in more than one city – a God’s eye view of the town with rooftops and umbrellas mixed in an almost abstract tumble.  This one is from Stord:  

If most made me think of the view underground, this one made me think of a raindrop’s perspective.

With just a few days remaining in our stay, I realize that I missed some.  Bodø's and Lillehammer's were, understandably, covered with snow.  I never made it to Tromsø or Alta, and I think I had a chance for photos in Røros and Verdal, but missed them.

I should mention that I, regrettably, also never made it to one of Norway’s national parks. 

Guess which one will bring me back.

The Kvikk Lunsj Tur

My son tells me that what I will miss most about Norway is Kvikk Lunsj, a candy bar that is remarkably similar to an American brand that rhymes with Chit-Chat.  I believe KvikkLunsj is better and that in a blind taste test I could distinguish the two, but I am probably kidding myself.  In any case, I love them.  I really, really love them.  My family gave them to me in lieu of a birthday cake because I love them so. They are not at all good for you.  They are not high quality chocolate.  They are junk food.  And I love them.

I tried my first Kvikk Lunsj because they’re a common snack on weekend ski trips.  You put one in your pocket with an orange and head out.  Kvikk Lunsj is far superior when consumed chilled.  “If this can keep skiers going, it can keep me going, right?” I rationalized that first time.  And then it became my standard backpack snack, my protection against a delayed flight or train or misreading the bus schedule. 

Since I knew that I was deluding myself, I dug in deeper.  Kvikk Lunsj wrappers include a description of a hike or walk in locations all over Norway.  They always end with the injunction: “God søndagstur!” I started trying to translate the wrappers to justify my purchases.  I got extra excited every time I was in the location profiled on the Kvikk Lunsj wrapper.  I took pictures of the wrappers of the bars that I had consumed:

 (until I became embarrassed by the number).  More than once, I actually took the hike.

When I was in Bergen with my family, we even went to the KvikkLunsj website, where consumers post pictures of their Kvikk Lunsj God Søndag Turs.  And everyone looks really happy.  And remarkably fit, given that they’re eating junk food.

Off we went on our Kvikk Lunsj hike.  

I was teaching later in the day and had forgotten proper walking shoes and a hat.  

Really, the only Norwegian thing about me that morning was my Kvikk Lunsj.  

I mused about whether Americans would be healthier (and would dress more appropriately for the weather) if our junk food came wrapped in hiking suggestions.

(Perhaps the real question I should be exploring here is whether Kvikk Lunsj is the magical ingredient necessary for Americans to affect that look of European ennui.  Don’t deny it.  You know the look.)

Lately, I haven’t had much Kvikk Lunsj.  My teaching obligations are complete.  I’ve begun to pack and clean.  And the weather really isn’t right for it.  They really are better served chilled.  So maybe it’s not what I will miss most.  We’ll see, come next year’s birthday. 

       

       

Food is Politics

I spotted this street art in Bergen on my first visit there and absolutely loved it.

“Food is politics!” I thought to myself.  I was so excited in October to be in a nation where people eat more healthily and take better care of their bodies than they do in the United States.  I was confident that smaller farms and less fast food would mean healthier food and healthier bodies for me and my family.  “We will eat fish and hearty bread and exercise in really warm spandex!” I resolved.  We have done most of that (not the spandex part), but I’ve found especially as we near our return home that I’m less and less interested in virtuous food and exercise and more and more interested in communal food and exercise.  I care less about how food and exercise makes me feel and more about how it connects me to others.

 

None of which is to say that food is not politics.  Teachers have filled me in on debates on the west coast over whether Norway’s famous brown cheese should be an allowed snack in preschools.  It is very high in calories and fat and not even cheese, technically, as it’s made from the whey, but there’s almost nothing more Norwegian.  

(Image from Nordic Nibbler -- the fabulous blog that kept us eating well in Oslo.) 

Especially after I visited the Sogn Jordog Hagebrukskule, an organic farm on Norway’s west coast and one of the most ecologically sensitive farms in Europe (They use almost all animal labor), I became intrigued with some efforts to make Norway’s family farms here more corporate.  (I visited only as a tourist, not a rover.) 

It seems like such a shame to move from the family farm tradition in a nation that takes such well-deserved pride in its farming efforts.  As well they should – it’s not easy to grow stuff here!

But most of my thinking about food in Norway has been more emotional, maybe even more primal.  After reading Hans Herbejørnsrud’s  “On an Old Farmstead in Europe” (in translation, of course), I was reminded of writing about the U.S. farming tradition in the upper Midwest.  I thought of the book, “APlace of Sense”; and an anthropology project my uncle, an agronomist, mentioned to me in which a scholar is studying gas station coffee shops near grain silos where Midwestern farmers spend their free moments; and Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and William Least Heat-Moon and the maps that show fewer and fewer farms in the U.S.  More than one Wednesday found me lamenting our distance from our St. Louis CSA, Fair Shares, and the extraordinary blueberries and butter and lamb and carrots and broccoli and potato chips and chocolate and all-round camaraderie among farmers and local food producers that they provide.  I have closed my eyes as I smelled red chile cooking and smiled with recognition as ex-pats from other countries described the near painful pleasure of smelling a dish from home.

My happiest moments have been sharing the farms of friends – on the west coast in Norway where my UWC classmate Nynke has a year-old goat farm and makes cheese with her family and outside Helsinki, Finland where my UWC classmate Veera has family who have given their land to a cooperative farm.  I’m in awe of how ready Nynke and her family are to learn new skills -- from how to operate the cheese press to how to protect their goats from preying birds to how to build a tree house.  Meanwhile, they are making really good cheese!

  The story of Veera’s farm seemed to come straight from the pages of progressive-era history.  Her great grandfather was an ardent reformer and prohibitionist and even brought reforms from the U.S. to Finland.  He was constantly in the city, but he wanted his son to be a farmer (not unlike many people of the age who sought to reform the city and recharge in the country).  His son had other ideas, but the farm has stayed in the family and now operates as a CSA.  Much of the area surrounding the farm is protected by the government.  I asked Veera why and she said: “Oh, the government always likes to be protecting land, especially in suburban areas to give people places to walk.”  I was struck by the differences between U.S. and Finnish land use patterns.  We finished our tour by collecting rhubarb in a nearby field.  It grows wild and serves the entire neighborhood.  As Veera showed us around, I told her about our CSA (I talk about it a lot here.) and Nynke’s farm.  She looked around and said: “It’s so strange.  We are all doing the same thing in so many different places.”

It is a commonplace to say that food is culture, but it’s terribly true.  The smell and taste of food are also the smell and taste of home and of distance.  Food is politics, to be sure, but too much of food in the U.S. is about virtuous counting: of calories, of bottom lines, of returns on acres.  Food is also friendship and connection and challenge and surprise.  Which, now that I think of it, maybe means politics is friendship and connection and challenge and surprise.

 

I guess that I should chew on that for a while.

What is your context?

In March I visited the Red Cross Nordic United WorldCollege.  RCN-UWC is an international boarding school with students aged 16-20 from over seventy different countries.  When I was there, the school was celebrating Las Americas, during which Americans, from Canada to Argentina, share aspects of their culture.  

As I wandered through the afternoon bazaar, where I tried Paraguayan sweet bread and learned U.S. history trivia, a young man stopped me.  “Are you…why…how did…I heard someone was here interviewing….” he trailed off.

 

“What is your context?” he finally asked decisively. 

Overlapping with my visit were job interviews for a Swedish literature teaching position.  On my first day on campus, a blonde woman had been spotted with members of the faculty.  She was rumored to be very pretty.   I am not blonde, which, no doubt, was the source of the young man’s confusion.  He had struggled with the question, but he probably had no inkling of the tailspin he had induced as I tried to think of an answer.

            What is my context? 

I’ve written elsewhere on the meaning of context to historians.  Generally, we give two definitions to the term.  We use the first definition to describe our process.  By weaving together our sources – letters, diaries, watch chains, declassified government documents, ship manifests – we create a world for our readers so that they see the times we are describing from the inside.

            What is my context?

I hastened to explain to the young man that I was a graduate of the United World Colleges myself.  I attended the sister school in the United States.  Both schools are parts of a global consortium – there are fourteen schools in all today – that seek to foster international peace, understanding, and sustainability through education.  UWC was far and away the best educational experience of my entire life, and I was in a state of excited delight virtually every minute of my time RCN-UWC.

The schools were founded by Kurt Hahn, a German educational experimenter who was also instrumental in the founding of Outward Bound.  Along with Lord Mountbatten and others, Hahn founded the first UWC in Wales in 1962.  The school and its descendents encourage outdoor exploration and experiential adventures – like Las Americas.  All follow the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which requires service activities and other involvement in the community. 

Most UWCs are located in remote and stunning natural locations.  RCN-UWC, near the tiny town of Flekke in fjord country, is no exception.  

When I mentioned it to one teacher in Oslo, she said that she would love to bring students from her own school there, but she added: “It’s easier to take them to London.”  UWC-USA is located in Montezuma, New Mexico, a town so small that even many New Mexicans do not know it.  The isolation and surrounding beauty in both places make for inviting environments to explore with newfound friends.  

I have long thought that the UWC movement would make an excellent environmental history topic.  Hahn’s story alone – he was expelled from Germany when he spoke openly against Hitler and the Nazis; he decried many of modern life’s traits, from easy distraction to sedentary indoor life; and he influenced multiple educational movements – invites an environmental history inquiry.

  

I shared virtually none of this when I gave my answer.  I said: “I went to the UWC in the U.S. almost 25 years ago.”   

The second definition of context is more like the setting for a play.  To contextualize is to set the stage for the events that we are describing.  To “take something out of context” when reading literature is to misunderstand the meaning of the text itself.  To “take something out of context” when describing history is to engage in anachronism.  It is to misunderstand the time itself.

What is my context?

Having covered how I knew about the school, I still hadn’t explained to the young man just what I was doing there.  So I hastened to add a quick description of Norway’s Fulbright Roving Scholar program.  Like the UWCs, the Fulbright program was an educational response to the fractures of World War II.  By fostering scholarly exchange the program sought and seeks to foster international understanding as well.  But only Norway has the Roving Scholar program that this year has taken me and two other Rovers across Norway -- from Kristiansand to Svaalbard – to visit secondary schools.  I was suffused with nostalgia during my visit to RCN-UWC, but I couldn’t avoid thinking about the school as a school, just like I’ve done on other campuses in Norway.  I kept saying that I felt like I was 17 and 42 at the same time.

Nor could I quite turn off my historian’s mind or, at least, the guilty feeling that I should keep my critical faculties about me.  “There is no perfect time and place.” I tell my students firmly.  “Things haven’t just gotten worse and worse.  Things don’t just get better and better.”  I found it hard to observe this injunction at RCN-UWC.  Students seemed to come from a greater variety of economic backgrounds than my classmates and I did a quarter century ago.  The student body included a larger number of refugees, and there was more attention refugees’ status globally (Not least because IB now includes a geography course).  And it was hard to believe that I had ever had such energy.  After classes concluded on Thursday, students headed to their activities, and, as far as I could tell, pretty much taught themselves for another three hours.  This was before practice for the Las Americas show and dinner and homework.  Some students travel regularly to Bergen – over a two-hour journey -- to study Mandarin as a third or fourth language. 

I did notice that there was less outdoor activity than at my school back in the day.  UWC-USA has a search and rescue team.  Many of the other UWCs have similar service activities that take their students outside, but RCN-UWC does not (The school does have a Red Cross rehabilitation center at which many of the students volunteer).  Although the campus has ready access to Norway’s well-maintained trail network, one avid hiker told me that most students do not head out to the hills often.  And there was much conversation about the food.  Norway’s northern climate, the school’s remote location, and, I imagine, the hunger of two hundred teenagers, makes for a cafeteria budget challenge, especially when balancing the dietary needs of representatives of dozens of cultures and political positions.  Variety and vegetarian options were slim.  That said, the day rooms smelled just like they did in my day.  Food may have globalized, but the smell of noodles, stir fry, and cinnamon toast appears to have remained a constant.  “Each historical moment is unique!” I tell my students back at SLU.  But maybe some things are universal. (Below: shoe dryers and dorm art)

I did not make this young man, perhaps interested in Swedish literature, listen to my entire reverie.  Rather, I said something like my standard: “I’m here as part of a scholarly exchange program called Fulbright that takes me to secondary schools all over Norway.”

As I struggled to be just a bit more critical in the days during and following my visit, I mentioned my challenge to a variety of teachers and students.   They brought my attention back to a few issues.  As the UWC movement persists, there is the danger that it will merely reproduce itself, rather than grow and change.  A number of students asked if my son would attend UWC, and though I answered that the decision was his, it will be hard not to hide my enthusiasm for the UWC movement as he grows older.  How many other potential “legacy” students are out there?  And is UWC best for them or for folks for whom the experience will be brand new?  Students from socially conservative communities often struggle when they return home, and their reverse culture shock can restrict their opportunities as much as their education broadened it. 

I had heard such criticisms when I was a student, but the reservation that caused me the greatest doubt was new: carbon footprint.  I’ve visited around thirty towns and cities this year, most by plane, and that doesn’t count family holiday trips to Rome and Paris or a guest lecture in Budapest.  One convocation at one UWC probably repeats that experience at least a hundredfold.  Can the globe sustain it? 

 “Of course!" I would have proclaimed when I was a UWC student.  We still need international peace and understanding.  Whatever challenges the world faces, we will solve them!  The world needs UWC! 

Now, my body sore from a day sitting on a plane and my voice hoarse from a day of teaching, I feel less confident.  Do I need this kind of travel?  Does the world? My context has changed and the world’s has too.   And yet I came back from RCN-UWC glowing.  For days, I couldn’t stop telling people about the school.  Alongside all I’ve learned from my Fulbright Fellowship, it’s impossible to look away from UWC’s value.  Education is the most comprehensive and direct route to international understanding.  UWC students may now chatter with their families on laptops instead of hovering near the pay phone in the hall, but we still need human connection to grow and learn.  I write in a different world context than when I was a student, but the world still needs UWC.

It's not the end of the world

Way back in the fall I overlapped with one of my fellow rovers in the southern part of the country.  In addition to the opportunity to observe her teach, which was a fabulous learning experience for me, we also had a chance to explore the area a bit together.  A teacher had suggested that we go to Verdens Ende – the End of the World.  We set off after classes had concluded in the late afternoon and arrived almost at dusk to an unearthly landscape.   The area is well named indeed.

    

I had plenty of time to write a blog entry about the end of the world, but somehow the place never seemed to fit into the themes and concerns that I was exploring.  The area was certainly naturally beautiful.  The experience of getting directions from one Norwegian after another as Sarah cheerfully asked: “We’re trying to get to the end of the world?” seemed to be perfect fodder for a traveler’s journal, but the experience sat, waiting, I think, for more perspective.

My last school visit in December was to Bardufoss, my northernmost visit scheduled to date.  Since it looked like our best chance to see the Northern Lights, my family came with me.  I had not paid much attention to the calendar of Oslo events when I was scheduling, but as the date neared, I realized that the visit overlapped with the Nobel Prize ceremony.  Other Fulbrighters were attending the ceremony, and, although I wasn’t one of the lucky ones with a ticket, I had wanted to participate in a candlelit vigil outside the Peace Center celebrating the recipients of the prize.  But…the Northern Lights!  With my family!  At the top of the world!  It seemed like the supreme environmental history dilemma – the choice between the pinnacle of human culture – a scheduled, certain celebration of the best of human ingenuity and compassion -- and the pinnacle of nature – the sublime touch of the universe on the skin of the Earth’s atmosphere.    

    So we headed out each night we were in Bardufoss, fleeing the surprisingly large amount of urban light to maybe, maybe see the Northern Lights.  Our first night was clear: good conditions!  We had been reading the Golden Compass as a family, and I imagined our dæmons running alongside the car, wolves or foxes maybe, tossing the snow with delight.  My husband and I stretched and stretched our son’s bedtime, peering into the darkness.  We were reminded of the skies over Zuni Pueblo and of adventures from long before our son was born.  We were on top of the world!  

But we did not see the Northern Lights.  The next night was cloudy.  The night after we returned too late for the candlelit vigil.  “Well,” I consoled myself, “It’s not the end of the world.”

Almost a month later, on the last day of the calendar year, we were outside Rome at the site of Ostia Antica, an ancient Roman sea port.  But the area is seaside no longer.  Centuries of silting have moved the coast and, lucky for us, preserved the town.  I do not think that it is only historians who marvel at places so old and so well preserved.  The streets were narrow; the painting of a café menu still covered a wall; the mosaics advertising port town necessities and amenities were still clear.  

As an environmental historian, I often reflect on humans’ tiny position in the wider sweep of the universe and its past.  But as a historian of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I rarely reflect on the wider sweep of human history and the simultaneous proximity and distance of those parts of human culture that I consider so very modern, like cities.  Visiting, as we did, on New Year’s Eve, made the experience all the more powerful.  When did the residents of Ostia realize that their town was on the decline?  A particularly decadent evening?  A notable sacking by pirates?  Did people only slow drift away or did if feel like the end of the world?

With only three months before our departure from Norway, every moment begins to have more meaning.  “This might be my last time on this train…on this bus…looking at this view….” More than once I have wondered on this adventure, “How much better can life be? Can happiness have a limit?”  Back when Sarah and I hopped from one rock to another at Verdens Ende, I thought I was sure to come back.   “Maybe in the summer,” I mused, “with my family.”  Now the time goes so fast.  There is so much that we will never see.  But it’s not the end of the world.