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.