Thing three about Norway

And now it comes to that time in my blogging where I get a little introspective and maybe just a touch self indulgent.  The third thing I need to blog about my trip to Norway is this creeping feeling I experienced that I really am Norwegian. Okay, obviously, my grandmother’s parents were born there, so my actual heritage is not in question. But while I was there, learning about the people and the land, I started to seriously wonder about the subconscious, unconscious, sometimes unwilling carriage of culture through generations.

So, you already know I have a thing about fjords (this is not evidence of my Norwegian-ness–just go with me for a minute). What parts of the country are not threaded by fjords are still subject to incredibly steep mountains and vast wilderness, but rather than inlets from the sea, they are strewn with lakes. The landscape is beautiful and dramatic, but the climate is unforgiving and the land itself is actually quite scarce. It’s as if anyone who doesn’t live in Oslo has their back to a sheer granite face and their big toes in the water. (If you need evidence, look at my pictures or do a flickr search for the  Kjeasen Farm. No lie, it’s 500 feet above sea level on a cliff, because that was the only farmable piece of land.)

It’s not surprising then, that the characteristics of Norwegians that I heard repeated over and over again include stubbornness, an ability to make the best of things, and a quickness to laughter.

So, I wonder, if I also posses these things, how much of it was my choice or my parents’biology, and how much of it was handed to me unknowingly through generations. I wonder about that, and then I wonder if someone ever had a cheesier thought.

Just for the record, the other thing that I really like about the current culture of the place is the guilt the society seems to feel over the source of their great wealth. Though Norway has one of the smallest per-capita carbon footprints of any industrialized nation, they know that’s really the least they can do, given that they are rich and comfortable because of the untold barrels of crude oil they are supplying to less guilty, less rich nations. On the other hand, considering they’ve only been this rich for half a century, they seem have adopted socialist ideologies with gusto.

I’ve read a few other things lately (specifically Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers) that suggest that this culture thing is passed on through literally countless generations–long past the necessity or cause of the characteristics.

Am I the only one with this kind of heritage fantasy?