God jul!

God jul!  Merry Christmas in Norwegian.  Pronounced "goo yool".  We celebrated a quiet Christmas with Tove's mom, Kitty.  We ate a traditional Christmas Eve dinner with pork, lamb, sausages, potatoes, red cabbage, mashed rutabagas, prunes, lingonberries, accompanied with aquavit and Christmas beer.  Dessert featured "riskrem", a type of sweet rice pudding with raspberry sauce.  After a post-dinner nap we had coffee with Christmas cookies, apple pie (which I baked from scratch!) and vanilla ice cream.  We had liquers including our homemade lingonberry liquer that turned out to be delicious.

Yesterday we had leftovers, and since I failed to take photos Christmas Eve,  here is pretty much how it looked (less one chair):

Leftovers  

Christmas Day Tove and I took our long walk in the hills behind our home.  It was a beautiful afternoon. albeit short.  It is hard to describe the Winter days here.  December 21 was the shortest "day".  The sun rose at about 10 a.m. and set at about 2:30 p.m.  But the sun never gets high in the sky. It's a sunrise-set!  Take a look:

This photo was taken on December 23rd at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Taken the same day and time.  That is my shadow in the "noonday sun"

Same day, 3:30 p.m.  That is the moon above.  

Another tradition we follow is taking Christmas wreathes and candles to place on the graves of loved ones at Christmas time.  We did this on Tove's grandmother's and on her father's graves.

Multicultural Norway?

I think that most people consider Norway to be a homogeneous land full of blue-eyed, blonde-haired descendants of the Vikings.  Reality is more complex.  First, most Norwegians are not blonde.  Second, particularly in the larger cities, there are many residents with non-Norwegian ethnic backgrounds.  Norway's demographics are changing.    In Oslo, 26% of the residents are immigrants.  Tove and I attended a Christmas party at a friend's home Friday night.  The host is from Finland.  The hostess is from Chechnya.  There were two other couples there.  One of the couples are immigrants from Bosnia.  The other couple are a Norwegian and his wife from Kosovo.  All of the immigrants spoke fluent Norwegian (except for me, but I am getting better).

In other multicultural news, I attended my post-exam party along with my fellow students who took level 3 Norwegian at NTNU this Fall.  We held the party at Den Gode Nabo.  The photos were taken by a fellow student's spouse.

From Thailand and China

Me n' our Norsklærer

Students from Iran, Germany, Spain, Spain and Germany  

Most of the students in our Norwegian class are graduate students at NTNU.  Others are married to academic employees of the university.  A few of us were admitted because of our strong educational background (There is a waiting list).  Last year, I took Norwegian through the city's language program.  Other immigrants take classes at the community college.  Immigrants coming to Norway after January 2012 must take 550 hours of Norwegian and 50 hours of Norwegian Social Studies.  I think that is great.

The Christmas Season in Norway

The last month has been clear, cold and beautiful.  It has been much drier than normal for this part of Norway.  Since the first week of November it has snowed only twice, and for just an hour or two.  The streets have been dry and ice-free.  But it has been cold!  In the teens and twenties much of the time, although the other night when we drove back from town the thermometer in our car dipped to 1 degree farenheit, which is the coldest I've ever seen here in Trondheim.

I turned in my term paper (coincidentally on adapting to Norwegian weather) and took my final exam (6 hours) and oral exam (15 minutes) in Norwegian at the university.  I am fairly certain that I passed, although I doubt that my grade will be very high.  

Our experience in the US is that the Christmas Season is launched by the Thanksgiving Holiday.  In Norway it is the first Sunday of Advent that gets everyone into the Christmas spirit.  We like Advent.  Tove and I have a wooden candelabra shaped like an elongated pig.  The candelabra supports 4 purple candles.  On the first Advent Sunday, one candle is lit.  Then on each subsequent Sunday an additional candle is lit until the 4th Sunday, when all 4 candles are illuminated.  I'll post a picture when all 4 are lit.

The last few times we have gone shopping we have been entertained by Christmas choirs.  My impression is that Norway abounds with amateur choral groups and most are not associated with churches, but rather just formed by people who like to sing.  We have several friends and relatives who sing in choirs.

December 13 is Sankta Lucia (St. Lucy) day.  Lucy is the patron saint of the blind.  Her name is derived from the Latin word for light.  Watch this video to see how many in Norway celebrate this day and other Christmas traditions:

The lyrics, translated roughly are:

Darkness brings the night

Over our stables and homes.

The sun has gone its way.

 The shadows that loom

Within our darkened houses

Are brightened with lighted candles

Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!

As the night is dark and silent.

The silence is suddenly broken

in all the hushed rooms

by the sound of wings fluttering.

Look who is at the door

white clad with lights in her hair

Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!

"The darkness soon will flee
from the world's valleys"
She speaks to us these wondrous words.
The day shall once again dawn.
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia

The literal translation makes less sense, so this is my attempt at giving meaning to the song.