Tag Archives: norway

Uff da

Context: EC is a white graduate student at USC studying linguistics. Up until attending USC, she lived in Pasadena, California. That being said, her dad is from Iowa, and her mom is from Indiana. I asked EC if there were any sayings that she learned as a kid from her family or community, and she responded with this folk saying. The word is used in casual conversation as an exclamation.

Text: One is from my dad’s side, which I always thought of is one word but apparently it’s two words, and it’s called uuf da. It comes from I think Norway or Scandinavia because my dad’s grandfather was from Sweden. It’s funny because my mom says phew, so when I was little I combined then, so now I say phewfda. Uff da, it’s kind of like… if you go to Minnesota, there will be merchandise with uff da on it because there are so many Scandinavian people in Minnesota. Basically uff da, you just kind of say it when something not big has happened. But it’s like “oh man uff da, that was really hard.” It doesn’t have a negative context, but you wouldn’t say “uff da that was so exciting!” It’s always like “ugh, uff da, that was a difficult test,” or “uff da, that was a workout.” It’s never for anything super bad, or at least how my family uses it, and honestly I’m not really sure what it translates to, but I think it’s one of those things like “ugh.”

“Uff da”


Thoughts/Analysis: From what I can gather, there’s no direct translation for uff da: it’s onomatopoeia like “oof” in English. It’s really an exclamation to express and release tension. Being onomatopoeia, different languages have different spellings for similar noises. I’ve used oof before, but it seems as though uff da is very specific to Scandinavians and those from that ancestry. EC’s combination of phew and uff da is especially interesting, exemplifying how the blending of cultures can impact the folklore that people spread. She’s the first to use it in her family, but as she ages and has children, her new version may spread as a fusion: an example of polygenesis in real time.

Norwegian Christmas Dessert

Text:

“My dad’s side of the family is Norwegian; we have a big family reunion for Christmas. We have a dessert tradition where you hide a nut in one of the desserts and then pass out a bunch of little portions of the dessert and if you have the nut, you win a prize. There is a kid prize and an adult prize. The prize differs – nowadays it’s money or a gift card but it used to be a toy for the kids and a bottle of wine or something for the adults.”

Context:

EK is a 19-year-old American student at USC. She described a family tradition that occurred during Christmas celebrations. She believes the family tradition of hiding a nut in the dessert comes from her Norwegian roots. She was raised in Northern California. 

Interpretation:

This is a tradition I remember hearing of at one point in my life, but I have never done it myself. Traditions like this are extra special because they connect you to your family’s past – in this case, Norway. It can be touching to do a tradition like this and think of all the ancestors who came before you who did something similar. Interestingly enough, when I tried to look this tradition up, it seemed that it exists in both Norway (“Norwegian Christmas Traditions”, n.d.) and Sweden (Duxbury, n.d.). It is obvious that traditions like these have variation across nearby cultures and they have likely existed predating some of the countries themselves. Also interesting is that the words for the pudding the nut is found in are quite similar – “risengrynsgrøt” in Norway and “Risgrynsgröt” in Sweden. While my informant didn’t specify what kind of nut, it seems it is generally an almond. And in both cases, it seems common to do the desert tradition around Christmas, with a reward for the winner. My informant’s family’s prize isn’t the same as either the Norwegian prize (Marzipan Pig) or the Swedish one (some sort of task). Her family prize is different each year and there is a prize for kids and adults separately, which means there are two hidden nuts and two winners. Thus, we can see the hallmark multiplicity and variation in this holiday tradition. This tradition is likely widespread in the Scandinavian countries and was brought here when ancestors migrated to the United States. 

Annotations/References:

Duxbury, John. “Rice Pudding or Porridge (Risgrynsgröt).” SwedishFood.com, Swedish Food, www.swedishfood.com/swedish-food-recipes-desserts/389-rice-pudding. 

“Norwegian Christmas Traditions.” Visitoslo.com, Oslo Vistor Centre, www.visitoslo.com/en/articles/christmas-traditions/. 

Hunting Trolls

Background: Informant has a Norwegian background from his fathers’s side and was raised being told about these Norwegian traditions and holidays, and this anecdote was told to me over a FaceTime call.

Informant: We would have a special toll hunt on the seventeenth of May… or syttende mai. Kind of like an easter egg hunt but trolls.

Me: Why did you hunt trolls?

Informant: Umm… it’s because trolls have a negative connotation, like how you’re supposed to clean your house in Chinese tradition on Chinese New Year to get out the bad luck… for us it was trolls.

Me: Did you get a prize for finding the trolls?

Informant: Yeah, we would get rewarded in chocolate.

Thoughts: Syttende mai in Norway is also known as Constitution Day, which is an official public holiday throughout the country. Essentially, it’s a country-wide party—people dress up in traditional costumes, with a lot of parades and drinking and ice cream. Syttende mai is not celebrated in any large way outside of Norway, as it would be like celebrating the Fourth of July as an Irish person—it just doesn’t really make sense to. It’s interesting to me how the informant’s mother brought together various folklores in order to give her children meaning on syttende mai as children born and raised in America. Trolls in Norway are seen to be creatures that are evil and dangerous, and beings that belong in the wilderness, not by the home, so there is even meaning behind the act of hunting trolls in Norwegian folklore, especially since the informant was rewarded for finding the trolls.

Norwegians Are Born With Skis On Their Feet

Background: Informant has a Norwegian background from his fathers’s side and was raised being told about these Norwegian traditions and holidays, and this anecdote was told to me over a FaceTime call.

Informant: Norwegians are born with skis on their feet. It’s an old Norwegian expression just because Norwegians are good at skiing and winter sports.

Me: Where did you hear it?

Informant: My great-grandma told me about it. 

Thoughts: This one is pretty self-explanatory, but there’s something funny about how straightforward it is as an expression. It is also a pretty well-known fact that Norwegian people are especially good at winter sports—they’re known in the Olympics as “the ones to beat,” and even now Norway holds the most medals in the winter olympics. 

NORWEGIAN TROLLS

MAIN PIECE:

Informant: So… Trolls are what people think of when they think of Norway, I guess… But people don’t actually believe in trolls, I don’t think… It’s kind of like to make childhood exciting, I think. You know how we have these little hikes in the woods where supposedly the trolls live, and you know, they make all these little adventure trails for kids focusing around trolls. And at the cross country ski races there would be troll mascots, right? Mhm.

Interviewer: What are some characteristics of trolls? 

Informant: Maybe a little rascal-like. Not mean, but mischievous… Bushy. Lots of hair… And very small… Big nose. Big ears… Bad teeth… There are big trolls… But when I think of them, I think of them as little trolls… I don’t have a strong attachment to trolls I guess, I don’t know.

Interviewer: But they are like a national symbol? 

Informant: Yeah, they are… They’re in a lot of our fairy tales and stuff…  I don’t know if trolls are officially a national symbol… Or if it’s something people play off of ‘cause they think it’s cool, and it draws tourists. I don’t know. 

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Interviewer: Do you know why trolls are such a big national thing?

Informant: I don’t know where it comes from. I’ve never really… Maybe it has to do with the nature in Norway… I’d be curious to know actually. 

Interviewer: So what’s up with all the troll statues everywhere? 

Informant: Oh yeah… I’ve never even thought about that… I don’t know why that is… Like there’s a big one in Oppdal, but Oppdal is such like a… Rural community, you know? I’m sure that tales are even more… What do you call it….? More prevalent, there. Like I’m sure there’s even more focus on tradition, and that traditions are even stronger in a place like that where it’s so rural and everybody lives on a farm almost.

Interviewer: Were trolls as prevalent when you were growing up?

Informant: Probably. Just not in my life, you know……? Actually! Growin’ up, I had kind of like a troll-looking doll that was really cute. That my mom would like knit clothes for, you know? And I would bring him as my mascot to gymnastic competitions and stuff. And my friend had one too and we’d play with them all the time. 

REFLECTION:

There is no denying that trolls are a large part of Norwegian culture. And yet, the informant does not feel much attachment to them as creatures or symbols; she does not have much information on trolls, nor has she given them much thought throughout her life. This suggests that the emphasis on trolls may indeed be primarily a tourist draw, as tourists may find more appeal in symbols than locals do. In “Early Travellers in Borneo” in Tourism in South-East Asia, Graham Saunders writes, “Travellers…today arrive with certain expectations. They carry with them an idea or image of Borneo, an image which tourist brochures have conveyed” (Saunders 271). Tourists have expectations pertaining to their destination. They are on the outside looking in, and may thus attach themselves to symbols that seemingly represent the place they are visiting; it makes a foreign place easier to understand and digest.

In his book Trolls: An Unnatural History, John Lindow writes, “For centuries…trolls were found only in the landscape of Scandinavia. They were ‘nature beings…’ Their home environment was a pre-industrial society in which people lived by farming and fishing, often on a small scale” (Lindow 9). Trolls largely originated as Scandinavian figures. They are thought to be encountered in nature, and Norway is a landscape made up of forests, fjords, mountains, rivers, and so on. Norway was also a rural place for a long time, and there are still active farming and fishing communities. Trolls may then fit the tourists’ expectations of what Norway is supposed to be like: rural and woodsy. The tourists’ expectations may in turn fuel what tourist brochures, etc. convey, as the tourist industry aims to draw more people in using the tangible symbols that seem to be working (such as trolls).

ANNOTATIONS:

Sources cited above (Note: Also see Lindow’s book for further reading on trolls):

Lindow, John. Trolls: An Unnatural History. Reaktion Books, 2014. 

Saunders, Graham. “Early Travellers in Borneo.” Tourism in South-East Asia, by Michael Hitchcock et al., Routledge, 1993.