Monthly Archives: April 2021

“Askeladden Som Kappåt Med Trollet” – Norwegian Tale

Nationality: Norwegian-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Norwegian

Description of Informant

NF (21) is a Norwegian-American, born and raised in Trondheim, Norway before coming to Colorado for middle school. She is fluent in Norwegian and English, is a trained dancer, and presently studies screenwriting and acting at the University of Southern California.

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Context of Performance

The informant, NF, sits in her bedroom opposite the collector, BK, her friend and classmate.

Performance

NF: So this is… a Norwegian fairytale that I first became familiar with because it was in a Norwegian fairytale book that was read to me when I was young. But, it was also turned into a movie. And it’s a really old movie, it’s gotta be claymation. And it’s bizarre, and it’s kind of creepy, but just seeing the poster of that movie, I was like “oh yeah, I definitely watched this movie a ton when I was a kid.” It’s still very nostalgic and it triggers a lot of memories. So fairytale-turned-movie.

NF: It’s called… and I can spell this out for you later, but’s called Askeladden som kappåt med trollet. Which means… Askeladden is the main character’s name, and it pretty much means “Ash-Boy.” Like Cinderella but he’s a boy. And then som kappåt med trollet which means “who fought the troll” [informant corrects this title later, see Collector’s Reflection]. Cuz trolls are like huge figures in all of Norwegian fairy tales. We have troll statues everywhere. It’s a big part of the culture. So this is what I remember from it.

NF: It’s about this boy, who has two older brothers. And he’s the smaller, younger one. So he’s kind of confined to just cleaning the house and sitting by the hearth. You know, Cinderella again. And I think… the dad needs wood… for the fire? So he sends out the oldest son to go chop down a tree. And when the first son goes he hears a troll that goes like, you know, “You’re chopping down the trees in my forest! I’ll eat you!” And he goes, “Oh no!” and he runs home. So the dad says, “You’re a wimp.” And he sends out the second son and he is a wimp too. He encounters the troll and comes running back.

NF: So finally, the youngest son is like, “I’ll go!” And they’re like, “Haha sure you will.” So he packs a little lunch, and he goes out, and he hears the troll. And I think— I really hope this is right because if I make this up it’s bizarre— but I think he takes out a block of cheese. And he squeezes it. And you know sometimes cheese has liquid in it? So the liquid comes out and so he’s looking at this troll and he’s like, “No, you’re gonna chop down this tree or I’ll hurt you! And this is a white rock.” So he pretends the cheese is a rock and that he’s capable of drawing water from stone. But it’s cheese. So basically he terrifies the troll, and the troll is like, “No don’t hurt me! I’ll do whatever you want.” So he basically gets the troll to cut down all this timber and to go fetch water and all these things that he is supposed to do himself. 

NF: Finally, for whatever reason, they end up at the troll’s house It’s probably like the sun’s going down, it’s late, the troll lives closer than the little boy so he’s like, “Why don’t you come back to my place?” Back to the troll’s place. And the boy has now scared the bejeezus out of the troll. So he has the troll doing his bidding. And what he does, is they’re eating porridge. I think it’s porridge, because porridge is a very popular, traditional cultural food in Norway. They’re eating porridge, and somehow the kid makes it seem like he’s eating an endless amount of porridge. He probably cuts a hole in the bowl, or does something bizarre that I can’t remember. But he eats so much porridge, supposedly, and he forces the troll to keep up with him. It’s basically a masculinity battle. He’s like, “Oh you’re a wuss! You can’t eat as much as I can? Keep up!” And the troll becomes so full that he can’t move. So he passes out, and the young boy runs away. He gets away and he has, you know, the timber for his family.

NF: So yeah, that was a very popular story. And I think that’s how it ends.

Collector’s Reflection

Askeladden som kappåt med trollet actually translates to “Askeladden, who had an eating match with the troll.” The story seems to follow the traditional “rule of threes,” where two failed attempts precede the final, successful attempt. In this case, that means Askeladden’s two brothers, who failed to beat the troll, and Askeladden himself. Many tales include this three-part structure, including another performance by the informant NF. For the tale Reve-enka, please visit this link:________.

Below is the poster of the claymation film adaptation that NF was familiar with growing up.

“Cheshm Zadan” (The Evil Eye) – Persian Superstition

Nationality: Persian-American
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired Teacher
Residence: San Ramon, CA
Performance Date: April 18, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Description of Informant

NV (75) is a retired school teacher born in Abadan, Iran. She went to boarding school in England from 1956-1963, moving to American for college afterward. She always remembers her arrival in the states, as it was the day before Kennedy was assassinated. Currently, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

— 

Context of Interview

The informant, NV, sits on a loveseat, feet planted on a brightly colored Persian rug. She is opposite the collector, BK, her grandson. Most text spoken in Farsi is rewritten phonetically using Roman characters and italicized. Some Farsi is translated and italicized for efficiency.

Interview

BK: Tell me about your superstitions.

NV: Oh! I have a lot of superstitions. You don’t want to hear about all that. Oh, I always say “pinch your butt!” That’s an Iranian one, “pinch your butt.” I say that all the time. For instance, if [my daughter] is saying something nice about [my granddaughter], I’ll tell her “pinch your butt! pinch your butt!” so straight away she pinches her butt. If you compliment someone, but you don’t want something bad to happen to them, you say “pinch your butt.” Or at least I do. And now [my daughter] does it, everybody does it, but it comes from Iran. 

NV: It’s a Persian thing. Cheshm zadan. Do you know cheshm zadan? That’s a very superstitious thing in Iran. Like, they say some people have the “Evil Eye.” You know? Yeah, the evil eye. Like if somebody looks at you and— for instance, we had gone to [visit] my dad’s side of the family in Tehran. And that night, they had complimented [my daughter] a lot. “Oh what a cutie she is!” She was like 3 years old. “How cute!” That very night, she walked in the middle of the night to come from her bed to our bed, and she hit the corner of her forehead and split it open and we had to have three stitches. We had to take her to the emergency room for three stitches! From that day on, everybody said “cheshmesh zadan“. They kept saying that, in that house when they were saying she was so cute, cheshmesh zadan. So someone gave her the evil eye and that’s why that bad thing happened. That’s a very big superstition with Iranians.

BK: How does pinch my butt come into it?

NV: No idea! They just say “pinch your butt!” Like in English you’d say cross your fingers. Pinch your butt, or koonat rah veshnkoon begeer.

BK: And that’s how you “undo” the evil eye?

NV: Yeah. Now, some people, they believe that if you give a compliment you should follow it with mashallah. You know, like, if you say “this child is so beautiful, mashallah” then you’re taking away the evil eye. The thing that, like [my cousin] she really believes in the evil eye. You know the eye, like the blue stone, she’s got it all over her house. That’s a big superstition. They got it hanging over the doors, they got it all over. I don’t have any of those. But this cheshm zadan is really something.

NV: My cousin is known for giving the eye. My mom had bought these fancy stockings from England. I mean really nice, with decorative holes in them, top of the fashion, right? She’s sitting there at a party, and her legs are crossed and looking gorgeous. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then my cousin says “What beautiful socks you have!” And that very minute— everybody laughed their heads off— that very minute, it got a run in it. You know what a run is? It tore. You know the stockings that are nylon? If you cut a little bit it just *tearing noise* starts to run, it messes it up. She’s known for having the evil eye. “Cheshm mezanan!”

Collector’s Reflection

چشم زدن (phonetically cheshm zadan) is one of the greatest of Persian superstitions. The term literally means to glare, but free translates to jinx someone/something. If you compliment someone without protecting the compliment, you risk jinxing it, causing something bad to happen to the referenced trait (e.g. compliment the face = facial injury, compliment the socks = socks are ruined). The jinx concept is often referred to as the Evil Eye, and shares a space with similar Mediterranean traditions (many are familiar with the blue glass evil eyes that decorate many middle eastern and mediterranean homes). An individual known for jinxing or giving the evil eye (such as the informant’s cousin) would be said to have “salty eyes” (چشمش شور, cheshmesh shooreh).

There are many ways to dispel of the evil eye, such as the aforementioned religious (ماشالله) mashallah or the secular pinching of one’s butt (كونت را وشگون بگير, koonat rah veshnkoon begeer). The latter is the equivalent of the American crossing of one’s fingers to block a bad omen/jinx. One may also burn esphand (wild rue seeds), the smoke of which is said to cleanse the air and prevent bad omens, such as the eye.

Another evil eye story comes from my (the collector’s) other grandmother. When my father was born, she began producing an incredible amount of milk. She was the envy of the town for this display of fertility. One day, she was out with a friend when her breasts started to leak. Out of surprise, her friend exclaimed, “Wow! You have so much milk!” And that was the end of it. That evening, she didn’t have enough to feed her son, and they had to run to the market in the middle of the night for powdered milk. From then on, she barely produced a drop. They said her friend gave her the evil eye, and jinxed her.

Conkers – English Children’s Game

Nationality: Persian-American
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired Teacher
Residence: San Ramon, CA
Performance Date: April 18, 2021
Primary Language: English

Description of Informant

NV (75) is a retired school teacher born in Abadan, Iran. She went to boarding school in England from 1956-1963, moving to American for college afterward. She always remembers her arrival in the states, as it was the day before Kennedy was assassinated. Currently, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

—

Context of Interview

The informant, NV, sits on a loveseat, feet planted on a brightly colored Persian rug. She is opposite the collector, BK, her grandson.

Interview

BK: What are some childhood games from your time in either England or Iran?

NV: I know something called Conker. It’s these things that grow out of the trees and we would take it and put a nail in it and tie a string on it. We’d have to borrow the hammer. And then we would have a battle with it and hit it [our Conkers] and try to break them— that you know have it hanging and you go whack! Hit it, and see how many hits would take to break that— like a fruit. It was a hard fruit that grew. You don’t eat it. It’s just something like this *makes a ball with her fist* called Conker, or something. That was in England.

NV: Boys and girls played it. So it wasn’t just for the boys, the girls played it too. It was fun because sometimes it would hit your face or fly all over the place. A lot of the time the nail would fall off and you’d have to start all over making another one.

BK: Were there winners and losers?

NV: Sure! Your Conker would hit the other person’s Conker, to see who’s broke first. And when you won you’d be so excited and crying with laughter, “I got it, I got it!” and all that nonsense.

Collector’s Reflection

The nut used in Conkers is the seed of the horse chestnut tree, native to the UK. Thus, the game was prevalent only in Great Britain and Ireland, as the tree was not common elsewhere in the world. The nickname for these seeds is actually derived from the game, not the other way around. Conkers comes from a dialect term for “knock out,” though there are several possible origins for the name.

There are many rules and scoring procedures for Conkers which vary from region to region, school to school. However, the informant was not able to recall any complicated scoring mechanism. This may be due to memory loss, but it is just as possible that her school played a more rudimentary version of Conkers.

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For more information on Conkers, including rules and variations, please see:

“All About Conkers”. worldconkerchampionships.com. Ashton Conker Club. Retrieved 24 April 2021.

LINK: https://web.archive.org/web/20161025235221/http://www.worldconkerchampionships.com/html/conkers_about.html

Aperitivo – Italian Ritual

Nationality: Italian-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Berkeley, CA
Performance Date: April 14, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian

Description of Informant

AG (18) is an Italian-American dual citizen and high school student from Berkeley, CA. At home, she speaks primarily Italian, and spends her summers in Italy.

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Context of Interview

The informant, AG, sits in the kitchen with her father and the collector, BK, her step-brother. Text spoken in Italian is italicized, but not translated.

Interview

BK: What’s aperitivo? Aperitivi?

AG: Basically it’s like… actually? I miss Italy *laughing*. Here in America, like, if you want to do something with someone, you have to kind of like have an excuse to do something with someone. Like “Okay let’s go to the movies,” or “Okay, let’s go to an amusement park.” You know? You’re never just walking around downtown, not really. In Italy, you just say “Oh, you want to go out?” Like that’s it. No reason. You just go out, someone walks to the front of someone else’s house, you know, whatever. And you start walking and you keep walking until you sit down somewhere to have a drink. And the drink is called an aperitivo.

BK: Is the activity called aperitivo? Like the process of going to get an aperitivo? And is the aperitivo a specific drink, or just any drink consumed during the activity?

AG: Yes… it’s like… those little midday snacks. Or midday drinks. You usually have them in the evening. The drink can be anything but it’s usually alcoholic.

*At this point, AG‘s father EG (52) interjects*

EG: You guys are gonna disagree with me on this, but I insist, and [AG] I think you’ll agree with me when you get back from Spain… it’s very much like tapas in Spain. Tapas is not a meal in Spain. It’s never a meal. It’s a snack.

AG: What is tapas?

EG: Tapas. Oh it’s very popular. It’s like small plates. But here in America, they completely misinterpreted it as like small plates that are shared, as meals. But in Spain it’s never a meal. It’s aperitivo, it’s a snack. But it’s later, too, because everything’s later in Spain.

AG: That’s similar in Italy. Like the whole culture around eating— everything is different. Like that “gastronomical culture.” Yeah it’s like everything is pushed two or three hours later. Like having dinner in the summer at like 10pm is not abnormal. And then, you have like literally snacks throughout the whole day. And like, yeah you have you breakfast, and then you usually have merenda, and then you have pranzo which is— oh, merenda is snack, and pranzo which is lunch— and then an aperitivo or two in the evening, and then you have cena which is dinner. Sometimes another merenda before dinner. Then desert. And that’s always how it is! 

BK: So going back to aperitivo, aperitivi, what’s the difference?

AG: Aperitivo is singular, aperitivi is plural.

BK: How would you ask someone on an aperitivo?

AG: Prende, take. Would you like to take an aperitivo? Like do you want to go out for one? Or you’d just ask someone to walk to the bar or restaurant with you.

BK: Is there a literal translation for aperitivo? Does it mean appetizer, pre-dinner?

AG: No, no. I would define it as a drink you have in the evening with a friend, usually one friend. You would never have an aperitivo alone. That’s weird. It’s all about the social. In Italy, food is social, period.

Collector’s Reflection

Put simply, aperitivo is a pre-meal drink, usually alcoholic, meant to whet one’s palate or “open the stomach.” It’s an extremely social ritual, as with many aspects of Italian culture. The term seems to derive from Latin for “opener” (as in opening one’s stomach in anticipation of dinner). 

One may immediately draw a comparison to American “Happy Hour” rituals, wherein peers gather over drinks in the early evening: well after lunch, but too early for dinner. These ritual gatherings do not often “limit” the number of attendees; it is interesting to note that the informant specified two individuals to an aperitivo gathering. AG clarifies that more may be present, but in her experience, it has been a one-on-one affair.

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For an in-depth exploration of the Aperitivo ritual, please see:

Mussio, Gina. “The Art of the Aperitivo: The Best Italian Tradition That You’ve Never Tried.” Walks of Italy, 2 Mar. 2017, www.walksofitaly.com/blog/food-and-wine/aperitivo-in-italy-what-it-is-and-how-to-enjoy-one.

La Befana – Italian Christmas Witch

Nationality: Italian-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Berkeley, CA
Performance Date: April 14, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian

Description of Informant

AG (18) is an Italian-American dual citizen and high school student from Berkeley, CA. At home, she speaks primarily Italian, and spends her summers in Italy.

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Context of Interview

The informant, AG, sits in the kitchen with her father and the collector, BK, her step-brother. Text spoken in Italian is italicized, but not translated.

Interview

AG: So, in Italy, obviously, they have Christmas. But here in America people usually hang their stockings over the fireplace during Christmastime, right? Santa Clause comes and brings them a few extra goodies in their stockings. But in Italy, what you do, is basically you get your gifts on Christmas. And the next month, in January, La Befana comes— I don’t remember if it’s before or after Christmas, but you know— umm, she comes. And she brings you, if you’re a bad child, no if you’re a good child she brings you candies and toys and a bit of money or spare change or whatever. And then, if you’re a bad child, she brings you coal! And our mom, all the time, there’s these candies in Italy that they sell a lot during this time period. They’re wrapped in black and it’s like hard chocolate, like chunky chocolate that looks like coal. So basically you would just put this candy in the stocking, and it looks like coal, so the child is like “oh no! I’ve been a bad child!” But then actually it’s just chocolate. You know?

BK: What is La Befana? Is it a human? Creature?

AG: Oh! Sorry, yeah La Befana means “The Witch.” But she’s a good witch.

BK: How is she depicted? What does she look like?

AG: Umm I don’t think it really goes into as much depth as Santa Clause. Kind of like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Yeah like flying on the broom with the hat.

BK: Does she come on a specific day or is it always a surprise?

AG: No it is a specific day I’m just forgetting the date. I think it’s in January or February but I’m not sure. And then also, something I just remembered, here we have the Tooth Fairy. There you have Il… uhh… hmm I’m forgetting. But like, same thing with the Tooth Fairy like maybe everyone has a different version of the Tooth Fairy in their minds. Right? Like is she a pocket-sized fairy or is she a larger fairy?

BK: Or is she Dwayne Johnson. Have you seen that movie? Where he plays the Tooth Fairy.

AG: Oh that’s funny. Or is it Dwayne Johnson? Same thing with the witch, like who knows what she looks like?

BK: You mentioned coal-shaped chocolate. Is it a substitute for coal as-in you’d receive it if you were naughty? Or is it a trick to make good children think they got a punishment, when in reality they got a treat?

AG: I think it’s just a trick, yeah. We usually would get toys every year and then one year our mom did this to us and we were like “What!?” At first, we were really surprised and kinda hurt, but then it was just chocolate so we were fine. And it’s not like you get a big toy, it’s just a stocking stuffer, like a pen or a slinky.

*At this point, AG‘s father EG (52) interjects to correct the date*

EG: [La Befana comes] on “The Feast of the Epiphany,” which is January 6th. Or 5th?

Collector’s Reflection

EG is correct; La Befana comes on January 5th: “The Feast of Epiphany,” the celebration of the visit of the three kings to newborn Jesus Christ. She resembles a kindly old grandmother, and, in addition to depositing gifts for the children, is known for tidying up a bit.

La Befana‘s legend is tied to the religious origin of Christmas, which may reflect why she has not been widely adopted in the United States: a region where Christmas is a greater celebration of capitalism than religion. However, her role of stuffing stockings and leaving bad children coal has been co-opted by the American Santa Claus. In contemporary America, the practice of giving coal is kept alive in name only. Generally, all children who celebrate the holiday, good or bad, receive gifts. From the informant’s perspective, the same appears true in Italy. However, the introduction of the coal-shaped chocolate keeps the tradition alive, while not entirely punishing the recipient.

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For the legend of La Befana‘s origin, and a discussion of the treats she brings, please see:

Thimmesch, Debra. “The Legend of La Befana.” ItaliaRail, 20 Dec. 2019, www.italiarail.com/culture/legend-la-befana.