Category Archives: general

Nisse of Norway (Norwegian Santa)

Nationality: Naas
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scotland
Performance Date: 04/27/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Norwegian, Old English, Old Norse, Old Scottish

Main Content:

I: informant, R: roommate M: me

I: So it’s a Christmas tradition, like, so we have Santa but it’s not that kind of Santa, it’s like a little gnome

R:*laughs* Gnome?

I: No yeah it’s like, not very tall, its like a little dwarf situation going on, but you leave out like porridge for him Christmas Eve so he doesn’t come and like um mess with your house or like tie you up or something

R+M: *laugh*

M: I love that!

R: *inaudible dialogue…* kidnapping at times..

I: no no yeah you have to please,, it comes from farm…farming, I think, so like farmsteads. So we would have like, they would be like caretakers of your, like they would take care of your animals and like watch out for your farm and stuff and then you left out food for them and we still do that. Cause I think you leave cookies and milk in the US?

M: Yeah

R: But that’s for Santa 

I: But it’s the same kind of situation, except you do it to like you know give a gift for your like uncle gnomes or whatever

M: yeah that’s so cute

Context: This is a practice that my informant has been doing since he was a little boy. The Norwegian legend of ‘Santa’ is different and thus their offering and practices are different as well.

Analysis: The Norwegian’s legend of ‘Santa’ is very different from the American telling, showing multiplicity and variation in the lore. The origins of these gnomes came with the Norwegian farmsteads wherein these gnomes would be responsible for the success or failure of the farms so in order to please the caretakers- as in many other cultures- offerings are made. In this case, porridge. In the US we offer milk and cookies and good behavior in exchange for gifts. These gnomes come around the winter solstice/ Christmas time, which is another common occurrence; folklore and celebrations often to be align with the solar calendar which can be representative of the life cycle.

For another version of this legend see: Varga, Eva. “The Nisse of Norway.” Eva Varga, 4 Nov. 2013, evavarga.net/the-nisse-of-norway/. 

Fairy Circles

Nationality: American, Ancestral: Scottish, Germanic
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scotland
Performance Date: 04/27/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Main Content:

M= Me. I= informant

I: And then fairy circles. As a kid I was never allowed to walk in fairy circles.

M: I don’t know what a fairy circle is. What is that? 

I: Yeah, so you know, um when you see like those rings of mushrooms

M: Uh-huh (in agreement)

I: Or just like a patch of grass that’s dead in a circle

M: Yeah

I: Like those are called fairy circles. And um, I don’t know a lot about the background, but my parents always said like if you stepped in one then fairies would come and like replace you with a fairy

M: Ohhhhhhh, okay. Like a changling?

I: Kind of, yeah.

M: Okay

I: Or, or they just kidnap you. In general. Not even…

M: Okay, not even changed, just take you away *laughing*

I: Yeah

…

M:Do you think it came from you mom’s side? The fairy stuff? Or from a mix of the two

I: Um, I think *sighs* I think it was a mix of the two. The Germanic stuff was always scarier stuff

Context: She said that it was a mix of both her parents who passed this down to her, which makes sense given that her mother’s Scottish side has a strong history of fairies, while her father’s side has a history of scarier child tales or teachings(German) thus fairy circles would be a good mix of the two. While she no longer believes in them today, she still avoids what are deemed ‘fairy circles’ out of habit, for entertainment, and as a reminder of her parents.

Analysis: This depiction of fairies is consistent with the other lore I’ve read about fairies wherein they are mischievous creatures that will take power if given the opportunity. In this instance, by stepping into the fairy’s territory, you are giving over dominion by being on their ‘turf’ and thus they can snatch you. Additionally, with many other pedagogical teachings in folklore this has the consistent theme of kidnapping, which we have seen used throughout various cultures to steer children away from doing certain things or going to particular places.

Trojan Knights: Involvement at Football Games

Nationality: Jewish, American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4 May 2021
Primary Language: English

Context: Football rivalries are often a major driving force behind school spirit. The Trojan Knights is a USC sponsored organization dedicated to keeping the history and traditions of USC alive, which includes traditions surrounding their rivalry with UCLA. The Knights are known for their shows of school spirit during football games, so informant MF, a member and previous Archivist for the Knights, describes the legacy of the Trojan Knights’ traditions involving USC football games. 

Main Piece: By MF’s account, the Trojan Knights’ involvement at football games probably started in the 20s, where the founding Knights acted as Yell Leaders, who would lead the students in chanting for the football team. This was before the Song Girls or the Spirit Team, USC’s two cheerleading organizations, were created. 

Likely during the 40s or 50s, when the rivalry between USC and UCLA became more heated, the Trojan Knights began coordinating Card Stunts. During halftime, hundreds of people in the student section would raise signs with different colors or pictures on them to create a word or image. MF says that there would often be four or five images, and you’d have a Knight at the bottom holding up a sign for which image the students would hold up next in their sequence. When Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, they asked the Trojan Knights to perform “the largest card stunt ever done,” which was “basically like an entire half of the Coliseum holding up the Olympic rings during a USC football game.”

These are examples MF gave of Card Stunts, provided by the Trojan Knights Archive. The Card Stunt of Traveler in black and white is from 1925, where the whole student section wore white and the Traveler students held up black signs.

Despite the flashy and exciting nature of the Card Stunts, in the 90s the Trojan Knights shifted away from that and towards Painting. Painting is where 8-12 “members of the org are painted with body paint. On the front of their chest they have a letter and their whole chest is painted to look like a jersey, and on their back they have a number that usually corresponds to some of the big players.” Painting is the Trojan Knights’ preferred way to rep school spirit at the football games, and when the Painted members are in a line together they spell out a message for the crowd. The messages can range from simple school spirit to jokes about the team that USC is playing; “sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s just fight on, sometimes it’s puns with the player’s names… When we play the Oregon Ducks, we like to paint ‘Duck Hunt’ as a reference to the NES game.”

When I asked MF why the flamboyant Card Stunts were replaced with Painting, he said that it’s because of the changes in how football games are viewed. “A lot of the reason it’s changed is because football games are now broadcast to the entire nation.” Because modern digital cameras have zoom features, it’s easier to get the painted people on camera than a Card Stunt. The Painted members are always visible during the game, making it easy for sports channels to put a camera on them. By contrast, Card Stunts are only feasible at halftime, when the sports cameras are off anyways. MF says that, while some people are sad that Card Stunts have gone away, it’s a great example of how the Knights have to adapt traditions to modern times. 

Thoughts: I believe that the traditions of Trojan Knights involvement at football games is really important for both school spirit and tradition keeping at USC. I think that the Yell Leading and Card Stunt practices were both incredibly unifying traditions, and that it’s sad to see them go because of how the student section got to work together to make it all work. However, for school spirit, it’s now just as likely that USC students or families around the world will see the Knights’ Painting on TV, and that small unifying act of school spirit scales up! The fact that this is done at every home game makes it all the more influential and impressive. 

The Drug That Wasn’t

Nationality: Indian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student/Musician
Residence: Mumbai, India
Performance Date: 29/04/21
Primary Language: English

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘L’. Translations for any words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is a 20-year-old non-binary transfeminine musician, born and raised in Mumbai.

I: So you have something that originates within the musical space, but isn’t about music?

L: Yeah! So, it’s kind of… an urban thing, not really ancient or out there, it’s niche. But it’s really interesting, because the way it spread around was really cool, because it’s false. So, when I was about thirteen-fourteen and at this music school where I used to study after normal school, this bunch of punks, this band called Mommy’s Not Home [they laugh], told me about this… this text, sort of a cookbook. It’s pretty dated, pretty subculture-ish, and has many weird details about how to break into ATMs—in the ‘90s—, make IEDs, extract psychoactive chemicals, et cetera, et cetera. Most of the techniques described in there were real, right? So, me, being a too-inquisitive thirteen-fourteen year old… I read it. So, I read it, perused through it, and I’m not going to go into the finer details of how to break into a ‘90s ATM in America—

I: You don’t have to.

L: Great. But what especially interested me were all the drug recipes, right? And one stood out to me, because I’d never really heard of it before. And, at this point, I think I was pretty well-read about these things. I was a young, punk musician who hung out with older stoner-kids. I was into punk and stuff, and that’s how I heard of this whole thing. But I was always kind of told not to talk about it in public, right? I tried and this guy who was one of the people who introduced me to it was immediately, like, ‘Hey, listen, you can’t talk about this out here, out in the open,’ which just… intrigued me further.

I: Why do you think they didn’t want you talking about it?

L: Because it detailed various criminal activities… So, basically, back to this, it was a recipe of this drug called Bananadine. It detailed an extraction of this drug called bananadine, and first of all, I’d never heard of this drug—why was it called bananadine? Why was there ‘banana’ in its name? [They laugh] So, it detailed, like, how to extract this from the skin of a banana to smoke it, for similar effects to marijuana, except more psychedelic. 

I: Did you have any experience with it, in the sense that, did you ever try it? When you told people about it, what did you say?

L: Right, so, me, since I didn’t have the same tools, I didn’t try it out like that, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t eaten a few banana peels in my day, looking for some sort of high [they laugh]. But, I still told all of my friends, and I’m pretty sure they tried the same thing, some of them might have even smoked it, I’m not sure, but I know I told them and they probably told their friends. Young and stupid, you know. I pretty much said, like, there’s this drug I found out about, and it’s legal—because bananas—so… maybe we can extract it together? But then we never really managed to meet up to do it, but I think he also just ate some banana skin around that time, too, just to see. Because, I mean, that’s logical right, one would assume that you can maybe get some effects with that too, right?

I: Had you heard about this from anywhere else, not just that cookbook?

L: I mean, the part about it in the book was only, like, a paragraph long, a short paragraph, but those punks, Mommy’s Not Home, who told me about it, kind of like they had experienced it? They would do, like, smoke-ins, where they would try this kind of shit, and other things, of course, but I think it placebo-ed them.

I: Why do you say it’s a placebo?

L: Because bananadine doesn’t exist, right? When I researched more about it, it was just kind of like… an urban belief, I guess, but people have felt these hypothetical effects of bananadine for a long time. It was, I think, first in a Boston magazine, because some singer called Donald, or Donovan—who I’ve never heard of—wrote a song about a yellow drug, or something along those lines. All the hippies, you know, 1960s America, thought he was talking about smoking a banana, so people all over the nation… they, like, also organised smoke-ins where they would extract bananadine, so-called bananadine, and smoke it as a sign of protest, you know, counterculture and all that. People actually felt the effects! But, just a disclaimer, there is no drug found in banana skin, I learned that the hard way. 

I: So it was false but people believed it, and sometimes, people still do?

L: Yeah, it really depends on who you are, I think. I was too curious, and young, so I researched before I really had the chance to try it beyond eating some banana skins. Research showed me it was false, but I know people who did believe it. I mean, the fact that people were and are organising smoke-ins… people did experience the placebo effect. Actually, I think the FDA—I’m not kidding, the FDA—launched an investigation into banana skins for psychoactive chemicals in it, because they were really going hard against drugs, weed, LSD, at that point, so having a drug possibly extracted from a household item was dangerous. But they found nothing. So, people do, and did collectively believe its existence, but… bananadine is not a thing.

I: Technically, you believed it was true until you looked further into it, so would you say that there are still a bunch of people who believe it?

L: Yeah, like I said, it really depends on who you are by nature, you know? Also, who told you about it. Mommy’s Not Home was told by an old guitar teacher in the music school, this sixty-seventy-something white guy, but I was told by Mommy’s Not Home, and even though I was fourteen—probably why I believed it for so long as it is—[they laugh] I still looked further into it because, I guess, they weren’t really trustworthy sources… or whatever the tween-age thought process equivalent of that is.

Analysis:

While the informant here refers to learning about this so-called drug through both people, and an authored source, they also point to it coming up before that, which is verifiable: there is an earlier version of this, from before the cookbook that they reference, therefore establishing a terminus ante quem, through the oral spread of this recipe and smoke-ins conducted by people in 1960s USA, with it gaining huge traction. Simultaneously, the informant also talks about believing its existence, and knowing people that experience a placebo effect of this bananadine, essentially solidifying the idea that belief can do big things, even make you feel a psychedelic high from smoking a banana peel. This source was particularly interesting to me, because I think the belief in it is the central part: the people believed in it, so its effects were real, a psycho-somatic high, to the point where the government took action then. Similarly, some people believe in it now, and its effects, for them, are real, and this information still spreads in circles within some sub-communities of musicians, even though the truth about it is only a few clicks away. Basically, people believe what they want to believe, and they want to believe each other, at least about this, and that belief alone can create real impacts and effects, even though there is no material reason for it other than that belief. It’s a lot like the idea behind mass hysteria, colloquially called groupthink, especially when it comes to those community smoke-ins where everyone would supposedly feel these effects, even when nothing was… really happening.

A Pep-Talk… For War?

Nationality: Indian
Age: 82
Occupation: Retired Army Colonel
Residence: Gurgaon, India
Performance Date: 01/05/21
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi/Urdu

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘D’. Explanations and translations for Hindi words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is an 82-year-old Punjabi father and grandfather, a former military man, born and raised in what is now Pakistan, but moving to post-partition North India.

D: I am a retired infantry officer. In the 1965 war against our neighbour, I was a young officer. I was not fully trained, in… in weapons. War started and I was sent to a picket called [X] picket, along with my hundred-and-twenty men. As a young officer, whenever the enemy fired their shells, I used to go on top of my bunker and see it, take reconnaissance. I did not know that the enemy had been firing star shells, those are the shells which are air-burst—they burst inside the air only, can kill a person who’s standing on his bunker. [He smiles] God saved me that I was not killed… but I kept doing it, out of ignorance and youth. There cannot be a bigger story than this from my many years in the military. 

I: Is there anything you would tell your men, something motivational, to boost morale in times of war?

D: I would raise the morale of my troops, I would say what I remember being told to me, what I hope to have been told to others in—in the future. “Mere bahadur gujar jawaanon, yaad rakhna ki jahaan bhi ham honge, jeet hamari hogi. Apni paltan ki aan aur shaan hamari zindagi se hamesha upar hogi.” (My brave, fighting young men/armymen, remember that wherever we are, victory will be ours. Our platoon’s dignity and pride/honour will always be above our life.) It was like… what you call a pep-talk, like that. 

Analysis:

The words in this may not be proverbial, as such, but I would classify them as folk speech because they are inherently a performance, and one that was passed on from person to person, echoing the same sentiment, even if the words were different. Even as an eighty-two year old man, my informant shone with the same honour and dignity that he spoke of, as he performed these words, while also admitting to his own faults, earlier on. He does state that these words were passed down to him and from him, a cultural idea of patriotism, one that arose especially strongly after the partition of India and Pakistan, and the ensuing decades-long, violent bloodbath. Putting my own not-so-favourable-or-popular views on the India-Pakistan feud and the military/militarism as a whole aside for a second (we would be here for hours and I’d probably get mobbed, I’m against both the feud and the military), just hearing him speak like this was especially intriguing because he spoke with what seemed like a hundred voices. There is more to this than simple patriotism for a motherland, because technically this was his motherland in name but the other was in place. There may not be a rhyme or a special poetic structure to what he said, but when performed live, this was a sentiment that could be felt, palpable, even though a video-call interview. Again, this is especially odd to think about, especially since he was a man that was born and raised partially in what is now Pakistan, but this same speech that was given to him, and this same overwhelming post-partition sentiment of patriotism, honour, and nationalistic pride, led him to fight in several wars over the years, against essentially what became of his birthplace.