Quasimodo wrote:Spurven Ten Sing wrote:Sometimes I miss Utah. I wonder if I lived anywhere other than where I live if I would also feel homesick. Who needs Utah when you have the Vestfold?
Sorry for the "off topic" Spurven Ten Sing, but how did you get from Utah to Norway? Did you start in Norway and go back? I don't think I have heard the story, but I would like to.
You are in luck. It's one I like to tell!
One day about 15 years ago I picked up a book at a local library called Explorations in America Before Columbus by the wonderfully interesting Hjalmar Haland (Halland). I thought at the time that it was a book about possible Lamanite cultures, or maybe something Book of Mormon related.
It actually described several speculative aspects about some alleged travels of some Vikings, including the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota. His prose and fanciful style enthralled me and I emerged from the book with a burning curiosity about the Vikings. I returned to the library and returned to work (as a security guard with 8 hrs a night to read) with a stack of books about Scandinavia, the Vikings, and medieval Europe. I soon exhausted the supply and borrowed and bought as many more books as I could.
I could not get enough! I would only need to see a horizontal cross to get all hot and bothered as I collected and read. Then I went to college. I chose to study history and anthropology and soon excelled in my studies as I became a local expert on Scandinavia and the Vikings. I studied under a rather prominent Scandinavianist,who loved Norway.
Based partly on my own ancestry, I preferred Swedish history of the six Nordic cultures. I boned up especially hard on histories and poetry dealing with that country. I taught myself Swedish and tested higher that RMs. I graduated cum laude and continued my studies in grad school, also in history.
Sadly, the university I chose for my studies had a nonexistent Scandinavian staff and I regularly found my hyper specialization lay far outside of the ability of my advisers to help me with. The situation forced me to choose between medieval Europe (late, outside my interest) or modern Scandinavia. I chose to change my period slightly and enter the modern day.
But what to explore? At the time an environmental history seminar, led by an absolute sadist, forced me to choose an environmental dimension in Scandinavia for a paper. What in the world was there to write about that? I walked the stacks, thinking and sat down, bewildered. My head struck a book that stuck out a bit and I pulled it out. It was a field guide to whales.
Of course! Vikings had beet harvesting whales for centuries. The Norwegians and Icelanders still whale and the possibilities seemed endless. I eventually spent many. many, many hours with ILLed primary sources, secondary histories, and articles up the wazoo. Had no idea how interesting whaling actually is! And Norway stood as the epicenter. Here is one of the very poorest nations in Europe. Tiny population, marginal agriculture, non-existent navy, absent industrial base, dominated by foreign diplomacy.
One day sometime in the 1850s, one man in the poorest district of the country with a laughable marine base, named Sven Foyn traveled with some American whalers and sealers in Iceland. He saw how much money there was to be had in rendering blubber and whales. The Americans and British had whaled out nearly all the whales they could catch throughout the world, but no one had either devised a method of capturing the largest species (rorhvaler) nor had anyone applied industrial practices to whale hunting (snip a seventy page explanation).
All this activity centered on a tiny town called Sandefjord, in a county called Vestfold. From 1860, Norway went from not having a single whaler in the world to monopolizing the entire industry. Not a boat, catcher or factory ship, not a harpoon, not a crew, nothing was done without Norwegians from this single town controlling it. It was total. For more than a century, every catcher, every crew, of every modern whaling fleet set sail from Sandefjord. 99.9 percent of all the tonnage came from Sandefjord. 99.9 percent of all crews of every nation were from Sandefjord.
ANYWAYS, I wrote my thesis on Norwegian and Icelandic nationalism inthe context of modern whaling. In other words, I became an expert on whaling, Vikings, and especially Sandefjord.
Fast forward. My life has fallen apart. Divorced single father of three boys. Teaching sixth grade and trying to make use of a useless degree (sorry, Kish, it's true) when I felt lonely and clicked on LDS.net chat room for fun. I made some good friends and had a good time. Naturally, I met a lass and we talked some and imagine my delight when she told me she was from Norway! Imagine my astonishment when I found she was from Sandefjord!
I think you see where this is going... I fell in love with her and moved to the place I had studied for so long. It seems too good to be true! Right now I work on the very soil where a century ago, masterpieces of whaling vessels were constructed. I drive past the Gokstad mound where the world famous Gokstad ship was excavated every day. I now own two large vertebrae from a whale I got from, guess where? The kids dug them up in the yard!
I am a lucky, lucky man. I am like a nerd who became obsessed with the Lord of the Rings, fell in love with an elf, and moved to Midgard. Utah? You can keep it! Does that answer your query?
