I’m sitting in a hotel room in Hammerfest. My flights were cancelled this morning and again this evening. I’m looking out at the snow-covered islands and ships coming into the harbor and leaving to various coastal ports, wondering how this story will end for me and when I will make it to my next destination.
For me, this is a year of story. I am spending my time telling stories. Sharing my experiences of growing up and living in the United States with students throughout Norway. I always say, we make sense of the world through stories. I watch as this unfolds this year.
Constant traveling makes me reflect on memory and story. How sometimes we spend time trying not to remember as much as we try to hold onto every last piece of the experience. How memory and history change as we travel and collect experiences.
Here, I’m trying to remember as much as possible. Sometimes it all blends together. It takes a few minutes to remember where I was the week before, whether or not I visited a school, or the order in which I saw landmarks and historical monuments.
But, there are other times memory hurts. I think about the people I wish I could share this experience with. My Tante Kari, the Norwegian who married into the Swedish family. Or my dad, who would love to hear about all my travels and experiences teaching, I often think about what I would want to tell both of them. My dad would love to know about teaching and schools here. My Tante would love to read these blog posts and tell me Norwegian stories. She would tell me where I should visit when I went to Kristiansand. And, she would share her love of Norway.
As I travel throughout Norway I think about some of my memories of Tante Kari. I remember her fondness for Norway. When I walked through Kristiansand, the city where her family was from, I thought about her stories of spending time in Norway. I thought about how she made sure that memories of her home were part of her daily life, the Norwegian flag or her Bunad, just as prevalent as the Swedish flag my Uncle Bob hung from their house.
Tante Kari was a writer. She shared her stories and those of her family. Every year I would get a book from her for my birthday. We shared the love language, words, stories. Traveling throughout Norway has made me think often about the woman who taught me about socialism and feminism and most importantly, story. I reread one of her books this fall, We Signed Away Our Lives. The connections to memory, place, and story in her memoir of her father is central to her childhood and narrative. Norway and China as place impacted her life and the life of her parents and her brothers.
Tante Kari always had a story. Everyone who visited her house would have to have their photos taken and then have them put in her book. She collected stories. When I first arrived in Norway, my cousin sent me some of those photos. Ones Tante Kari had taken on me and Chris. Collections of memories. The love of story. The love of hearing the stories of others, of gathering stories, and making stories central to our lives is something I am valuing more and more during this experience.
There are little things all over Norway that trigger memories of my childhood. When I see all the black licorice or Lucy’s love of marzipan, I think about Tante Kari wanting all the black jelly beans and having us eat rice pudding searching for the almond to win a marzipan pig or dancing around the Christmas tree. I think about cheese slicers and lefse and Santa Lucia and growing up in strong Scandinavian traditions. I visit Stockholm and am surrounded by Gustavus Adolphus. I am even more aware of the stories that informed the traditions of my childhood and why they were valued.
One of my workshops is on immigration: DREAMers and DACA. I start by having students think about how the make-up of the population in the United States is quite different than that of Norway. We talk about how Americans are often interested in the ethnicity of our ancestors and the countries they came from. We value the traditions from those countries. We want to preserve them. We see our heritage as an ongoing part of who we are and what brought our families to America. Immigration is one of the foundations of America, whether we choose to accept that or not.
Other workshops connect to memories and stories of my life as a teenager growing up in Minnesota. When I talk about American Music I usually start with my favorite bands. I like to mention Hüsker Dü. Sometimes it takes a minute and then students have to pronounce it with a Norwegian accent, but they laugh that Hüsker Dü is the name of band from Minnesota. I tell them that people in Minnesota love Norway more than Norwegians do, and Hüsker Dü a great example of that.
Often, students ask about my experiences in Norway. What I like to eat, what I think is different, what I would change. I tell them stories of first eating brown cheese, what you can get detention for in the US, or what “breaks” are like in American high schools. Students love my stories of getting David Tenant’s autograph (I show photos), Harry Potter study abroad, or my love of the Winchesters.
They listen intently stories I tell about athletes, civil rights veterans, or police violence and brutality of black people in the United States. I have an important role as I travel through Norway to present a more varied and nuanced image of the United States than what traditionally appears on television, YouTube, and social media. I try to show students the complexities and struggles in the United States and how they relate to those in other countries, including Norway.
It’s all memory. All stories. As I make my way through Norway I think about the stories I want to bring back. What stories do I want to share about Norway? Teaching? My experiences? What are the stories I will tell? What are those I will choose not to privilege?
There are difficult choices when we share story and memory. Our stories are never unbiased. We need to acknowledge that, but we also need to make sure we continue to share our stories. During my workshops on Hamilton I talk about “Who Tells the Story.” It’s important to realize that we all have the ability to tell the story, and how we choose to share that story impacts what the world learns about us as well as the places we come from.
I’ve sat on this blog post a week. I made it out of Hammerfest eventually, but not to the destination I was supposed to get to. I had adventures with luggage, planes, and ferries that week. And stories. Stories I will continue to tell as I share my year as a Fulbright Roving Scholar.