It’s Syttende Mai – the 107th anniversary of the day that Norway declared its independence after a bloody war of independence, throwing off the shackles of onerous, brutal Swedish rule.
Norwegian forces had fought a long-shot, underground war against the evil Swedes – a battle which may have been the model for the “Rebellion” in the movie Star Wars – ragtag rebels fighting the Swedes and their Finnish and Danish mercenaries, eventually coalescing into a movement that was able to virtually wipe out the Swedes and drive to the very gates of Stockholm, dragging the Swedish monarchy to the negotiation table, leading to the…
…the…
…oh, I can’t go on. It’s really just the date the Norwegian constitution was ratified. Norwegians celebrate the event with childrens parades and the sort of stuff Americans do for, well, Arbor Day.
Anyway – happy Syttende Mai!
As my late mother would say, laying on as thick an accent as she could:
“Ten tousand Svedes, vent running tru the veeds, chased by vone Norvvejun.”
They’re seared, seared into my memory–the horror stories my grandmother told me of “Skremmelseregjeringen”–the Norwegian Reign of Terror, when the bloodthirsty revolutionaries of The People’s Organic Cheese Party took vengeance on all Swedes and Swedish sympathizers, whom they confined to smoky, dark cells and forced to eat lutefisk–something that, as it happened, had little effect, since it wasn’t very different from their living conditions before arrest.
Until the rise of the legendary hero Tenzing Norgay, who overthrew the despots and established the present tolerant and generous system of governance, under the national motto, “Please don’t raise your voice. Thank you so much.”
My Norwegian grandfather used to say “Those Swedes are worse than N&$#&^%”. Of course he hated the Pollacks that lived next door, so we just let it slide.