<< Undefined memories

Asbjørnsen and Moe are to Norway what the Grim Brothers are to Germany.  Storytellers of their own right, they assembled and distributed what we know today as Norwegian Folk Tales; a series of stories essential to the Norwegian culture and identity which you can argue contain the very essence of the values and traditions of the country.

As I dive into this trove of Norwegian treasures, I couldn’t help but draw some immediate parallels to the Mitologia Cuscatleca*, a perhaps smaller but culturally equivalent collection of tales from my native El Salvador.

There’s no doubt similarity on the idiosyncrasies of both traditions, so much in fact that sometimes one has to wonder how can two so apparently different cultures can arrive to rather similar conclusions.

Spend any length of time for with both of these stories for example and you might realize how strong is “our father” against demons and spectres of the beyond, or how witches and people inclined to the dark arts have a fascination to turn into disastrous animals immune to weapons that are not blessed.

All these might perhaps be expressions of agrarian Christian societies which have a much stronger faith in the power contained in prayer and religious institutions, or maybe it has to do with the conditions of poverty and humbleness which both shared at the high time these stories dominated the collective unconscious of our nations. (or perhaps both).

 Go beyond the comparison level though and these tales offer a layout for the archetypical Norwegian, which is: the behaviour that the ideal Norwegian should express and how it should behave in organized society.

A good Norwegian, the collective memories inform us, is resourceful, hardworking, nature loving and a faithful Christian. It should also long for outdoor life, where hunting and skying are important recreational activities.

Some of this is heavily present in our modern hytte kutltur, and the consequent Norwegian dream.

Both at strange odds with the dominant urban narrative of more globalist trends.

We’re also faced with the worst of the culture:

A bad Norwegian is wasteful, treacherous, given into excesses and with poor capacity to set limits to his/her working life. It's also quite useless in any sort of tasks either intellectual in nature or of physical prowess.

As I descend into the fabric of the myths that integrate my new home, I cannot help but undercover the small patterns that to this day define Norwegian culture and identity. These tales are filled with as much nostalgia as fundamental clues to our behaviour and that which we consider right.

Over the following months I shall try to dwell into these story as means to understand why we are who we are as a nation in hopes to preserve and reinterpret that which to this day makes all which we love about this beautiful land up north.

return 0;

Notes:

-Roughly translated as The mythology of Cuscatlan the most known recollection of these narrations by Efrain Melara Mendez.