Every Once in a While

As it happens, I descend from Nordic people.

Who one's ancestors were, and who we find ourselves to be,
is about the most out-of-control thing that happens to us.
I do not know anyone who chose which ancestors to have.

Sometimes I say I grew up in Western Washington State,
but that would be patently false:  I did not grow up
until long after I have moved away from home,
and even then, there are those who are willing to argue.

There where I spent my first twenty years or so,
I knew that my tribe was Norwegian.  My dad was born in Norway,
and all of my mother's ancestors were from Norway, too.
While they were all from Norway, it was in Washington they met,
having more in common with each other, largely by language
and religion and codfish, where they patched a tribe together.

I always knew that we were American Norwegians,
although that was a term no one ever used:  we were Norwegian.
And what did that mean?  It meant we were the people
who had migrated from Norway, and their descendants.

I did not learn Norwegian then, but I did absorb its sounds.
When, at the University in Berkeley, I tried to learn Swedish,
the instructor told me I spoke Swedish with a Norwegian accent.
When, a few years later, I began to work at learning Norwegian,
it was not until I heard Audun speak--Audun from North Norway,
from coastal Norway, as my father was from near Bergen--
that suddenly Norwegian seemed almost easy and natural.
It never was easy, of course, but it did seem natural.

As it has happened--things happen, don't they?--
I have lived in Norway a couple of times.
One of the most dramatic and delightful times in Norway
is the Seventeenth of May:  their Constitution Day.
The Syttende Mai celebrations in Norway are feasts for the eye,
and for something much older than nationhood.

On the Seventeen of May, in Norway,
the tribes parade in glorious costumes,
each a signal as to where they came from.

The people whose ancestors came from that fjord
recognize each other by the patterns and colors of their clothing.
The people from the central mountains do the same.
Over toward Sweden, or far north above the Arctic Circle,
there are other, distinctive and impressive symbols of their own tribes.

The Norwegians don't call them tribes, of course,
but that is what they are.  Their "bunads" remind themselves
and everybody else, where they are from, what they are like,
what their history is, and maybe even what they eat.

The mountain ridges, everywhere,
and the fjords reaching far inland,
have made tribalism natural; almost inevitable.
One does not stroll across Norway,
nor hike from north to south.
The landscape of Europe, there far north and west,
makes pockets of people everywhere; small pockets.
Even today, it is easier to take to the sea, or the air,
than to drive the length of Norway.

Tribalism came naturally.

Today, Norway is something larger than a tribe:
maybe it is a super-tribe.  Not quite.
What made tribes effective was their small size.
We evolved in small groups, knowing the same language
or using the common language in our own way,
pronouncing it in our own way, having some of our own words,
singing our particular songs, reading our particular holy books,
forming our own traditions, marrying our own kind of people,
eating codfish, cooking our own way.

We were Norwegians in Washington State.

We were all White.
We were--almost all--Lutherans.
We were . . . shall I say, comfortable 
pretending we were . . . shall I not say
superior to lesser tribes from other places?
We had to learn not to marry Catholics,
not to marry people of other races,
not to trade our holy books for theirs.

Every once in a while,
when we realize how large our nation is,
how diverse it is (not everyone is a Norwegian)
we get very uneasy at the truth of our diversity.
It is almost as if we decide to wear bunads
to make it plain where we come from,
and while we are at it,
to make it plain that our tribe is more important
than our nation, and that maybe we should build a wall.

Every once in a while.