Hipp hurra for 17. mai! It’s May 17th, the day when all Norwegians går mann av huse (go to the streets, literally ’go man off house’) to celebrate their beautiful country. In every Norwegian by (town) and bygd (little town, hamlet) there are 17. mai-tog (May 17th parades) with people waving norske flagg (Norwegian flags) and musicians playing. If you look around you, you’ll see a lot of people wearing bunad [BOOnahd], the Norwegian national costume!

All bunader have a lot in common, but vary in the details. In fact, every major Norwegian region has its own bunad! (Norwegians of Sami origin wear kofter on 17. mai, which are quite different.) Today, most bunader are worn by kvinner (women) on festive occasions. However, the traditional mannsbunad (male costume) is being used by an increasing number of menn.

Ingeborg Fatnes kindly agreed to be photographed in her rogalandsbunad.

The ordinary (female) bunad usually contains a skjørt (skirt, pronounced ”shirt”), belte (girdle) and a sjal (shawl). The sølje – a silver ornament worn on the chest – is also an important part of many of the costumes. Additionally, there may be some ”gadgets”, like a purse, a hodeplagg (headgear) or a kniv (for the male costumes). I always thought broderiene (the embroideries) that adorn a lot of bunader looked a bit like rosemaling (Norwegian ”rose painting”)…

Making a bunad takes a lot of time and money. The embroideries, the sølje, the folds – everything has to be correct. The silver for the sølje may cost thousands of Norwegian kroner. So, in some families, the daughters are given parts of the ornaments ”in advance”. For example, the year the girl has her 4th birthday, she’s given a piece of silver, and then another one next year, and so on until she celebrates her konfirmasjon and is given the full bunad.

Of course, only (grand)parents (usually (grand)mothers) with a lot of time on their hands can make a bunad for their (grand)daughter. It is more common to pay a systue (dressmaker’s workroom) to do the work.

A sunnmørebunad for men.

If you’d like to have a Norwegian bunad yourself, it’s totally possible! But you should be prepared to pay something between 15.000 and 30.000 Norwegian kroner (2.500-5.000 US dollars).

There are various places to go bunad-shopping, one of them is the web site http://www.norskebunader.no

When you want to tell the world where you are, prepositions come handy: I’m in the garage; we’re on the mountain. (And so it is in Norwegian: Jeg er i garasjen; vi er på fjellet.) However, very often some kind of adverb can do the job as well: I’m home; we’re out. Jeg er hjemme; vi er ute.

You’ll notice that a lot of these locational adverbs end in -e in Norwegian. In addition to hjemme [YEMMeh] and ute [OOteh], you’ve got:

- inne (in, inside), as in Hun sitter inne i stua (she’s sitting in the living-room)

- oppe (up), as in Vi var oppe hele natta (We stayed up all night)

- nede (down), as in De traff hverandre nede i dalen (They met/hit each other down in the valley)

- borte (away), as in Hvorfor er du alltid borte når jeg er hjemme? (Why’re you always gone when I’m at home?)

- fremme (in front), as in Det er jeg som skal sitte fremme i bilen (It is I who’s supposed to sit in the front of the car) [this word can also be spelt framme]

But what if you wanted to say you were going home rather than being home? In Norwegian there’s a really nice trick you can use to tweak the meaning of the above words into something more directional: You just remove the final -e:

- Gå hjem! (Go home!)

- Nå må dere komme ut! (Now you must come out(side)!)

- Hun går inn i stua (She’s going into the living-room)

- Han står opp (He gets up)

- De går lenger ned i dalen (They go further down the valley)

- Han løp bort så fort han kunne (He ran away as fast as he could)

- Kom frem! (Come forth!)

Neat, huh?

Norsk er lett å stave. Norwegian is easy to spell. For learners being used to the quirks of English spelling (why on earth is ”weemen” spelt with an o?), the Norwegian system may seem like a godsend: You write things more or less like they sound: sjåfør (chauffeur), miljø (milieu; environment). Fortunately, there are still some utfordringer (challenges) for that geeky part of your hjerne (brain). Among them are

The sj sound and the kj sound

• Sj sounds like the English sh of shoe: sju (”shoo”, seven).
• Kj sounds like the h- of huge (as pronounced in England, that is, ”hyuge”): kjære (”hyare”, dear). The exact sound doesn’t really exist in English, but it’s typical of German: Ich liebe dich.

The two sounds are sometimes confused, so that the names Kjell and Shell (the oil company) are both pronounced ”Sjell”. Unless you really want to upset educated Norwegians, I wouldn’t recommend that you copy this ”trend”.

The bad things is that these two sounds are written in several different ways, so you really have to memorize the spelling of each word where one of them occurs:

• The sj sound can be written as:
  • sj: sjokolade (chocolate)
  • skj: skjold (shield)
  • sk: ski (”shee”, skis)
  • g in a couple of words of French origin: geni (”shehNEE”, genious)
  • j in a couple of words of French origin: journalist (”shoornaLIST”)
• The kj sound can be written as:
  • kj: kjeks (biscuit)
  • k: kylling (chicken)

There is a bit of logic here: The letter j does not normally appear in front of i or y (save in a few words such as jypling, greenhorn, and sjiraff, giraffe). And the letter k and the combo sk usually have their normal, ”hard” pronunciation in front of vowels other than i or y, such as skole (”SKOHleh”, school) and Kari [KAHree]. So, to indicate a ”soft” pronunciation in such words, a j is inserted: skjold [sholl], Kjartan [HYARtan]. In front of i and y these sounds are naturally ”soft”, so the j would be superfluos: kino [”HYEE-noh”, cinema), skyte (”SHEE-teh”, to shoot).

A similar system is used for the letter g. It is pronounced ”y-” (as in yet) in front of i and y, but ”g-” everywhere else – unless it is followed by a j. So, gi (give), gyte (spawn) and gjøre (do) all start with the same sound as English yellow.

If this seems confusing, maybe this little verse, which I learnt at school, will help:

I-en og y-en
gikk på byen
så møtte de j-en
men ville ikke se’en.

The I and the Y
went to town
then they met the J
but didn’t want to see ’im.