Norwegian Language Blog

I have always been astounded by the amount of coverage branner (fires) get in the Norwegian media.  I swear in every Norwegian newspaper I open, there is an article about a brann.  I used to think that perhaps there isn’t enough other interesting stuff to share with the public, so stories about branner naturally get a lot of attention.  I don’t actually think this is true.  After a bit of research, I feel a little silly having not thought of this on my own.  There are so many branner (for such a small population) because so many buildings are made either partially or completely of tre (wood)!  Of course there are going to be more branner.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that large cities began to establish their own brann departementer.  The Oslo Fire and Rescue Services Department (Brann og redningsetaten), for instance, was founded in 1861 and protects over 500,000 inhabitants.  There are over 400 employees and 8 brann stasjoner within the department.  Oslo is a unique capital city with regards to firefighting.  Workers for the Fire Department can expect to be called to a small one story building in downtown Oslo or they could be fighting a forest fire within the 90+ mile radius of forest land.

Before the 19th century and even afterwards, Norwegians had to deal with highly flammable buildings (sometimes tre through and through), frost, significant heating to keep homes warm, etc.  The reason why I thought about writing about branner in Norway right now is because I recently saw an article in Aftenposten about branner and jul.  Jul is the høysesong (high season) for brann because of all the elektrisk belysning (electric lighting)and levende lys (literally ´living light,´AKA open flame) that people have in their homes to create the cozy Christmas feeling.  The time between lille julaften and nyttårsaften is statistically the highest risk for branner, but otherwise weekends in desember and januar during the winter are also very susceptible months for many branner.

In Oslo every year there are over 400 homes that are destroyed by branner, one quarter of which occur in desember or januar.  The more startling statistikk is that men living in Finnmark have the highest likelihood of not surviving a brann.  If you are interested in checking out the article and trying to decipher it and look at the graphs, click here!

Use caution especially during julesesongen whether you have a trehus or not!

Gardermoen Flyplass

Inside of Gardermoen Flyplass

Norway is an extremely long and narrow country.  If you look at the map, you will see that it really isn´t very far from Bergen to Stavanger, Ålesund, or Trondheim.  It takes a long time to drive to most places in Norway, whether it be on the coast or in the mountains.  However, as the crow flies, it shouldn´t take more than about a few hours to get from one end of the country to the other.  Unfortunately, the number of flights available that fly directly from Bergen to another city is small.  Same goes for flying from Tromsø to Trondheim (which is of course a longer distance) or many other combinations of cities.

Gardermoen on the map

I was told that I was lucky to get a direkte rute (direct flight) from Tromsø to Bergen.  Usually flights are directed towards Oslo, where you will have a (hopefully) short overgang (layover), and then you will bytte fly (switch planes) to head to your final Norwegian destination.  My friends that work on cruise ships often board and depart out of Ålesund.  They live in Tromsø.  It would make sense for them to  just fly directly south to Ålesund, but instead they have to fly to Oslo, where one can sometimes expect to have an overnight overgang before one can proceed on to Ålesund, or wherever it may be.

I guess the reason for all of this hassle is simply that there aren´t enough people who want to go from Tromsø to Bergen at the same time.  But there are a lot of people who want to fly from Tromsø to Oslo, so it´s easier and cheaper for the airline to send you on that flight, and then fill up a plane of people who want to go from Oslo to Bergen.  This is quite irritating, as you can imagine, but such is the market, right?

For those of you who have not flown to or inside Norway, you may be wondering how many flyplasser (airports) there are and where they are located, and which flyselskaper operate in Norway.  There are no less than 46 flyplasser in Norway, one in every major city, and many small cities.  It is simply essential to have flyplasser located close to just about everywhere due to the difficult and lengthy travel time via another mode of transportation other than flying.  The most well-known flyselskaper that operate in Norway are:

SAS Braathens

Norwegian

and Widerøe

God tur (Have a good trip!)

Although I am fairly well versed in Norwegian banneord (curse words), I’m going to try my best not to share them all with you in this post, for I feel it may be inappropriate?   I’ll probably slip out a few though, so på forhånd (in advance), pardon my -ahem- norsk

Think about your own culture and what the origins of banneord are.  In the U.S., most are derived from excretory or sexual words, as well as religious terms.  We seem to create and use banneord based on what kinds of words are taboo in our language.  While religion is not necessarily taboo in Norwegian, it has lost much of its importance among a large portion of the population, and I think this must have something to do with the fact that a lot of Norwegian derive from religious words.

The devil, Jesus, and hell are the sources of many banneord.  Faen (pronounced fah-enn, connecting the two syllables quickly and emphasizing the first) is another word for the devil (or fanden in gammelnorsk-old Norwegian).  Djævelsk (pronounced dj-ave-elsk the ´j´ is like a ´y´ in English and ´ave´ like how you would say the abbreviation of avenue) which means devilish, is another word-in this case an adjective-that is used often to describe something negatively.  Like djævelsk, the words jævlig and jævla are adjectives as well that mean ´devilish.´ Satan (sah-tahn with the emphasis on the first syllable) means ´Satan´of course and is also used as a banneord.  You will often hear ´Reis til helvete´ or ´dra til helvete,´ which means ´go to hell.´  These are all very common Norwegian banneord derive from religious words, but have no religious meaning whatsoever.

There are, unsurprisingly many banneord på norsk that originate from sexual or excretory words, but I do not care to mention them in this post.  Simply google ´Norwegian curse words´or something of the like and you will surely find them.

What I have always found interesting about banneord in Norway is that is seems to be much more acceptable to use them in everyday conversation with people who I would never dare to use them in front of at home.  If I said what is kind of the English equivalent in front of certain people, I would get unhappy looks to say the least.  I mean elderly people, people in the workplace, a significant other´s family who you just met, etc.  Until recently, I was quite surprised by this seemingly appropriate use of banneord by most people.  I must say also that it seems much more acceptable to use banneord in northern Norway than it does elsewhere in the country, especially in the south.

Anyways, I recently came to understand that you can´t simply translate banneord from English to Norwegian or vice versa.  The Norwegian banneord that I have shared with you in this post would not carry the same weight if you said them in the US.  Would you agree that you wouldn´t flinch if someone said, ´that devillish woman!´ I know I wouldn´t.  To be sure, I might be a little confused about why the person used that term, but I wouldn´t the meaning wouldn´t quite get across.  So, I don´t think a lot of banneord in Norwegian are quite as harsh or carry the same strength that a lot of American banneord do.  I would be careful about using banneord that derive from sexual or excretory words though.  Those are rett og slett (plain and simple) inappropriate and most adults do not welcome those words.

Everyone needs a lesson in banneord when it comes to learning a foreign language;)