{"id":264,"date":"2011-12-20T23:16:39","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T23:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=264"},"modified":"2011-12-20T23:16:39","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T23:16:39","slug":"the-one-and-only-julekalender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2011\/12\/20\/the-one-and-only-julekalender\/","title":{"rendered":"The One and Only Julekalender"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201dWhat was that? That was what!\u201d the nisse<\/strong> G\u00fcnther exclaims, his face dripping with the water splashed on him by fellow nisser<\/strong> Fritz and Hansi in an attempt to cure him from his momentary belief he\u2019s a German tracker dog. The scene appears in The Julekalender<\/strong>, a televised \u201dChristmas calendar\u201d in the Danish broadcasting tradition, with a story split in 24 parts and shown every day from December 1st to December 24th, the day julen<\/strong> (the Christmas) is usually celebrated in Denmark. The Julekalender<\/strong> premiered on December 1st, 1991, and had a considerable part of all Danes tune in on the channel TV2 every evening in order to see the daily afsnit<\/strong> (episode). The series was so popular that some of its idioms even entered the common language! (Such as the character Benny\u2019s bob-bob-bob<\/strong> \u2013 uttered while wagging a downturned palm as a reaction to a situation you\u2019re not wholly comfortable with\u2026)
\nThe Danes may laugh, but here the humour needs some explanation\u2026 A nisse<\/strong> is a kind of Scandinavian pixy. Nisser<\/strong> wear red hue|r<\/strong> (cap|s) and eat risengr\u00f8d<\/strong> (rice porridge). They look a lot like Santa Claus, only without the reindeer and the silly laugh. (Of course, we\u2019d say the Americans got it all wrong!)
\nThe nisser<\/strong> of The Julekalender<\/strong> are out of the ordinary in that they speak a strange mixture<\/a> of English and Danish \u2013 or rather, of English and a kind of do-it-yourself Western Jutlandic dialect. Much of the humour of the series is based on this linguistic interplay. In a way it is parodying the way many state-of-the-art Danes constantly switch between Danish and English\u2026 (The title itself is a prominent example of this; in \u201dpure\u201d Danish it should be Julekalenderen<\/strong> with the Danish article<\/a> -en.) \u201dWhat was that? That was what!\u201d becomes hilarious when you know that v\u00e5dt<\/strong> \u2013 pronounced \u2019wot\u2019 by the nisse<\/strong> \u2013 is the neuter of v\u00e5d<\/strong> \u2019wet\u2019. \u201dWhat was that? That was wet!\u201d<\/p>\n

A recap for starters:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The three nisser<\/strong> Fritz, Hansi and G\u00fcnther are on a quest for a key to the \u201dplaydose\u201d (in Danish: spilled\u00e5se<\/strong>) \u2013 the musical box that keeps the old nisse<\/strong> Gammel Nok (\u201dOld Enough\u201d) alive. While flying over Western Jutland in a vintage aircraft, their engine crashes in the vicinity of the potato farm of Oluf and Gertrud Sand and their dog Emil. The nisser<\/strong> hide in an underground hule<\/strong> (cave) in the forest while trying to get the plane back on its wings. The farmer couple go on with their somewhat ridiculously monotone and lazy everyday life without having the slightest idea of the supernatural presence in the woods next door. One day Benny knocks on their door, presenting himself as a salesman from Copenhagen. With his loud, talkative city manners he could hardly be more alien to the farmers; yet somehow he manages to fool them into giving him accomodation on their sofa\u2026 But there\u2019s something weird going on\u2026 For some reason, the very word \u2019nisse<\/strong>\u2019 makes him go off the deep end\u2026<\/p>\n

The Julekalender<\/strong> is a modern milestone in the Danish humorous tradition; it has gone on the air six times \u2013 most recently this December \u2013 and in has been recreated in Norway and Finland. The script was written by the musician trio De Nattergale, who also play all the roles \u2013 except Gammel Nok and the dog Emil. It can be no surprise, then, that there\u2019s a lot of music in the series\u2026 Hits like \u201dThe St\u00f8vledance\u201d and \u201dIt\u2019s hard to be a nissemand\u201d are still floor-burners at Danish Christmas parties.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NXcPrbgPH1s<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201dIt\u2019s hard to be a nissemand\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

\u201dWhat was that? That was what!\u201d the nisse G\u00fcnther exclaims, his face dripping with the water splashed on him by fellow nisser Fritz and Hansi in an attempt to cure him from his momentary belief he\u2019s a German tracker dog. The scene appears in The Julekalender, a televised \u201dChristmas calendar\u201d in the Danish broadcasting tradition…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}