If you had to guess where this picture was taken, what would you think? Bergen? Trondheim? Somewhere on the coast of Lake Mj
øsa?
You'd be right if you guessed "Land of the Midnight Sun," although you'd be wrong if you guessed a Scandinavian location. This photo was taken at sunset on the Seward Highway, just south of Anchorage.
I lived in Alaska for four years. One thing I learned while I was there is that, like Norway, Alaska also calls itself "Land of the Midnight Sun." Rightfully so. On the summer solstice, it barely gets dark in Anchorage -- people set golf tee times for midnight in June and July, and at 3:30 a.m. the horizon is already that hazy pre-dawn gray. North of the Arctic Circle, in Barrow, Alaska, the sun rises on May 10 and doesn't set for 84 days. (The opposite is true in winter; the sun sets on November 18 and doesn't rise for more than three months.) Sound familiar? That's what happens in Northern Norway, too. I don't miss Alaska much in the winter, but when the sun sets at 8:00 during a Wisconsin summer, a little piece of me wishes I was back in Alaska, among the moose and the mountains.
In some ways, I felt less connected to my Norwegian heritage when I lived in the Land of the Midnight Sun -- or maybe it's more accurate to say I felt connected to my Norse heritage in a different way when I lived there. It's true that in Anchorage, there were no sandbakkles at my Thanksgiving dinner, no neighbors named Hans Brekke or Inga Moen, nobody responding to bad news with an "Uffda," no strong black coffee to sip in a Lutheran church basement. In that sense, my Norwegian-ness -- or at least my Midwestern Norwegian-ness -- was strangely absent for four years of my life.
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| Star the Reindeer |
In other ways, though, Alaska felt more authentically Norwegian to me than the Norwegian town of Blair, Wisconsin, my parents' hometown where I spent a lot of time when I was growing up. In Anchorage, there's a man who routinely walks his pet reindeer through the downtown streets. The Anchorage Museum houses an extensive exhibit on the Sami people who came to Alaska and taught the native Yup'ik tribes to herd caribou. The severe landscape of mountains and ocean looks like something from a coffee table book of Norway photographs. And in Alaska, there was easy access to Norwegian chocolate -- I frequently stopped by a shop in Anchorage, Pia's Scandinavian Sweaters, for my Freia fix. Pia had every variety imaginable -- the one in the
blue wrapper, the
purple wrapper, the
yellow wrapper, the Norwegian
Kit Kat,
Smil. (If anyone knows where to get Smil in Wisconsin, by the way, please let me know!)
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| Alaskan Sons of Norway members |
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| "Authentic" Norwegians |
And let's not forget the dog sledding. Alaska is home to the Iditarod, one of the world's most famous dog sled races and also a popular sport in Norway (at least Northern Norway). I attended the ceremonial Iditarod start in Anchorage twice, and the actual start in Willow, Alaska once. Each time, Norway's mushers were out in full force -- and each time, their fans were also out in full force (some came all the way from Norway; others were members of Alaska's seven Sons of Norway Lodges). Seeing all those Norwegian flags always made me feel a little bit more at home in a place so very far from my actual Midwestern home.
I'm glad to be back in Wisconsin. I sometimes miss the mountains and the Midnight Sun, but I don't miss the long winters, the December darkness, and the ridiculously expensive cheese. Yes, my Sheboygan neighbors are mostly Germans rather than Scandinavians, but I manage get my Norsk fix every month from my Vennskap friends (and by thawing some of the lefse I keep in my freezer). Gudskjelov!
