I worked briefly at the National Archives as an apprentice bookbinder yonder, and I remember the genealogists that came trundling up the path from the metro every day, carrying heavy bags of notes. They would request church registres, dusty tomes, old newspapers and microfilm from the six floors below ground. A systematic, gargantuan, taxonomic task. I always thought I would never bother with it, because: back then you needed serious discipline and a keen sense of priority. You would only have a few sources of information available at one time, and flitting to and fro by fancy was not a good idea. Enter scene: the internet!

I started out with the names of my great grandmother, for the simple reason that they are unusual, and therefore easy to follow. The first name, Schjoldager, goes to Trondheim, and I find a small street there named after my great-great-great-grandfather or so. I thought that was rather swell, actually. He was a chimney- and chimney sweeper-inspector. Trondheim burned several times, so I guess this was a reasonably important job. At least not one they would give to the town drunk. Then Schjoldager morphs into Wolner/Wølner, and goes to about 1590, to Jacob Wølner who came to Norway from Freiberg, Germany to work as Overstiger at Kongsberg Silver Mines. Schjoldager stops there – or at least, I have not tried to find the rest of the Wølmers of Freiberg.

So, back to great grand-mamas second name, Figenschou. It goes to northern Norway, then to Bergen. There, a fellow by the name Elias Fiigenschow (b. ab. 1599, in Copenhagen), was apparently one of the best portrait painters in the country. His grandfather, Mathias Fugenshuh (1540) was a royal saddlemaker from Hindelang, Germany, and he had a coat of arms. I was chuffed. Hurrah, I thought. A proper, swirly family crest complete with animals, acantus and shields.

Elias married a Bloch, and to make a long story short, she hails from the old Norwegian noble families. Apart from having hilarious names such as Benkestokk, Smør (Butter), Smørhatt (Butterhat), Krukow, Bratt til Tomb, Ku til Tomb, Stangjarfylja, the crowning beauty is a governor on Iceland, Tore Bjørnsson Tinghatt (Tinghatt = thing (as in assembly) & hat). The source considers that the name Þinghottr may be because he “came to a thing (assembly) wearing a peculiar hat“. This strikes me as wild speculation, but hey – I love the thought, so I am sticking with the story:

Some time in the early 1200, one of my ancestors came to the assembly meeting wearing something amusing on his head. 

From another path of the Figenschou line, I find the unassuming name Hage. The line goes to Danefær, to not-so-unassuming Holstein, to von Reventlow, to Rantzau, Buchwald, Breide, and further to the positively pompous von Ahlefeldt, Limbek, Gyllenstierne, von Rugen. This may not say very much, but they are all nobility, knights, members of Council of the Realm. Wherever that may be. I was at this point swimming in more crests and coat of arms than I cared to, and it was clearly steering towards Scandinavian royalty. And if you get mixed into that, there is no way out. To cut a very very long story very short, I end up at various kings and queens of Sweden, Denmark; princesses from England, Poland, Italy and Russia. Some saints too. This is around year 1000, and if things are a little shady after the black death, it certainly gets foggy around 1000.

Of course, genealogy is not an exact science, and I am no professional. I am good at digging around on the internet though. Of course I may have gotten something wrong, but I would be in good company, among those hobby genealogists that came to the National Archives. I have tried to find at least two sources and confirmation of the lines, particularly the high royalty. They often had multiple wives, husbands, children out of wedlock left right and centre. The men might die early in war, the women in childbirth. I am learning much about “NN”, and the politics of marrying off your daughters for political reasons. And after all, we are all related, more or less. At least in Scandinavia it was not uncommon to send a child to a neighbouring lord or a relative to be brought up there. This was to ensure connections and peace, but it might also leave the origin of the child uncertain. At some point in history, the idea of “parent” may be biological, or may be whoever raised the child. See the confusion?

From Figenschou, I find three distinct lines that I have not followed through. One point to the old kings of Norway, and the two others both point to Charlemagne. I mean, what do you do then? Behind him is the Byzantine empire.

Once you have hitched your family tree to a royal line, there is little point in following it through: others have done that. The royal connections are amusing, but I do not feel any relation to them. My initial interest was to find amusing anecdotes such as the guy with the peculiar headgear, and the guy that “in a fit of anger did away with himself with a rope” (Johan Reinertsen Wormhuus, 1686, Bergen).

I have three more family lines to look at. They will not be so easy, but they might have good stories. And yes, I made a family tree. A work in progress.

After the second world war, the law was changed for the legal purges in Norway, so as to execute Quislings, the Nazi sympathisers. Technically, Norway had the death penalty for high treason until 1979, but the last execution was in 1948.

Obviously, there will be no death penalty for Behring Breivik, and because of a police computer-system cock-up, he cannot be sentenced to 31 years, the upcoming limit for “acts of terrorism”. So the maximum ordinary sentence he can receive is 21 years, a “life” sentence. Norway do not do that weird thing of multiple life sentences. But he can be sentenced to a complicated melange based on his mental health/capacity, that might keep him locked up for as long as he lives. They then have to prove he is just the right amount of bonkers.

Today, as I write this, he is present at the first public hearing in court, and he introduced himself as a knight and a military commander of the Norwegian resistance. He sees himself as a freedom fighter that had to do terrible things for the common good. So in his mind, he is related to those who was interned at Grini during the war. He fights for freedom against Goliath-odds.

He questioned the judges ability to give him a fair trial, as they are “representatives of multiculturalism”. The guy is obviously deluded, but he is not mad. We should not give him the benefit of the mad lable.

Norway’s justice system, unlike some other countries, are based on the premise that people can change, they can learn, they can repay. Repent and be free. Statistically, this works, as the percentage of re-convictions are low compared to other European countries. So this case is a large problem for the justice system, and for the prevailing sense of justice. Fact is, there are few people in this country that would not like to see him boil and burn.

A friend set up this scenario; if you are out driving, and accidentally hit someone with your car, and then discovered it was Behring Breivik, would your reaction pattern be different? I would say yes. I would think a lot of people would, if not directly celebrate, then at least take their time in calling an ambulance; a sense of guilt greatly diminished. Some people would get back in the car and back up over him again.

We are uncomfortable with these feelings. Other people do terrible things too, and victims of other crimes may suffer just as much, but the sheer scale of this guys actions makes it a very public problem. He has committed atrocities, we want him to suffer. That is the point of prison, that is the point of punishment. We have the justice system so that the punishments do not get out of proportions. We want criminals to see what we see, and we want them to suffer in new-found understanding, then we want them to become clear-eyed, honest, upstanding pillars of society.

But deep down, I do not think we want this for Behring Breivik. Norway will uphold the justice system. And we will all quietly hate it for this one man.

EDIT.

As His Loopyness is unfolding – should I say unravelling – it becomes more clear he has a severe mental illness. Paranoid schizophrenic, they say. Quite possibly. But here is the curious thing: people seem to be outraged by that. Why? They want him punished. They want him in prison, even though a mental hospital would take away more of his freedoms and rights, would control and monitor him closer, would even possibly medicate and cure him, would keep him locked up for longer. Then maybe he will see what we see. If so, who could live with that? How could prison be more punishment?

We have all seen a gorgeous film, A Beautiful Mind. This is the Terrible Mind.

If he is sick, he can be medicated, he can be cured, more or less. That would probably be the greatest punishment of all.

I woke up yesterday, to a flood of warnings on facebook, telling me about this deeply disturbed individual, and that several dogs had already died. Even in my grumpy pre-coffee morning haze, something smelled a little off.

A few hours later the media backtracked, and the mystery was solved. It turned out it was the commendable tradition of Oslo Hash House Harriers, beer-drinkers with a running problem. A very british ex-pat invention, the Hash House Harriers have a hare that leaves a trail, the hounds follow, and beer is consumed at the end. This, incidentaly, is maybe the only kind of fitness group I could see myself join and enjoy. The trail is environmentally friendly sawdust or flour. Figures.

But here is the mystery… how, HOW does this happen? How does the connection of “my dog sniffed some sawdust” go to “my dog sniffed some sawdust and then got diarrhea”, and then to “dogs sniffed sawdust and diiiiied!” then further to “INSANE MAN poisons dogs!” HOW does this happen? Who add that crucial sentence, “man (because that was what it said) poisons dogs, dogs have died”?!

Apparently a pet-shop had a sign up, saying this. But where did it start?! There must be a single human that added drama to the “dog sniffs stuff”, and others who escalates.

The papers contacted the local humane-societies, the veterinary institute, the food safety authority and the police. The society for prevention of cruelty to animals says they have had several reports of sick dogs. The canines are apparently listless, have diarrhea and do not eat well. A far cry from being dead, and certainly not an uncommon malady, partics with the gunky weather here now.

A dog sniffs and licks a million things outside, and some of them enjoy rolling around in dog poo. But how, oh, mystery, hooow did this canard happen?

Facebook is practically untrackable. The information there is nearly impossible to source, and one feather turns into five hens, as the saying goes. People are sentimental, they see a status warning of this terribly disturbed man, and dare not not share it. It is about social conscience. The thing is, if you do not share it, it does not mean that you want dogs killed, but it plays on our love for animals, our conscience, a social responsibility to warn others of possible misfortune. And so it generates, escalates and goes haywire. And viral.

And then the newspapers pick it up, and parrots random facebookers who cannot even spell instead of doing a little research.

Use your heads, people. If you wanted to poison dogs. Would sawdust be the first thing that springs to mind? If dogs have died, do you not think the teary face of the owner of some mutt would be all over the media within 30 seconds of said mutts demise? Dead cats? Birds? Rats? And not the least. Facebook updates with a million exclamation marks after it does not inspire confidence.

I would really like to know how this works: the gears of this process is not easily figured out; the “social media” is a messy tangle with  lots of dead ends. A curious similarity to the aim of the hares of the Hash House Harriers.

Will someone please do some solid research on this?

Note. I said solid.

..and the top pic is of highly-alive Grainne (look up the irish pronounciation), my Aussie dog-friend.

Old iron posts of various types have imprints. They are either mirrored or the right way around, but something in the style tells me this is old. How old, I have not the faintest idea. I imagine old posters used ink that somehow etched itself into the paintwork. Apart from the gorgeous textures and a whiff of history, I would like to know what was announced, when and how. In the two pics above, I can spot a street name “dalsbergstien”, a map and a skate. It should – in theory – be possible to find out when these posts were last painted.

The posts are seriously worn, and I suspect might be removed soon.

“våpen” (weapons)

Paulus plass (paulus’ square, a square on the other side of town, across the river)

This smiley – and font – seems rather old-fashioned.

Then, the second mystery; I did not realise it was one until I got home:

A sticker, announcing a company called “AS Hjalmar Bjørge”… first: what thought was that, to announce offshore charter, sales & purchases on lampposts around town?! Subliminal advertising?! Thing is: the phone number and postal code tells me this sticker is from before 1992, when Oslo changed the phone numbers from six to eight digits. The telex is a nice touch.

A fascinating thing about this, is that I cannot find any real nor historical information on this company. And the logo is just epic.

Any suggestions as to the origins of these little strangeness’es would be welcome, and any similar things from other places would be fun. I hope the posts stays. I love Oslo for this quirkiness.

I hear myself do it at times, I hear fellow countrymen do it at times, and it bores me. Often, the person on the other end of this probably does not understand the relationship norwegians have with nature (why would they!?), and it seems excessive. In a way it is.

Then, four intrepid friends from USA came over, to play and explore with L and me, and I got to see parts of my country with their eyes, as well as with my own. It is, as R said; stupidly beautiful.

She asked if I felt proud being connected to all that.

Not proud, exactly. But a wordless sense of being connected.

Pictures from the mountainous lollygag that brought this on here