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.

The quality drink their champagne and mockingly toasts the great unwashed people below. Do you not know what a large group of ticked off people can do? You do not even have to read history. You do not even have to leave the timespan of this week. The snowball does not care about what is fair, correct or who is or was responsible. I believe you call it critical mass.

I heard an “expert” say that the protest would never achieve anything, because it is too vague, there is no clear message, they are not united under a common banner. The expert went on to say that the protesters could not achieve anything, because it is like the messy anti-war protest in the sixties.

Come again?! ..and what happened in the sixties, children? Yes, the anti-war protests and the hippies were not exactly homogenous. But things changed.

BBC radio 4 friday night comedy; one of my favourite podcasts. Last fridays NewsQuiz edition was brilliant. Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton and Fred MacAulay are my best friends on fridays. Pointing out that usually when there is a protest, experts say “this is a few, extremists people”. Except that this time that is not the case. Jeremy Hardy quotes various media having nothing else to say that these are “well educated reasonable people”. How to you deal with that? Funny man.

One of my favourite pictures from Wall St. is one of librarians. Yes, you know things are messed up when librarians starts marching  (I will add the image here later, if the photographer gives me permission). There are guerilla libraries. How can you not love that?

The world is off its trolley, undoubtedly. Winter is coming though, and New York gets cold. Who will continue, and who does not have a choice anymore?

Many of them say they are proud to be Americans. They should not be. They should rant, rave and create change. And then be proud.

These are well behaved people. Maybe they shouldn’t be.

edit:

I will let someone more eloquent than me sketch out some very valid points. Smile or die, from Barbara Ehrenreich, courtesy of th RSA.

You have the Apple fans and the – until recently slightly guilty – Microsoft followers. The MS crowd seems to have gained some confidence back recently, and they yell as loud as the macApple clan.
The two biggest companies have become, as most other complex situations and multinationals, personal. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (No, it does not matter that Bill Gates no longer works for/at MS). They are these companies. It is a sort of anthropomorphism. But here is what kills me every time: Sooner rather than later the argument gets to ethics. Bill Gates is an altruist. Therefore Microsoft is best. Apple apparently uses child labour in appalling conditions. This makes Apple evil. Therefore, Microsoft is best. Microsoft was for a long time the king of proprietary formats. Evil. Therefore, Apple is best. Ad nauseam.

Chew on that one. Evil.

Arguments are usually pointless and based on emotions, that again are based on coincidences, what you are used to, grew up with. As in religion, the newly converted are always the worst. Apple and Microsoft are big, big, big companies. They want to make money. Pretty much like every other company. But somehow, we think their ethical conduct more essential and important than others massive systems. We somehow seems to expect better or otherwise from them. It is fundamentally absurd.

Though I too would want to see a more ethical world, and wishes for multinationals to be responsible, intelligent, I do not comprehend why all these emotions are spent on these two, and how that transfers to the software and hardware. When will you protest the awful practices of the producer of your food-processor, hair-dryer, the proprietary software in your car? The paint you use for your house? Diamonds? (“nothing says I love you like a superficial…”) Why not a public outcry against the s/w control-thievery of a squillion other things in your house, your pockets, your office?

Where is your outrage?
Wasted on bickering over the tools that was supposed help us change the world.

And, yes. We are all sheep. Geeks included.

The art of looking sideways
Alan Fletcher
This is how it looks like inside my head. It a fountain of musings, facts, the odd, solid, and whimsical. It is design, doodles, unfinished thoughts, images, drawings. It is colours, shapes and wisdom. It is a delight and frustration at the same time – if I could show what goes on in my head, this is pretty much it..
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I should have stayed home
Roger Rapoport, Marguerita Castanera
Very funny. About all the glorious trips and travels that goes wrong. A collections of discomfort, disaster and disappointments. Timbuktu is not like you’d think. Not a homage to the well-planned, but rather an honest picture of how things can go, regardless of preparations.

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the IRA
Tim Pat Coogan
There’s a lot of junk about the IRA out there; a lot of rubbish. This is not without it’s faults and exhausting going-ons, but it is one of the better ones.
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All the trouble in the world – the lighter side of famine, pestilence, destruction and death
P.J O’Rourke
O’Rourke should not be read in one sitting – he can be exhausting and a little too much. But he IS funny, cynical and sometimes, dead on. All the trouble in the world is not always what it looks like, or what some would like us to believe.
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The great war for civilisation – the conquest of the middle east
Robert Fisk
Depressing, informative, exhausting and impressive. It is very good, and the good Mr. Fisk is a relentless journalist, not letting sleeping dogs lie.
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Thinking with type
Ellen Lupton
Despite this being part of the curriculum, it is very, very good! Hah! Imagine that – a first class book in an educational institution… what marvels…
It gives a good, sensible introduction to typography, without the annoying, sentimental waffle often found in such books.
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The elements of typographic style
Robert Bringhurst
Clearly for the especially interested – but the book on the subject. In-depth, clear and sharp.
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Neither here nor there
Bill Bryson
Mr. Bryson can be a little too much too, and sometimes rather predictable. But his travels around Europe is very funny, and combining his experiences with the ones he had as a youth doing the same trip, is hilarious. Personally, I am fond of the story about the german restaurant, the incomprehensible menu and the threat of calf brain.
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Three in norway by two of them
anon
Hysterically funny, and should maybe belong under fiction for the many tall tales and absolute nonsense. But the descriptions of norway and inhabitants are spot on..

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Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen /Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke
Never mind the film. The book is beautiful, intelligent. Her view on her time in Africa very interesting, and the stories she tells vivid and touching.
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Hidden agendas
John Pilger
Well. Good old Mr. Pilger seems to repeat himself endlessly, so one book will do. He is relentless in his digging for truth, and like a dog with a bone, will not let go. Bless him.
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Those are real bullets, aren’t they?
Peter Pringle, Phillip Jacobson
There is a large pile of books on Bloody Sunday, but this is the best to my knowledge. There is a limit to how interested I am in reading about bullet entry angles over and over, when we all know what went on. They got the new inquiry, and we are still waiting to hear it.
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We wish to Inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families
Philip Gourevitch
The awful story of the genocide in Rwanda.
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Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Brilliant thoughts on time.
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Color – travels through the paintbox
Victoria Finlay
This is the book with the annoying language and irritating fancies and guesswork. But the subject is immensely interesting, and her travels to all sorts of odd places entertaining. The myths and stories well researched; the fascinating conflicts and wars fought over colours fantastic.
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The ice master
Jennifer Niven
The mad story of the polar expedition of the ship Karluk and it’s crew. It is a story of survival, cruelty and a mad scientists’ need for self-promotion, but most of all it is a story of how tragedy can split men and bring out the worst in them. The crew and scientists of the expedition survives or dies along social divides, rather than work together. Revealing and terrifying.
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The politics of nationalism and ethnicity
James G. Kellas
Interesting. Don’t think I need to say more than that.

Michael Stone – exceptionally bad haircut and not-a-winning personality – stuck his nose out again, and this is a good wan!

Michael Stone is one of those who got an early release under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement following his life sentence for a triple murder. In 1988, he launched a gun and grenade attack on the republican funeral of three IRA members shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar. This is his claim to fame. That, plus that some of the loyalist paramillitaries didn’t want him, as they saw him as unstable

….. hello…? This is from the mentally healthy and balanced boys in UVF, UFF. Gosh, maybe there is something wrong with the guy, do you think?!

Anyway. Said fruitcake heads for Stormont, pockets filled with home made goodies, and after he is stopped, claims his actions were ‘performance art’……uuhhhh, yes. Delightful! Brilliant move of the lawyer there. The bad-haircut-guy, who killed a couple of funeral-goers, and popped up regularly with insane – no, I mean reeeally insane – points of view… well. It doesn’t bear thinking of.

The other version is what he told the police: “My intention was to walk into the debating chamber and look for where Adams, McGuinness and Sinn Fein were sitting. I would have lobbed several nail bombs to cause confusion. I planned to stab Adams and McGuinness and cut their throats.”

During interview Stone said the prominent republicans were “war criminals” and that he just “can’t handle” republicans being in government.

Brilliant – maybe lock the guy up in the Maze again, and give him some of his favourite dope. But here’s the goodies:

The lawyer said Stone – who suffers severe arthritis and walks with a stick – spent two hours working his way through the Stormont grounds to the entrance of Parliament Buildings. After being trapped by a security guard in the doors of Stormont he lit a fuse on a bag he had and threw it into the hall, shouting that it was a bomb. The device never went off and is believed to have malfunctioned after having got damp during the torrential rain that fell that day.

If that isn’t hilarious! Bless the irish weather! And see a middle age freelance loyalist nutcase hobbling through the garden and the rain, pockets bursting with hardware. Too good.

Stone said he had been acting alone telling police: “I am a dissident loyalist freelance.”

Right!

As well as the attempted murder charges, Stone is charged with possessing home-made explosives and an imitation gun with intent.

WHAT? ‘An imitation gun with intent’!? Intent to what? wave threateningly? Use the imitation gun as an imitation gun? I do not miss northern ireland-speak. “acceptable level of violence”.

He is also charged with carrying a garrotte, three knives and an axe and assaulting staff members who trapped him in the revolving doors at Stormont.

Well, well. You cannot say he came empty handed.. well equipped, but lacking one crucial thing: a plan. You know. Sneaking past the guards-kind of plan. Handeling hardware, lighting fuses, guards, ax, garrotte, knives while finding somewhere to put the cane- kind of plan.

And maybe one major blunder: maybe the guards these days are not so lenient and blind towards loyalist paras.

The security forces are not what they used to be.

___________________________________________________________________________________

the RUC are called PSNI these days.

It was all in the Patten Commission … a feeling of change, perhaps. They have a nice little website with a picture of Belfast city hall with a speeding police car going towards it, with the charming caption:

«Making Northern Ireland Safer
FOR EVERYONE
Through Professional, Progressive Policing»

yes. … well. Where do people get the idea from, that putting Capital Initials In Every Word Is A Good Idea? It Makes Everything Look Like It Should Be Abbrevated, And Especially In Northern Ireland, Where Everything Has Some Sort Of Short Form, Three-Letter Combination or Acronym. Or that putting FOR EVERYONE in capital letters does anything else but attracting unwanted attention to that phrasing?

And what exactly is “progressive” policing, if it’s not supposed to mean “fair”…?
……and Ronnie Flanagan nowhere to be seen. Strange days.

minor disaster
minor miracle
misanthropic humanitarian
necessary evil
recycling dump
somewhat destroyed
UN designated safe haven
vigorously ignoring
violent agreement
well-preserved ruins
Wilderness management
act naturally
friendly fire
new classic

-some are good, some not so good. All have been used in all seriousness – bless journalism.
I actually disagree with “misanthropic humanitarian” being impossible- I am one. But my favourite is “UN designated safe haven, or possibly “enforce peace”. Brilliant. In a moronic way.

And the sea.
Awfully toxic and polluted, but to see a horizon. Delicious. Sniffing salt air.
The Mediterranean sea, basically a very large and deep bathtub with originally only the shallow Gibraltar strait to replace water through, the oceanographers estimates it takes a century to replace all the water in the Med, so it’s saltier (evaporation, narrow flow) than the atlantic, and have less nutrients.
The nutrient-poor, high-salinity of the Mediterranean sea getting mixed with water from the Red sea, through the Suez canal, and tiny marine creatures with it. It’s been going on for a while, but no one know quite which way it’s going.

Do we ever?

And the Black sea, literally dying, adds it’s twopence.
And then there is us. The greatest problem-makers. Pollution, pollution, pollution. Indescrimenate fishing, ship traffic, water pollution and all sorts of nasty toxic waste.

I knew all this. And still it was joy to see the sea.
Selective memory.

We walked along the Corniche in the afternoon into the night and breathed salt air and the mediterranean. A few guys with fishing rods, a few guys playing backgammon, the esplanade filling fast with strollers, joggers, youth, coffeedrinkers, kids on tricycles, gaggles of girls, flocks of boys. The decorative streetlamps not in service, we wandered in silence around in semi-darkness, smiling at strangers that couldn’t see us in the backlight from cars and towering blocks of flats. That friendliness. That calm.
Keep a flashlight in you pocket.

Beirut is a little french, a little arabic, a little bit of Sydney, but not entirely either of them. Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arab, Crusader, Turk, Mamelukes, Druze, Ottoman, Syrian, missionaries, French, Americans. If this is the result… I could live here.

We got the hotel ridiculously cheap. The prices on the wall was a tad steep for three students. The girl behind the desk said: «don’t look at the wall. Look at me, and tell me what you need.»
Beirut does not have a thriving hospitality business these days. Things looked good back in the nineties. Things are not so hot now- or maybe that’s precicely it. Rumours says people stock up on food and arms. Buns and bullets. Elections going pear-shaped. The parliament are supposed to elect a president, but it’s been postponed for …the fourteenth time now, I think it is. When they finally elect the poor sod, it’ll be one tough job.

Sometimes, to some people these things are immensely important. Sometimes, to some people these things are incredibly uninteresting. Sometimes this is the people it concerns. Sometimes not.

My grasp of Lebanese politics is a little sketchy, and webpages do not go on forever. Well. They do. But I can’t be bothered. Sectarianism, splinter here and splinter there, deals, paras, cloak and dagger, Syria, Israel, refugees, bombs, history, rockets, coalitions, guns and superpowers. Religion, faith, beauty and the horrid. The best and the worst.

(«All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.» – Edgar Allan Poe – )

To me, Beirut was gorgeous.

There’s an undertow of Belfast awareness under it all, but on the surface all is seemingly well, if not swimmingly. («Sick of it, nothing will happen», I heard. That’s what they said in Northern Ireland before the Omagh bomb. But Beirut is too busy for Belfast antennae to work. And a nose for nutjobs and paramilitary groups is not much help when the paras are the ones securing the streets. I imagine IRA, OIRA, UDA, UDF, UVF, RIRA, CIRA and INLA doing that- it makes me laugh.)

Beirut is a tight city- narrow streets, high concrete buildings in various state of repair, poshness, falling-down- and going-up-ness. The skyline is littered with cranes pulling things up and dumping things down. It’s not always obvious which it is. It could have been claustrofobic, if not for the slight hillyness and the sea.

And people? The very best. I only met smiles, service, friendliness, laughs. And I was overwhelmed by that Derry-thing again – a guinness, and I would have started telling the stories.

We walked and walked, and I fell in love. Textures everywhere. The brand, spanking new, the unbelievably ancient, and things you can only guess the age of. And miss by a millennium.
So we needed regular latte breaks- which suited me fine, with one foot bulging with blisters, and one thigh-muscle acting 80 years old.

If they could just stop arguing and blowing things and people up… and clean the beach a little…

The American University is wonderful – S and I wandered around, said hi to the cats, bushes, trees; sat on various benches under cool, shading trees with a perfectly elevated view of the sea. Postcards, croissants and coffee. Holiday good enough for me.

I’ll go back, as soon as I can make up a reasonable excuse, find someone to feed the cat, and get the money together.

When I think of it… the cat is old, and there’s always that ‘rainy-day account’.

It’s been raining a lot here lately.

The first buildings they occupied, was the server and computer labs, and from there coordinated their actions. In Østfold, they painted the glass walls and brick buildings with slogans of politcal dissent, and set up watches with web cameras and sensors on the roof of the university college.

The leaders of the riots said to the press, via video interviews, that they will not give in, that the demands must be met, and that the educational system..

is going down the drain anyway, and does it matter if we paint the school fluorecent green? It should not blend into the environment, it should be a beacon, the spokesman said. They say that the local, national and international leaders cannot ignore the world wide actions of students- there’s a lot of us, said an anonomous spokesman in the student pub. And we’re supposed to run this country eventually. For how long can you ignore your successors?

The riot police were deployed, and high pressure water and mustard gas was used against the students. This caused an outcry, as this is prohibited by the Geneva convention, but the police defend the use, saying it was a neccesary measure against aggressive and rampaging students (certain parts of the Geneva Convention has been ignored by most signatories since implemented in 1925). A few rounds of rubber bullets was fired, as students tried to occupy the local newspaper. Setting fire to a number of cars, the black plumes of burning vehicles drifted over town for over a week.
Some of the college staff joined the students. As one professor said: this has been a long time coming. The government have not taken education or the students seriously, or seen what’s cooking on their own doorstep. It’s suprising who will listen, as soon as you break a few windows and hurl some cobblestones. And if someone is to protest inequalities, who else but students?

yeah, right.

Here is the alternative version of what happened in spring 2008:
The students, not arguing about much, created no ripples. Being too concerned about who had what software, what gadget, and wienging about dismal student loans, there was no detectable interest in social equality, global commitment or political insight. They kept slouching around in the corridors, moaning about lectures, and generally had their noses stuck in their own private virtual world. Nothing to report, except a stunning amount of cars, at such a small university college.