The Ambassador's request

A couple of letters for me had arrived at the old house, John told me the other day, and yesterday he brought them over. I expected them to be from my Silje, the only one so far to have established a postal connection with me in Sri Lanka. One look at the envelopes told me they were not. One was small with a computer printed address label, the other one big, with handwritten label. Both were sent by national mail, which ruled out Lånekassa (the State Educational Loan Fund).

Savouring this moment of mystery, I started with the smallest envelope, slowly prying it open. Inside I found a stiff card, with the Norwegian seal of state. The card roughly read:

"In occasion of the Norwegian Constitution Day on May 17
The Ambassador requests the pleasure of the company of
Mr. Assprong [handwritten]
on May 18 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM for a reception at his residence."

Now, I don't have the card here, so this may not be the exact wording. Still, with one part I haven't strayed a letter from the original, and that is with the spelling of my own name.

You non-Norwegians out there may not be aware just how uncommon the name "Aasprong" is. A search at Statistics Norway reveals that our "clan" consists of a mere 78 people, whereas there are 54,046 Olsens, 4,521 Ødegårds (6,908 when you count the Ødegaards), and 181 Bersvendsens (the name of my famous, jet-setting, modelling first cousin - and possibly the weirdest Norwegian name I can think of). But only 78 Aasprongs. So why is this? My brother Einar, a hobby-genealogist, could probably whip up a nice explanation (and no doubt he will do so in a comment or three). I have a theory of my own, though.

How many times can a person tolerate being called an ass? Invariably, Americans will pronounce our proud name, a name meaning "river that runs between two hills" (if I'm not mistaken but again I expect my brother will comment), "Æsprong". The correct pronounciation? "AWsprong"

Not only Americans go wrong. Most Norwegians will struggle, though some more intentionally than others. How many times was I not teased in school when the teacher took attendance? And although most adults know that the "aa" in older Norwegian (imported from Danish and now spelled "å") is pronounced "aw" they will struggle with other aspects of the name. Which is why we often use fake names while ordering pizza.

My brother and father used to collect misspellings of "Aasprong". I don't know what happened to that sizeable collection, but I am sure "Assprong" was one of the more commonly collected spellings. Honestly though, shouldn't we expect more from the embassy? Here I am, lonely and thousands of miles away from home, the embassy a weak link to all that was left behind. And this happens when Constitution Day is coming up - the day when our national pride wells up inside of us in an uncontrollable manner. The day when our children are dolled up in new suits and dresses which they immediately soil in an orgies of ice cream, soda and hot-dogs, while running around kneedeep in mud, screaming "Hurra" (hooray), blowing on annoying plastic trumpets, and blowing off fingers with fire crackers. This is the day when our women don the heavy frocks we call national costumes, complaining of the painful shoes, while looking like 19th century peasants on their way to milk the cows. This is the day when men... hmm.. what do men do? Anyway.. you get the point. This is the day that I should feel part of an extended Norwegian family (Andersson, 1983)*, which I assume is why the ambassador requests the pleasure of my company, but Ambassador Brattskar, my surrogate father: "Mr. Assprong"?? That one stung.

Oh.. and the other letter was from the embassy, too, but nothing exciting was inside. Only a letter to inform that Norway's parliamenary election will be held on September 12.

/haakon/


* This is of course a lame, nerd-ish joke. Anthropologists, and a few others, will recognize the reference, which is to Benedict Anderssons "Imagined Communities", a seminal work on nationalism.