I used to believe, or wanted to believe, or in any case pretended to believe in order to amuse my children, that my, and therefore some of their, ancient forebears were Mongol horsemen thundering across the steppe. Now, though, following a trip to Norway at half-term, I think my lot probably clambered out of longships and started crapping in Northumbrian monasteries like so many other English people’s ancestors. Yes indeed, I’ve come over all Viking.
I have been to Norway once before, in 1970, when I was 6. It is one of my earliest memories: a cabin; a lake; and, incongruous as it may seem, a chip-pan fire that my dad put out in textbook wet-tea-towel fashion. But I don’t think my profound sense of belonging up there in the frozen north can be explained as an echo of that visit, a mere four decades ago. Rather, I believe I experienced nothing less than a reverberation from the ages, a folk memory stirred by the hills, the pines, the cold, the prodigious quantity of patterned knitwear.
Of course, most Brits are well disposed towards the Norwegians. Theirs is a seafaring nation, Protestant, a constitutional monarchy like our own. They gave it a good go in the war. They play fair. Grieg-Ibsen-Munch is an impressive cultural triumvirate for a small country. They provided one quarter of Abba and a bit of Roald Dahl. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seems like a decent bloke. They have a cool flag, not dissimilar to ours. The king gives us the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. Basically, we like them. If the French had beaten our guy to the South Pole, we’d still be embarrassed about it. But Amundsen? Fair play to him.
If you’re from the North East of England or Scotland, such vague goodwill strengthens into something closer to an ethnic connection. The men and women in our hotel in Norway looked like the boys and girls I was at school with in Hull. Only older, obviously, and healthier, richer and scaled up by about 50 per cent. The women looked like my wife. The men looked like my brother-in-law, who in turn, looks like the Texan cyclist Lance Armstrong, whose ancestors were in turn, I discover, Norwegian. Our ski instructor, Anne Lise, looked like my Auntie Doris.
Plus, the vowel sound for that sexy Norwegian ø with a line through it is exactly the same as the “o” sound in a Hull accent, as in the exclamation, “Err nerr, a lurry shed its lurd of Curk in the rurd,” or, as a southerner might put it, oh dear, a heavy goods vehicle carrying a consignment of a well-known soft drink has been involved in a traffic accident. Children in Hull, and throughout the North East, are called bairns. The Norwegian word for children is barn. Fascinating how the language of one country can live on in the dialect of another for 1,000 years.
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All in all, as with John Cleese’s dead parrot, it turns out I’ve been pining for the fjords. I loved everything about Norway, smoked salmon for breakfast, nice jar of herring for lunch, spot of mackerel with fermented trout for tea, all that oily fish, you can feel your brain expanding by the minute, bring it on. The eye-watering price of alcohol kept me on the straight and narrow. Steep, wooded slopes leading down to water? I’ll tell you, they felt like home, pass the horned helmet and meet me in Valhalla, it’s runic Bob.
If you were being less fuzzy and romantic about it, of course, less deeply suspect Norse revivalist, you could seek to explain the success of my Scandinavian voyage by reference to some cold hard statistics.
In terms of per capita wealth, Norway is the second richest country in the world, its welfare provision the best in the world, its homicide rate almost the lowest. On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, the United Nations’ Human Development Index and the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, Norway comes top. On the most recent Global Peace Index, Norway had slipped to fifth (the UK came in 31st), having until recently topped this table as well. Possibly a punch-up in downtown Stavanger distorted the figures.
Overall, you get the picture. Rich yet compassionate, safe yet free, consensual yet tolerant of dissent. Plus, great jumpers, mixed outdoor Jacuzzis wherever you turn and enough omega-3 to last you a lifetime. What’s not to like?
I’ve never for a moment wanted to come from anywhere other than Britain, but up there in Norway, I thought, I wouldn’t mind coming from here. Which is no doubt why I have conveniently decided that, in a way, I do.