It is a great day of celebration and culture in Norway with lots of tradition. We attended the festivities last year with Jason’s project leader and his family but I think we were still in shock from the move so this year we were able to enjoy it and absorb a little more. Most people go downtown to watch one or all of the three parades throughout the day and then usually have some sort of meal out at a restaurant in the afternoon. Everyone dresses up for the day….which is so anti-celebration to us but it is neat to see them all dressed up. The women all wear “traditional” dress, which is really neat and beautiful. You can see the images in the photo album but the outfit includes a long wool skirt, a white blouse, a wool vest and various other accessories depending on your area such as a cape or hat. The outfit is based on your local area so there are hundreds of different outfits and you can tell where someone is from based on the outfit. The Trondheim outfit is a blue and white patterned vest and blue skirt. The men’s traditional outfit includes short pants, wool knee socks, a wool vest and a neat jacket but you see far fewer men in the outfit- most just wear suits and ties. Either way the traditional dress is handmade for you and cost a fortune! We have been told that the traditional dress can cost between $3,400 to $10,000 USD…talk about loving your country! Most people get it once they are adults so they don’t have to size it too many times but it can also be bought as a teenager for your confirmation. The children also wear it but their outfits are reproductions are not too pricey since they are still growing. I guess the outfit lasts a lifetime as long as you don’t gain or lose too much weight but it still seems outrageously expensive for something you wear maybe once to twice year. Jason was frustrated because we were told by our Norwegian friends that we needed to dress up for the day otherwise we would “stick out as foreigners” but he bit the bullet and dressed up. I have to admit we wouldn’t have “stuck out” but almost everyone was dressed up- something we didn’t notice last year. We were also told that we should iron our flags – we thought that would be a bad idea since they are polyester so we didn’t follow that advice. When we did meet up with our Norwegian friends one of them had burned her flag while ironing it, which we thought, was pretty ironic!
Our day started with a 40-minute walk downtown since it is too crowded to drive or take the bus. Kathryn and I had the opportunity to walk with Birralee International School in the Barnetoget (Children’s Parade), which started at 10am. We had a nice time walking in that and seeing all the people lined up along the route. The kids parade is kind of boring since it is just all the schools walking through the town but the kids enjoy it. After that we had a traditional lunch of a hot dog wrapped in bacon- which is called Polse here. Then we headed over to meet our Norwegian friend Lena and some others to see the next parade. Lena was in her traditional dress so we got to hear all the stories about the dress and learn more about the costs etc. We then walked over and got a good spot to watch the 1pm parade which is the “People’s Parade”. It is all the organizations in town parading around which is slightly more interesting then the school kids. The highlight of the day was the “Trondheim Moustache Club” which is hilarious plus there were some nice bands and other groups. We didn’t watch the last parade that started at 4pm and is the Russ Parade. I will blog eventually about Russ, which is another really interesting Norwegian tradition.
After the parade we headed to our lunch reservations for a meal. The place was overcrowded and we had a horrible customer service experience but the food was okay. The bad experience made us realize how much we take customer service for granted in the US and how many options you have to handle a bad experience. In this case we had already paid for the food and the manager basically came out and yelled at us in front of the whole place that we had ordered wrong and they were very busy and nothing was his fault. I waited 1.5 hours for my food even though everyone else had lunch within 40 minutes but that was only half the issue- the rest of our table had many other issues. But all in all it was okay – it gave us another story to tell. J After lunch Jason and I walked home and collapsed after a long day on our feet in the sun. It was a really nice Norway day.
