Saturday 9 December 2006

Pic of the day: The book in question, picture taken with my mobile phone so not very sharp.

THAT old time religion??

Today as I went shopping for groceries at the nearby supermarket, I noticed a children's book that was displayed near the line to the cash register, among with cheaper Christmas comic books. It was called Jul i Valhall - Yule in Valhalla - and illustrated lavishly with Viking-age motifs.

The irony is that we Norwegians use the old word Yule for Christmas. (We spell it "jul" but pronounce it Yule.) This was originally the name of the heathen feast at roughly the same age. Even further back in time it was probably a generic name for feast or party, because it has been borrowed into Finnish with that meaning well before writing arrived. When Christianity came, our ancestors kept the old name but gave it a new meaning. So "Yule in Valhalla", which may seem appropriate to the educated American, looks to us like "Christmas in Valhalla", which should makee any Christian do a double-take. (Valhalla, for those unfamiliar with Norse Mythology, was where fallen warriors lived in preparation for their apocalypse, the Ragnarok. The warriors spent their time fighting each day and partying each night. There were also warrior angels of sorts, the female Valkyries, and the place was the main abode of Odin, the chief god of the Vikings. Not an obvious place to celebrate Christmas.)

With a nod to multiethnic modern Norway, the two healthy smiling Aryan children on the front page are not entirely blond, more dark brown of hair.

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From what I gleaned without buying it, it contains a collection of illustrated old myths about the Norse "gods". Old myths, as in from pre-Christian times. What I did not know was that there was a TV series with the same name, which contains new myths, from post-Christian times. It is about a couple kids who find a cave with an entrance to the world of the old gods. They accidentally sets free Loki the trickster, and so begin the countdown to Ragnarok. I bet there is a happy end to it though. The series is Danish but is also shown in Norway. But not to me, since I don't have a TV. I did not even find it on Pirate Bay, and have not seen it in the shops. So I can't tell you anything more about that.

What I can say however is that Norway truly is a post-Christian nation, as are Denmark and Sweden. Only one Norwegian in four (or was it five now?) believes in God. Among the young, the numbers are more like one in ten, and the people from when Norway was a Christian nation are dying off quickly now, or are lingering half-aware in nursing homes. So I don't expect there to be a lot of protest about "the reason for the season" and idols. Rather, Norwegians respect both Christianity and the old Norse faith as two different cultural expressions. While most will claim that Norway still hold Christian values, these are such values as generosity, tolerance, and support for the underprivileged. Green values, in the code of Spiral Dynamics. Postmodern values, some of which happen to have some similarity to parts of Christianity. (I have written about that elsewhere, I hope.)

I doubt this would have gone down well in the USA, making a children's book for Christmas about pagan idols. Perhaps some fraction of white supremacists might have done so, but it would have been widely reviled, I am sure. But Norway is not the USA. And there is no racist intention in it. Sure, some of our new countrymen don't share this past, but they are free to celebrate their own. And the minority in our country, whether Norwegian or immigrants, who actually believe in Christ, are free to do that and even teach it to their children... At least for a while yet.