Tuesday 8 May 2007

Pic of the day: A spring celebration.

Liberation day

I am surprised that I haven't written about this in my years-ago entries. When I grew up, May 8 was an important day. I think we didn't have a day off work even then (there were just so many free days in May already) but everyone knew about it and thought about it: May 8 1945, the day the Germans capitulated and their occupation of Norway ended. After five years, we got our freedom back.

Well, my parents and their generation got their freedom back. I wasn't even born, of course. But it was still very real to us. It was something that was etched in the memories of those who were adults at the time, those who ruled society and made up the bulk of it. And of the young, a substantial number were conceived on that day and the next couple weeks, the original baby boomers. Vague descriptions, already half legends, made their way to us kids about how people had danced in the streets and copulated in the bushes. Not to mention hunted down those who had been too friendly with the Germans, and done some pretty imaginative things to them.

In the 1960es, when I was a kid, people still remembered who had sided with the Germans (that was the most common word, the Germans, not the Nazis) and it showed in how people treated him and even his children and grandchildren. There was something fundamentally wrong about such a person, a stain that would never go away. We all remembered this on May 8, even those of us who had not been there. But most of all we remembered the joy, the ecstasy of freedom.

Norway did have a resistance, and while it did not strike often, it struck strategically and with daring. And the huge Norwegian merchant fleet had been an important part of the Allied war effort, risking and losing many ships and many of our seamen. Even so, everyone knew that we had not liberated ourselves. The Russians had liberated Northern Norway. Then, unlike everywhere else in the world that I can think of, they had withdrawn. But more than any, it was our Western allies and their push through Normandie that we credited with our freedom. The British, the Americans and the Canadians. Due to the Cold War we downplayed the Russian war effort and their immense sacrifices, although we were not entirely ignorant of them. We just preferred not to talk about that. After all, it was liberty we celebrated. And we knew full well that the lands that fell under Soviet rule could still not celebrate the kind of liberty we had.

May 8 then was a day of gratitude as well as celebration. Gratitude to God and good men, to our own and to our allies. Gratitude that the Germans had abandoned their vague plans of fighting on in Festung Norwegen, a land that not only was hard to invade unless you took it by surprise (as they had done) but also a land that they were emotionally attached to: The Nordic race was considered the purest form of German, the tall and strong blondes the pinnacle of human evolution. Not a few Germans had honestly believed they were here to protect the ancient wellspring of their race, rather than just a conquered colony with valuable ores. But luckily for all involved, they had given up, on this day. And we got our freedom like a gift from Heaven, without the rivers of blood that it could have cost.

These days, I don't hear much about May 8. I wonder if there are still old people who go to the memorials to lay down flowers. Probably still some. But it is no longer a big part of our life. We take freedom for granted now. Truth to tell, we also have more of it, again not least thanks to the Americans. Back in my childhood we had radio monopoly, TV monopoly, telephone monopoly, all run by the state of course. Taxes were high, and the banks were told how much to lend and at what interest rate. Today such things would seem like dictatorship to us. But despite all our freedom now, there is no dancing in the streets. Despite a standard of living I could not have imagined back then, there is whining and greed. The next liberation, I think, needs to be the liberation of our heart.