Norwegian Pride

NOT BECAUSE A GOOD DOSE OF SINCERE, SOMEWHAT DORKISH SENTIMENT BATTLES AGAINST THE DELUSION OF SELF-IMPORTANCE CONFERRED BY THIS MEDIUM, BUT SIMPLY BECAUSE

statements about my grandfather, Sigvald Helland, aged 84, an Norwegian American, or American Norwegian, depending on what about part of the 20^th century you’re talking

1) In his youth, my grandfather was a Norwegian sailor in the merchant marine who twice took to the broiling waters of the sea with his compatriots following a German torpedo attack. As an adult, he was a carpenter and small business owner who took obsessive pride in keeping the lumber yard he owned immaculate and his shop all the more so.
2) I remember watching him work in his shop after retiring. He would cut two or three boards with a circular saw, stop to sweep up the sawdust, and then cut two or three more. It was not like he was obsessive-compulsive; he just liked the rhythm of sawing and sweeping, sawing and sweeping.

3) Upon retirement, my grandfather built my parents’ house, my uncle’s house, and a house on Jackson Lake in Minnesota. He hired myself out as a carpenter who served rich people in southeastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota. In between projects, he taught me how to fish.
4) My grandfather likes to be taken on drives these days, and he has the unconscious habit of naming the places we pass because I think it helps orient him and avoid succumbing to that that terrible feeling of being lost in places in which you used to be familiar. He can’t remember seeing stores that came into being two years ago, so he always ask if they are new.

5) To this day, whenever we go out to eat, which unusually involves going to Perkins, always gets “freedom fries” on the side and admonishes the waitress for calling them French fries. He is being ironic, which is rare if not unheard of for my grandfather.

6) My grandfather’s basic unadorned goodness is the source of the little Norwegian pride I have. Norwegian pride is understated, soft spoken, slightly socialistic in its disdain for being too "me! me!" That sentiment is largely overwhelmed by a crasser, less at peace pride denuded of ethnic specificity and dependent on equating triumph of the self with the undoing of the other. But sometimes this is not so. Cheers to old people everywhere.