Ord Fra Presidenten
Hei til mine venner! (Hi to my friends!)
In November, we had our lefse party, making many packages of that great stuff. We usually use real cooked potatoes. However, this time, we also used some prepared packaged lefse mix, and it went just fine. Anyway, we have enough lefse to serve and some left over to sell at our upcoming Julebord, December 12. Cost of a package of 3 rounds is now $7.00.
Our Lodge has long been active in local charity. At this time, our Board of Officers has decided upon a charity new to us. It is the Glendale YWCA Sunrise Village, a program for women and children. Instead of a gift exchange at our Julebord, we are planning a monetary donation to this worthy program. Please read the information below.
“Famous” models, Gertrude and Jo Ness, modeled again for the annual fundraiser luncheon for the Glendale Community Scholarship Fund in November at the Castaways Restaurant. Edvard Grieg Lodge has donated scholarship funds more years than any other organization. One of our three scholarships is dedicated for an arts student, in the name of Russ Bakken, a longtime Disney artist.
Please refer to the proposed Nomination of Officers for 2010-2011. We will hold elections at our Julebord. Installation will be conducted by Zone 5 Director Eric Harem at the meeting on January 23. This will be a “formal” meeting – meaning we will meet upstairs, chairs and regalia will be set out, and a short installation will be conducted with the appropriate ceremonial procedure that accompanies installation of officers. This is a chance to participate in a charming, businesslike event which confirms and supports our new/returning officers for the next two-year term. It’s really quite lovely. Afterwards, we adjourn for refreshments. Please note our request for potluck delicacies in the announcement below.
Har et bra.
Jo Ness.
Velkommen
John Richard Fleischer
853 N. California St.
Burbank, CA 91505-2920
(818)563-2767
LODGE ACTIVITIES
BOARD MEETING
Tuesday, December 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the home of Jo Ness, 2619 Fairway Ave., Montrose. 818-249-8102. The membership is invited to enjoy a mini Jul celebration. Jo has special Jul decorations, food, including a traditional tree. Lots of goodies, candles and good time…after the meeting stuff.
Thursday, December 3 at Solheim Lutheran Home. Be there by 6:15 p.m., so the singing can begin at 6:30. Wear something Christmasy, even though it's still early! Solheim is at 2236 Merton Avenue, Eagle Rock. From Colorado, go south on Eagle Rock Blvd. one block, turn right on Merton - it’s in the first block. For information call Mim Johnson - 626-574-9550
JULEBORD
Saturday, December 12, at the American Legion Hall, 4011 La Crescenta Ave., La Crescenta. Starting time: 6:30 p.m. Bring your family and friends, children and grandchildren!
The Santa Lucia procession is an all-time favorite, and kids who want to participate may show up as early as 6 p.m. to be outfitted in their garb as members of the St. Lucia procession. One girl will be chosen as St. Lucia, and others will be her Santa Lucia girls. Boys are welcome as well; older boys can be the stjernegutt (star boy) or magi, and younger boys and girls will be decked out in red capes and caps as Julenisser.
Following the candlelight procession, kids will be visited by Juleknisse himself, bedecked as the American Santa Claus, who will distribute gifts to all participants. All celebrants will then circle around the decorated Christmas tree singing traditional Norwegian and American Christmas carols.
Everyone is asked to bring smørbrød (open-faced sandwiches) and pastries - Scandinavian, if you can -- enough to serve 10-12 people. If you have questions, call Jo Ness at 818-249-8102, or Judith Vinje, Edvard Grieg Lodge Youth Director, at 818-563-2526, or contact her at jgabriel.vinje@gmail.com.
BOARD MEETING
Tuesday, January 12, 2010, 7:30 p.m. at the home of Pat Savoie, 1968 Pinecrest, Altadena. (626) 794-8805
LEFSE PARTY
Saturday, January 16, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the American Legion Hall. We will be making lefse for the Torsk Dinner and we also want enough to sell. Please come, bring your sack lunch; coffee will be provided. With a good number of people, we should be done by 3:00 p.m.
CULTURAL EVENING WITH INSTALLATION OF OFFICERS AND POTLUCK.
Saturday, January 23, 2010, 6:00 p.m. at the American Legion Hall. Officers for 2010-2011 will be installed. Eric Herem, Zone 5 Director, will be the installing officer.
Officers, please make every effort to attend this meeting, and invite your families and friends. Members are asked to bring hors d’oevres or open faced sandwiches for refreshments following the installation. Dessert will be provided.
BOARD MEETING
Tuesday, February 2 at 7:30 p.m. The location will be given in the next issue.
TORSK DINNER
Saturday, February 21 at the American Legion Hall. There will more information in the next issue.
Klub Kristine
For many years, handwork done by LaVonne Kerfoot was the main source of income to Klub Kristine, the lodge’s auxiliary. LaVonne’s sister, Dorothy Lowande, will continue going to events to
sell items; if anyone is interested in contributing handwork, please contact Dorothy at 818-563-4315.
Our New Charity – YWCA Sunrise Village
The mission statement of the YWCA of Glendale is “empowering women and children in our community to achieve independence, self-sufficiency and a life free from violence”. After a hiatus of donating to a local charity, besides the Glendale Community Scholarship Program and Scholarship Annuity, your Board has chosen to include a new local charity. It is a donation program to YWCA “Sunrise Village”, an emergency shelter and safe haven for women and their children fleeing from domestic violence. This has been a successful YWCA service for many years. Our donations will be dedicated specifically for this project, including such needs as food, clothing, current renovations and repairs to the facility, etc. We will invite the YWCA staff to present a brief information program in the near future at one of our cultural program nights. We will be offering our membership opportunities to donate $$ to this program from time to time in the next years. Our first event will be collecting donations at the Julebord instead of a gift exchange. Note – this does not eliminate our usual gifts to our Santa Lucia youth at the Julebord.
Gertrude Ness recommended this new charity. She is YWCA Past President, Board Member, co-founder of their shop, founder of their nursery school program, longtime supporter and volunteer of the organization. She is retired Director of Glendale Unified School District Early Childhood Education Program, and Past Social Director of Edvard Grieg Lodge.
Mange tusen takk for your individual generosity, Gertrude.
News and Notes
The lodge made a contribution to the “Honor Penny J. Knudsen Fund’ for her 25 years of coordinating the rosemaling seminars at Camp Norge.
ššššš
At Norrona Lodge’s 65th Anniversary, Jo Ness took the rosemalt plate that Edvard Grieg Lodge received from Norrona on our 35th anniversary. The plate was painted by Dorothy Olson, and one of the special items that is kept by the current lodge president.
Slate of Officers for 2010 & 2011
President Jo Ness
Vice President Vacant
Counselor Dorothy Bakken
Secretary Mim Johnson
Assistant Secretary Elaine Lundby
Membership Secretary Anne Marie Nassif
Treasurer Margaret Shuler
Social Directors Vacant
Social Committee Peg Chereek, Yvonne Claypool
Tina Hartney, Sally Nilssen, Carl Voien
Cultural Director Cara Clove
Editor Margaret Shuler
Publicity Patricia Hamilton
Historian Patricia Savoie
Youth Director. . Judith Gabriel Vinje
Youth Reporter Shayna Niles
Musician Shelly Baum
Assistant Musician Cara Clove
Scholarship Fran Quick
Foundation Director Dorothy Bakken
Sunshine Committee Astrid Omdal, Diane Langill
Librarian Fran Quick
Auditors Dorothy Lowande, Sally Nilssen
TUBFRIM
Postmaster Ditlef Frantzen in Nesbyen established TUBFRIM in 1928. The aim was to collect and sell used stamps and use the proceeds to aid the eradication of tuberculosis among Norwegian children. The first profit was made in 1929 and amounted to NOK 1.500,-. Profits varied in the following years from NOK 8.000,- in 1940 to NOK 25.000,- in 1947. TUBFRIM has made good progress since from then and profits in 1970 were NOK 150.000,- growing to NOK 620.000,- in 2007.
TUBFRIM is owned by the Norwegian Health Association (Nasjonalforeningen for folkehelsen). Today the profits are used to help handicapped children and youth in Norway, and to finance the efforts to eradicate tuberculosis.
Used postage stamps and telephone cards are not to be thrown in the waste basket, but should be sent to Margaret Shuler, 147 N 5th Avenue, Monrovia, CA 91016. They will be taken to the Norwegian Seamen’s Church in San Pedro, and then shipped to TUBFRIM in Nesbyen, Norway.
Zone 5 Director
Eric Herem
eherem@verizon.net
Insurance Representative
Dennis Burreso
EDVARD GRIEG LODGE WEB SITE
www.edvardgrieglodge.com
Dan Christensen, webmaster
6TH DISTRICT WEB SITE
www.sofn6.com
Christmas celebrations in modern Norway have lost the strong superstitious overtones that made the holidays a perilous time for earlier generations. In today’s Norwegian homes, the first sign of Christmas is the four Advent candles. The first
one is lit on the first Sunday of Advent, four weeks before Christmas Eve. The next Sunday, two candles are lit—and all four of them flicker expectantly the Sunday before Christmas. At the end of Advent, luminous Christmas stars show
up in people’s windows. Apart from these decorations, most Norwegian homes
display few signs of Christmas until December 23, “Little Christmas Eve”, when many households trim their tree and set out their decorations. Others wait until the morning of Christmas Eve.
The Christmas tree was not a part of the ancient Norwegian celebrations. The tradition of having a Christmas tree originated in Germany in the 1500s and was common among well-to-do Norwegian city people in the 1700s. Clergymen and teachers brought the custom to the countryside. In the beginning, people used various types of trees, depending on what was available. Now tree nurseries provide the fir that almost everybody prefers, although in later years the pine has
taken over a part of the market. There are, however, quite a few families who consider searching the woods for their tree, one of their dearest Christmas
traditions, and in most districts some property owners provide the general public with the opportunity to go out in the woods with axe and sled to find their own special tree the old-fashioned way. The trim has, of course, varied somewhat with
time. Most modern Norwegian Christmas trees have glass balls, tinsel garlands, electric candles and a luminous star at the top. Many have long strings with small Norwegian flags on them plus nisser, pine cones, stars and birds. Probably every home has its own home-made trim: heart-shaped paper baskets and long, colorful paper strip chains, made by eager children’s hands. Felt and yarn are given shape
and turned into nisser, angels and birds. Wooden strips and straw are also traditional materials for Christmas decorations.
In addition to the tree, most Norwegian homes also have other Christmas decorations, most of them made of natural materials. Twigs, pine cones,
lingonberry twigs, heather, moss, reindeer lichen, straw, wooden strips, fir-, pine-, and juniper twigs, felt, cotton and linen are the usual basics. Combined in various ways they make attractive decorations placed in baskets or bowls, on platters or trays.
Candles are often part of the decoration, along with nisser and red and white mushrooms. Red is, of course, the eye-catching color, combined with green, white and and natural wood colors. Norwegians are usually cautious concerning effects: gaudiness is considered bad taste by most of them. You will not find as many Christmas wreaths in Norwegian homes as you will in the United States or Canada. Many Norwegians feel that wreaths belong in cemeteries only, and if wreaths are used, they are often placed flat down, like the Advent wreaths that hold the four Advent candles.
From SofN Information Bank – Norwegian Christmas
Fattigmann
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons whipping cream
1-1/2 to 1-1/2 cups flour
6 cardamom seeds, crushed
Beat egg yolks and sugar until creamy and add the whipped cream. Sift flour and cardamom into the egg mixture, stirring carefully to form a soft dough—it must not be stiff. Cover and chill overnight. Roll out a small portion at a time, using as little flour as possible. Cut into diamond shapes with the aid of a pastry wheel and ruler. Make a slit about an inch long Just below one tip and slip the opposite
corner through. They swell and develop large air bubbles during the cooking process. They should be golden brown and tender.
Berlinerkranser
2 hard-cooked egg yolks, crumbled
1 cup butter
2 raw egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
2-1/2 cups flour
Cut flour into butter. Add cooked egg yolks. Separately mix raw egg yolks and sugar. Mix the two mixtures. Roll in short ropes. Twist together. Dip in egg white, then sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.
From SofN Information Bank – Norwegian Christmas
HARALD ULRIK SVERDRUP (1888-1957) – PART II
As one of the world’s leading scientists and founder of modern physical oceanography, Harald Ulrik Sverdrup was appointed head of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, in 1936. He served in that capacity until 1948 when he returned to his native Norway as Professor of Geophysics at the University of Oslo and as Director of the Norwegian Polar Institute until his death in 1957.
Even before the United States entered what came to be known as World War II, the Scripps Institution was engaged in a number of war-related research projects. Among the earliest of these, begun in early 1940, was an effort to detect the presence of German submarines which at the time were aggressively sinking scores of merchant ships carrying supplies to support Allied forces fighting in Europe. Harald Sverdrup was one of the Scripps scientists participating in meetings on anti-submarine warfare at a special Radio and Sound Laboratory constructed at Point Loma, just a few miles from the Scripps campus.
Around the same time the University of California, of which the Scripps Institution was a part, established what came to be known as the University of California Division of War Research (UCDWR), which functioned in close collaboration with the National Defense Research Council (NDRC). On July 1, 1941, Harald Sverdup was placed in charge of the UCDWR/NDRC section on oceanographic research, where meetings were held almost daily seeking ways to detect German U-boats prowling the North Atlantic.
When Sverdrup failed to appear for a scheduled meeting on March 1, 1942, all his colleagues were told was that the Navy had withdrawn his security clearance to work on war-related projects. It was not until some fifty years later that the full story of the extensive government investigations of Harald Sverdrup during the early 1940’s became fully known, with the release of classified files and other records, mandated under the Freedom of Information Act.
As a matter of fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) first became “interested” in Sverdrup in May 1940 when an identified man went to the Bureau’s San Diego field office to report what he regarded as “suspicious” activities. On that same day the FBI launched a field investigation, interviewing a La Jolla resident and contacting the San Diego police department. A few weeks later the FBI received an anonymous letter from New York, alleging Sverdrup’s friendship with a prominent German sympathizer in Sweden. Comments and opinions from other so-called informants gradually found their way into the FBI files.
In addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the offices of Naval Intelligence and Army Military Intelligence were involved in compiling information about Sverdrup, his wife, and associates, and on more than one occasion he was placed under twenty-four hour surveillance. At other times entries in his notebooks and letters to his wife and others, all written in Norwegian, were translated and copied to become part of the intelligence file. In sum, the record reveals considerable doubt of Sverdrup’s loyalty to the United States on the part of high ranking officials in the Army, Navy, and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sverdrup’s closest scientific associate on certain research projects, Walter Munk by name, was also questioned, and investigations of the two men became inextricably linked. According to the long suppressed government documents, challenges to their integrity and loyalty, appear to have come from a variety of sources, some of them anonymous or second hand. Comments by a janitor and three junior staff members at the Scripps Institution were also included in the file. The fact that Sverdrup spent three years in Germany during the first World War was also noted. However, what is most striking in the reports of these investigations is that the senior scientists, both at Scripps and elsewhere and persons of international reputation, were virtually unanimous in their support of Harald Sverdrup and his loyalty to the United States.
Although denied security clearances and unable to be directly involved on certain projects, Sverdrup continued his own research and was able to confer with colleagues on various issues. However, it was not until late 1942 and early 1943 that the investigations by various governmental bodies were concluded. There is no question that he was bothered by the invasion of his privacy and restrictions on his behavior, which in the minds of some left on him “a permanent scar” that in all likelihood was a factor in his decision in January 1947 to leave Scripps and return to Norway one year hence.
The decision to leave the United States was in stark contrast to his position a few years earlier when in May 1940, shortly after the invasion of Norway, he requested that his appointment at Scripps be made permanent and indicated his desire to remain there until his retirement. Also, within a matter of weeks his wife and daughter applied to become U.S. citizens. Further, Sverdrup’s wife became a nurse’s aide and Red Cross worker, and daughter Anna was commissioned a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps.
Other family notes are also relevant here. Preceding Harald Sverdrup’s arrival at Scripps in 1936, an older brother had emigrated to the United States and subsequently established a large and highly successful engineering firm in St. Louis. He also became a United States citizen and joined the Army Corps of Engineers. Rising to the rank of major general, he served under General Douglas MacArthur as Chief of Engineers for the Pacific Theater. Apparently he encountered none of the security problems that beset his brother during that same period.
One of the “public” reasons given for undertaking the investigations of Harald Sverdrup was that at the time those investigations began he was not a United States citizen. Further, it was assumed that because he had close family members living in Norway under German occupation, he might be subject to blackmail should any of them be imprisoned and subject to torture and death. He addressed that issue directly, in an interview at the San Diego field office of the FBI in January 1942. The report of that meeting indicates he stated “that no amount of pressure on his relatives in Norway would in any way affect any confidential matter or information he may have in his possession.” The facts are that two of his sisters were imprisoned by the Germans and that a younger brother, an officer in the Norwegian resistance movement, was killed in battle against the occupying forces in Spitsbergen. It is also a fact that despite numerous obstacles and personal frustrations Harald Sverdrup persevered in his scientific work throughout the war. During those years he became widely known as the father of modern oceanography, and some of his studies are said to have saved thousands of lives of American army and navy personnel.
In Part III, concluding this article, we will mention some of his scientific achievements, and how they contributed, in ways little known, to military successes in North Africa and Europe and also in the Pacific.
Richard C. Gilman
Pasadena, California
Norwegian among the 'most difficult languages to learn to speak'
A veteran professor of languages claims that Norwegian is among the world's languages that's the most difficult to learn to speak well. Russian professor Valerij Pavlovitsj Berkov, who has spent decades perfecting his own Norwegian, told newspaper Aftenposten that the tonelag (inflection and musical accent) needed to speak Norwegian properly is almost impossible for non-Norwegians to master. "Norwegian is one of the world's most difficult languages to learn to speak perfectly," said Berkov, who will turn 80 this month.
Non-Norwegians will find it nearly impossible, he contends, to speak the language without revealing that they are foreigners. Berkov is a long-time professor of languages at both the St Petersburg State University and the Nordic Institute at the University of Oslo, teaching Norwegian to Russians and Russian to Norwegians among other subjects. He also has taught English, German, Icelandic and several other languages, is fluent in around 16 languages himself and has written the 1,121-page Russian-Norwegian dictionary as well as its companion Norwegian-Russian dictionary.
He's been fascinated with Norwegian since he was a child and had taught Norwegian for 15 years before he was first allowed to visit Norway, in 1966. Another 21 years passed before he was allowed to return, in 1987, and says he still doesn't know why the authorities denied him travel permission or who "worked against me." Now he and his wife divide their time between St Petersburg and Oslo. Berkov strives to stay firmly out of the ongoing debate over the various forms of Norwegian, but allowed that the language isn't well-served without a norm. He notes that broen, brua, bruen and broa, for example, can all be used for "the bridge," and that the lack of one preferred version in fact does away with the norm. He wouldn't comment, though, on whether it's wise for a country to have two official languages, as Norway does with bokmal and nynorsk. "It's stupid for a foreigner to try to tell a Norwegian how they should use their own language," he said.
Views and News from Norway
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