Scandinavia : Summer 2010

We are in Scandinavia for summer vacation. Ashi, my three-year-old expects to meet Santa Claus at every turn in Finland and Norway. Every day her list of what she is going to ask Santa for gets new additions. It helps that she knows Santa is watching, even though she can’t see him. At least three times a day she checks if she is being a good girl. Now I know why the Scandinavians love their kids.

The Missing Mermaid

Ashi has been looking forward to seeing the Little Mermaid ever since she heard the story. But on the Copenhagen harbourfront, at the spot she’s supposed to be, she is not there. Breaking news – the Little Mermaid stolen? Not really. She is away to Shanghai Expo, gracing the Denmark pavilion. I want our money back – imagine a foreigner coming all the way to India and finding the Taj Mahal gone. The husband says this is a clear case of sucking up to the Chinese. All Scandinavian governments are in a race to please China. Every year, dozens of high level delegations from China come to Sweden, for example, to learn about environmental management, urban planning, clean energy, education, healthcare and, believe it or not, labour relations. All evidence suggests that these are not Indian babu-style junkets – there are real results on the ground. Hundreds of Scandinavian companies run hugely profitable businesses in China. The Volvo-Geely deal is merely the cherry on the top.

Sober Scandinavia

The Swedish crown princess Victoria married her personal trainer Daniel Westling in June. Despite several hundred thousand visitors descending in Stockholm over the wedding weekend, the celebrations are remarkably – and pleasantly, in this day and age – decorous. Surely there is a stereotype of the ‘cold fish’ Swede, and surely no one expected the newly anointed Duke to break into a full-blooded bhangra while sailing down Stockholm’s waters on the Royal Barge with his newly-wedded wife. But the decorum is in contrast, somehow, to the sleaze and intense scrutiny that has come to be associated with the royal family of England, contributed to mainly by the last Princess of Wales. Except Finland, which is a republic, all Scandinavian countries have monarchies that seem to have the love and respect of their subjects. In Copenhagen, for example, to speak lightly of the very popular Queen Margarethe II is bad form, second only to eating with your hands and then licking your fingers – guaranteed to set Danish teeth on edge.

It is not uncommon to see Danes eating burgers with knife and fork. What is truly alarming to an Indian mother like me, however, is the sight of an unattended infant gurgling in its pram on a pavement outside a café. The little one has been left alone by its parents who are inside the café for a good half hour, bonding over coffee and Danish pastries, confident that no one wants to kidnap their baby. It slowly begins to register that in the Tivoli amusement park, in the Town hall square, walking in the park, riding on the metro, everywhere except maybe while crossing the street, kids don’t hold hands with their parents. These are child-friendly countries – our hotel lent us a stroller for free and in Stockholm you go free on the bus if a kid is with you. The Danes, concerned about the declining safety and quality of life in their society (really!) have enacted some of the toughest immigration laws in Europe.

Passout Parade

In Copenhagen, the day we arrive is when the high school students graduate. For the next two days, in a tradition called russefeiring, the young boys and girls raise hell, looked upon indulgently and even encouragingly by the rest of the city. They hire buses, decorate them gaily with balloons and festoons and drive around like crazy, playing loud music and blowing horns and mini-vuvuzelas. They scream, jump into public fountains, dance around city squares and drink enormous amounts of Carlsberg beer. The general spirit is, “We made it.” They are allowed the obnoxious behaviour, which actually never crosses the limits of harmless fun as we watch. The bus drops each one of them, soaked in water and beer, back to their parents’ houses, where they are welcomed with much congratulatory cheer.

No way in Norway

The National Geographic has often voted the Norwegian fjord area as the most beautiful destination on earth – ahead of New Zealand, the Swiss Alps and the Yorkshire Dales. As always, it is right. The scenery is gorgeous –  water and mountains are a constant feature on a picture-book landscape. Driving through Hardangerfjord from Oslo to Bergen or to Geirangerfjord via the Jotunheim National park, we repeatedly stop to take pictures. In the Trollstigen mountains there is ice –  vast sheets of white –  despite the round-the-clock sun. Sheer, barren brown walls of rock guard frozen lakes one minute, the next minute the vista opens to rolling green meadows and gurgling streams. Waterfalls abound –  refreshing little nymphs you can reach out a hand to, as well as raging harridans that scare you with their might. The roofs on many houses are green with grass – real grass that acts as insulation – it is an old Viking tradition, we hear.

The weather is excellent and it seems the entire country is outdoors to celebrate the sun – driving around in their campervans, mountain biking, canoeing, hiking, river-rafting – these are hardy mountain-folk, and like hardy mountain-folk everywhere they are supremely fit, generally quiet and introspective, and very community-minded. In many campsites we see satellite dishes on campervans – this is World Cup season. Campervan rental companies will happily rent you camp furniture – including a fence to build a yard outside your campervan door, folding tables and chairs, a barbeque grill – camping is quite luxurious these days, in these parts of the world, for sure. The little kitchen inside the motorhome with its hob, chimney and fridge serves us well for a week. Ashi can’t get over the little shower cubicle and potty in her “moving home” – with a small child, the bathroom is very convenient. Since you can camp almost anywhere in the Norwegian countryside that doesn’t carry a “No Camping” sign – and those signs are few – campervans are designed to be totally self-sufficient – though campsites give you an electricity connection that helps you save on gas.  Campsites are well equipped for septic tank cleaning, grey water discharge and topping up fresh water.

If India was Norway, we would drive to Siachin. The feats of civil engineering have to be seen to be believed. Never-ending tunnels cutting through mountains, roads that barely cling to the edge of the fjord – remember, dynamite was a Scandinavian invention. But someone needs to ask the Norwegians why they forgot to build overtaking lanes. Very often, you want to let a purring BMW behind you pass, but you can’t - on mountain roads there are poles (to mark the road in case of snow) - very close to the nearly-absent shoulder – that completely hem you in. On motorways speed limits vary greatly and frequently, and speed cameras show up regularly. Driving a seven meter long camper-home in Norway is not for the fainthearted.   In a country with no poverty, free healthcare, free childcare, free education, generous pensions, one hundred and sixty days of holiday in a year and one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, nearly all motorways are single lane each way. There is some justice in the world, after all.

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On the last day of our vacation, as we step out for dinner in our Oslo hotel, we are joined in the lift by a big round man with bushy grey hair and a long white beard. “What’s your name?” He asks the little one. “Ashi,” she says. “And I am Santa Claus,” he says as he steps out. I wish he knew that his joke has made Ashi’s holiday complete, and given her the memory of a lifetime.

Did you know?

The Danish national flag, the Dannebrog, is the oldest state flag in the world.

The Norwegians eat Lomper or Lefse, a flatbread very similar to the Indian chapatti in look and taste.

It is believed that in the year 1000, Leif Ericson, a Viking Explorer became the first European to land in America, nearly 500 years before Columbus.