Outside of Norway, there are a lot of ethnic Norwegians who take the idea of tradition very seriously. Hardliners tend to see it as a make or break type of thing – you either follow custom with scrupulous attention to detail or risk perverting your “Norwegian-ness” with outside influence. Being authentic often means wearing official Husfliden issue bunad accessories, knowing whether hands-on-hips should face forward or back during folkdance posturing, and certainly it means understanding that rosemaling is applied to “traditional items” such as wooden cupboards and spoons.
This is a peculiar sort of authenticity, frozen in time and action, where tradition becomes more like a highly ritualized representation of the past. In this sense Norwegian-ness has set parameters taken from a particular time and place, formalized through rules of conduct, dress, and technique. “Tradition” is synonymous with the concept of “preservation” and partitioned off from ordinary life like good china and the parlor room used only for entertaining. Set apart in such a way, it sometimes reminds me of the mutant barnyard fetuses floating in glass jars at the local fair.
This kind of tradition has its place, certainly, in distinguishing the real from its poor cousin the replica. Without it, we wouldn’t have the probing thirst for truth that led us to ask whether Vikings really had horns on their helmets or whether the advent of Catholicism really obliterated Nordic pagan beliefs for good. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to recognize regional variations in rosemaling technique or understand the underlying insinuations of “introducing” one’s lady to the church in archived records.
At the same time, it would be a mistake to regard tradition as the measuring stick for Norwegian authenticity, for once a custom, belief, or practice has been specially marked as “traditional,” it acquires a special status set aside from common practice. Lost is the warm familiarity of baking cookies with unquantified ingredients in the kitchen with one’s mother. This is replaced with the rigidity of recipes, specialized equipment, and formalized presentation. Tradition, once it has lost its automaticity, its spontaneity, ceases to be a realistic version of what it was intended to represent. It becomes an alienated object of conscious reproduction and loses its original flavor.
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