Nationalism is a dead cause

This post is a little bit of a departure from my previous posts, but it is still connected to my observation and study in Oslo. Nationalism seems to be the topic of the day for both of my courses. It has actually been a subject of debate and discussion since we arrived in Norway.

There seems to be a strong national identity in Norway, and I will be the first to admit that I don’t buy it. This strong national identity has been threatened by a recent influx of immigrants from all over the world who are attracted to Norway’s thriving economy and peaceful existence on the world stage. I've been told that one in three children in Oslo is a child of immigrant parents. Norway never was a homogeneous nation. While they have been ignored for much of Norwegian history, the Sami people in the north have been a significant minority from the start. Still, this national identity persists even with a non-ethnic population that seeks to be a part of the Norwegian nation.

In preparation for a tour of a Pakistani district in Oslo, we were assigned to read a text that attempts to explain how and why the Norwegian national identity exists. The author points to a mixed response to the other depending on the circumstances Norway was dealing with at the time. Norwegians treated Swedish immigrants as equals and fellow workers in times of prosperity and labeled them as bastards and mongrels when they feared that the immigrants would place a heavy burden on their economy.

There was also a tragic and unfortunate response to Jews in Norway. Even though the Jewish population was less than 2,000 before World War II, many Norwegians feared that Jewish business owners would overrun Norwegian businesses. On top of that, Norway almost never accepted Jewish refugees into the country at the start of WWII. The author suggests that many Norwegians did not want to acknowledge what was happening throughout Europe, and they especially did not want to take responsibility for assisting the millions of Jewish refugees.

On the flip side, my peace seminar reading of the day suggests the ethnicity has nothing to do with the reasons for conflict. In fact, ethnically diverse states are not any more likely to go to war than ethnically homogeneous states. Differences only become important as a tool for political mobilization to conflict. In other words, leaders use supposed injustices against their own ethnic group as a way to motivate people to fight for justice.

With that being said, I struggle to look at the Norwegian nation as a relevant construct in the present era. How can so many people still approve of a categorization that has so often been used to discriminate against others? At its extreme, nationalism has been the very instrument of armed conflict in regions that have not seen war for centuries.

Americans have also struggled with a national identity. I would argue that many of our discriminatory practices against immigrants in the last two centuries have been a result of the very pressures Norway experienced as well. But unlike Norway, the United States has definitive ethnic identity to attach to its national identity.

These are just some thoughts to consider. Maybe it is possible to integrate new members of a state into the nation. Then Norway would surprise me. But as far as I can tell, the current global climate makes it nearly impossible to survive as a homogeneous nation-state, no matter how small the country is. Maybe it is time to put nationalism behind and hold onto the idea of citizenship instead.

*The photo above features the folk choir, Bygdelagskoret, who performed for the ISS opening ceremony on Monday. I placed this photo because I question whether this is really a representative snapshot of Norwegian culture and identity.

Starting out

My roommate, Eva, came in Saturday afternoon. She drove all the way from Germany to get here. We have had a couple of orientation meetings to prepare us for our summer school and life in the dormitories. I can finally sleep through the night. While I was in Lillehammer, I got into a habit of waking up at 4:30 a.m., and I couldn't fall back asleep unless I did something for a couple of hours first. The light Norwegian nights will do that to a person if she's not careful.

We explored the student pub Saturday night because we heard they have the best prices in Oslo. And by the best prices, I mean that the cheapest drink is about $5. We met up with some full-time students at the University of Oslo who are working through the summer. They were already pretty drunk on homemade wine, so they were pretty interesting folks.

Classes started yesterday, and with them came all the homework. Each of my two courses has three compendia, which are books of photo copied materials. I spend pretty much my entire morning and afternoon studying in the library or my room since I have some hefty daily reading assignments. The summer school was a little different than I expected. Both of my professors are American by birth, but they live and work in Norway. My government and politics course is half American and half everything else. I was surprised to see so many people from the U.S. at this summer school.

Last night, the City of Oslo hosted an opening ceremony and reception downtown. They hired a folk choir to sing during the ceremony, and the rector of the university and the minister of education gave their remarks. I was entertained by the murals in the festival hall where the ceremony took place. A select few of them featured people fully clothed, while the others pictured people doing odd activities in the nude. After the ceremony, we walked to the city hall for the reception. The city paid for the food and the alcohol, which I'm sure is a pretty costly venture. My friends from the Balkans tried to out-drink each other with the free champagne and wine. Needless to say, everyone was pretty merry.

*The person standing next to me in the photo above is my roommate, Eva. The other photo features some of my American and Balkanian friends.

Mid Summer Night's Eve and off to Oslo

On Thursday night, we participated in a festival that celebrates the longest day of the year. The tradition of Mid Summer Night's Eve stems back to the times before Christianity. In Lillehammer, they had the party in an outdoor museum that has buildings from the 18th and 20th centuries. Many people were dressed in their traditional costumes which they apparently pull out for special occasions. Norwegians do quirky things like log cutting and polka dances. At the end of the celebration, they lit a bonfire on a small island in the middle of a lake. I knew there was going to be a bonfire. But silly me. I was thinking of an American blaze where people throw tons and tons of wood and other things in a heap and stand around it with beer in hand. The wood for this fire was placed in a neat spiral, and the people watched from a safe distance around the lake. The interesting thing about the Nansen seminar was that we were all foreigners in Norway. I sat with a Macedonian woman at the bonfire, and we were both observing a Norwegian family nearby. All of a sudden, we both starting laughing at how quaint the family was. The three blond-haired children ate their sandwiches from their lunch packets while their mother chuckled as she spoke to her friend. The father casually chatted with his friends nearby. This is a terrible description of how humorous the situation was, but I guess you just had to be there. I think the mutual culture shock among all of the students at the seminar created a tight bond. Most of us felt a little out of place among the picture-perfect families and peaceful culture.

We ended the seminar yesterday with a discussion of the challenges of nation and state. I think we finally reached a point where the discussion could become more difficult. One of the biggest problems in ex-Yugoslavia is that nations are not divided by state borders. People vote based on nationality of the party rather than the political objectives of the party. In a democracy, this means the ethnic minorities are rarely represented fairly in government. Nationalism provides a sense of belonging to a group of like-minded and culturally similar people, but in the Balkans, it often overrides a sense of belonging to a state. Ethnicity comes before citizenship.

I will be interested to see how my friends and I continue to discuss issues such as this one as we continue our studies in Oslo. At first I was unclear that we Americans were going to fit into the conversation at the Nansen Center, but there are many parallels between the conflicts in the Balkans and the identity issues that arise due to immigration problems in the U.S. As one person pointed out, the American students seem to feel extremely guilty for many things in our history. There is a lot to proud of as well, but it is easy to point to our faults as a country when we have so much power. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" is happening right here in the United States.

We took a bus to Oslo yesterday afternoon and arrived in the early evening. I spent the night without a roommate. As of yet, I have still not met her, but I came back to find her bags in the room, so at least she is here. I'm still getting acquainted with the campus and the food. I don't eat fish, and I am struggling to find ways to get around it since Norwegians consider it a staple of their diet. The food is getting better, but it is a letdown compared to what we had in Lillehammer. In Oslo, fresh fruit is considered a dessert because it is expensive to import. I am learning to appreciate fruit more than I ever have before.

*The photo was taken at the Mid Summer Night's Eve in Lillehammer. The person in the picture is a grad student from the U of Minnesota who is in Norway because he was working with the U.S. Embassy in Oslo and is now a student at the ISS. The other photo is an example of the huge spread of food at the cafeteria in Lillehammer.

Reminiscing at the Dialogue Seminar

The last two days have been extremely powerful. Steiner Bryn has an ability to bring people softly into conversation with each other. It’s sort of like putting a frog in a pot of water and slowly turning up the heat until the water is boiling. On our first day in the dialogue seminar, we discussed the goals of the program and how to do dialogue. Steiner feels strongly that dialogue is the key to understanding another person. Debate, discussion, and negotiation can only take people so far, but dialogue is an experience that causes people to change. We started with short introductions in small groups and then moved to larger groups. It was really nothing serious. We all knew why we are here. Most of the participants come from places that have been ravaged by guerrilla war and segregation. The rest of us have our own problems in the States because of problems associated with immigration and the three major conflicts we are currently engaged in. For the most part, we didn’t go there. We also had a lecture on the role of religion in our lives. The Norwegians take religion very personally. It’s a private matter that is not easy to talk about. We were forced to break that boundary and share what religion means to us. For some reason, this was a very difficult thing for me. Even though I only had to talk to two other people, I felt awkward talking about such a hot topic that is truly a private matter for me. Our final session of the day was a trip to the Olympic ski jump. Norway hosted the Olympics in 1994, and the ski jump still stands. We started at the top and walked our way down the hundreds of stairs next to the jump. The view was impeccable.

Yesterday was a little more serious than the first day. We learned more about Nansen, the man whose name became famous in Norway and became the name of the academy where we are meeting. We then tested our abilities to engage in dialogue when the subject of the conversation is more serious. We talked about conflicts in our countries. This had the potential to turn into a debate rather quickly, and I was afraid that people were going to ask me about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. I usually avoid those topics because I do not have a strong opinion about them. I am a Soldier. I go where I am told to go, but I do not have hard feelings about Arabs or anything like that. My group focused on repatriation of Serbs into Kosovo. I saw before my eyes the concept of parallel truths come out as a Bosnian Serb and Kosovo Albanian argued about what is causing Kosovo Serbs to avoid coming back. They were both right, and yet it is easy to say that one has to be wrong. We finished the day with some free time in Lillehammer and then a barbeque at Steiner’s house.

I expected that my trip to Lillehammer would bring closure to my time in Kosovo. I left my mission in Kosovo with a deep sense of unfinished business. I felt like I didn’t accomplish anything substantial. Yes, my team was one of the busiest in KFOR, but as far as progress on rebuilding Kosovo, I felt like we didn’t do anything. Ethnic conflicts are difficult to the outsider. I as a foreigner do not understand what is holding Serbs and Albanians back from reconciliation. I will never completely understand. So my response to their conflict is one of impatience and insensitivity. I admit that I had moments of misunderstanding while I was in Kosovo. I wanted action, either positive or negative. Soldiers are not trained to deal with the long process of peacekeeping. They are used to being busy. That’s the problem with combat troops. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “I just don’t understand why they don’t just get along already. It’s so childish.” Maybe this misunderstanding followed me home to North Dakota. I started the deployment with a sense that maybe this rotation would be the one that brings peace to Kosovo. And when we didn’t accomplish that goal, I was disappointed.

So when I boarded the plane to Norway, my expectation was to just see some positive work being done with people from Kosovo. If I met just two people from opposing sides who could see eye to eye, then maybe I could close the book on Kosovo and move on to more important matters.

That was not at all my experience. Every spare chance I get, I ask the three people from Kosovo as many questions as I can. I ask about construction projects that were unfinished when I left. I ask about their vacations to the Albanian coast, the food they eat, the clothes they wear. And I find myself getting really excited when they share new things or bring insight into the questions that I never got answered while I was there. Whether I want to close the book on Kosovo and the Balkans as a whole, I can’t. The Balkans is in my blood.

Other people are beginning to notice as well. One student from Holland told me that I really need to do something with the Balkans because she can tell I speak very fondly and personally about the place. Another person has told me that somehow I’ve been given an opportunity as a student and a soldier to understand Kosovo in a way almost nobody could. He told me that I need to do something about this. I’m not sure what that particular thing is, but I have a strong feeling that I will be back to the Balkans sooner than I previously thought.

Icelandair

I just made it through yet another international flight. I have so much to say about Icelandair, but I think the most precise definition is "sketchy." Times are tough for Iceland. The volcanic eruptions in 2010 must have destroyed their airline industry. Now customers have to buy their meals on transatlantic flights. The flight was great if you were a kid. Children get a free meal, free headphones, and a coloring book. Now I see where my/Concordia's money went. I also had water dripping on me from the ceiling emergency exit. I'm not sure how that got through, but again, this airline is sketchy.

I'm about to begin a dialogue seminar that focuses on reconciliation with students from the Balkans. Last night I shared some of my knowledge of Kosovo with our group. I am beginning to realize that certain memories are fading, and I am not as certain about what I know about the place anymore. The academic environment is drastically different than the world in which I worked. It will be a challenge for me to set aside my military perspective when I sit down in conversation with these students. I have so many questions to ask them.

Our peace prize forum group seems to be pretty pleasant. There are many different personality types, so I suspect that we will be able to get along well. I am amazed by the amount of collective knowledge and experience that we are bringing on our trip. Hopefully it will be put to good use.