7hrs 16 mins TV documentary on Norwegian train trip

[steinjr]

Very interesting, Stein. My wife is Swedish and Norwegian on her father's side and her mother was from New Foundland. Her Grandfather on her father's side was Swedish while her grandmother was Norwegian. I had heard that this was unusual since Swedes and Norwegians didn't get along very well, but this is the first time I've heard of any details about the history of the two countries.

Oh, Norwegians and Swedes are like Canadians and Americans. They get along just fine, even though both sides thinks the other side speaks a little funny and has a few odd customs and quirks, and even though they have a shared history including the occational cross-border invasion (in either direction) over the centuries.

In earlier times, there were things some people at the time probably felt quite resentful about. Like the American Loyalists (people who stayed loyal to England in the American war of independence/rebellion) that were hounded out from New England, and had to resettle in the maritime provinces of Canada after the American war of independence, or the Norwegians who became Swedes after the Norwegian province of Bohuslen became Swedish sometime in the 1600s or so.

But mostly people have gotten along. They speak, after all, essentially the same language, and have essentially the same culture and customs.

It was also interesting to me that her uncle Otto was in the Norwegian Merchant Marine and was in New York Harbor when the Germans invaded Norway while his wife, Mary was in Norway and as far as we know was fighting with the resistance. Mary never wanted to talk much about her experiences during the war. Uncle Otto and his crew turned the ship over to the Americans to sale under the U.S. flag resupplying England and later the rest of Western Europe as it was liberated from the Germans

Hmm - possible that the ship was turned over , but not likely. The Norwegian government in exile fairly quickly set up a government run shipping organisation (NORTRASHIP) to organize Norwegian merchant navy shipping outside occupied Europe into a government run shipping line (the HQ of the various shipping lines being in occupied Norway).

The ships were used to run supplies to England and Russia and a lot of other places.

The Norwegian merchant navy was fairly big in those days - at the start of WW2 Norway had the fourth biggest merchant navy in the world, and about 18% of the world's total tank ship tonnage was Norwegian.

At the end of the war, we had lost about 700 ships (200 in Norwegian waters, forced into German service and sunk by the allies, and about 500 in exile, sunk by the axis powers). About 1 in 10 of our merchant navy sailors (3800 out of about 30 000) died during WW2, and far more came away from the war with their nerves shot to pieces after spending night after night wondering if the next torpedo had your name on it.

But we are straying pretty far away from the subject of trains here - enough of the general Norwegian history ?

Stein