Norway's Northern Lights & Spanking in Culture

The February 2024 Dance Past Sunset Newsletter

Tromsø, Norway, where the January sun rarely came higher than you see here

Dear Gentle Reader:

A little bird suggested that my newsletters are too long, so rather than shorten them, I’ve decided to rebrand these occasional missives as a news “magazine” rather than a news “letter.”

So, this will not be a long letter — rather, it will be a short (very short) magazine! It will include my photographs of Norway, including some of the Aurora Borealis (the famous “Northern Lights”) that Fabi and I had the chance to see in January. Truly wonderful!

But first, I want to share my view from the balcony.

From the Balcony

My balcony today is a small chapel built in the 17th century, the Saint Antonio da Padova in Melzo, Italy. I am sitting on a brown wooden pew, polished smooth by over 400 hundred years of use, writing the old-fashioned way — with pen and paper. Later, I will migrate these words to an electronic form so I can share them with you.

The Saint Antonio di Padova chapel in Melzo, Italy

I am no longer the religious person I once was — those years are far behind me now — but this little church is just a stone’s throw from our flat in Italy, so it makes a quiet place to write and think, or better yet, to think and then write.

I remember a Bible verse from my years as a Christian: “Spare the Rod and spoil the child.” That verse comes from the Old Testament, as so many of the Bible’s most controversial ideas do, and the idea of corporal punishment, especially as it applies to children, is indeed controversial.

In Norway, where Fabi and I just spent a week, it is illegal to spank your child. That law would have landed me in jail when I was raising my three daughters because I did not spare the rod. Neither did my parents when they were raising me. As you can read from this new chapter of my new book Making the Second Half Man, corporal punishment was part of how I was raised, for better or for worse.

Temperatures in Norway were in the single digits in Fahrenheit, or minus 14 in Celcius

When Fabi and I met with the host of our Norwegian Airbnb, a gentleman from Nigeria with a PhD in molecular biology, we asked him about his experience adapting from his African culture to his new Norwegian one. The issue of spanking immediately came up.

“They will come to the school and take your child,” he said with a touch of panic in his voice.

“Who is they?” I asked.

“Norway's Child Protective Services,” he said. “If a teacher, or even a neighbor, suspects you are mistreating your child, they will forcibly take that child away from you and put them in foster care.”

According to Norwegian law, in addition to “spanking, slapping, hitting, and pinching,” mistreating a child also includes a variety of non-physical parenting techniques that were the norm when I was growing up, such as:

“Stop that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about !” This was one of my mother‘s favorite lines. It would have landed her in Norwegian jail for “Threatening violence, harm, or abandonment as a way to control a child.”

“Go to your room and don’t come out until I tell you so!” Another favorite. Illegal for “Deliberately preventing a child from socializing or participating in activities with others.”

“Stop whining and get ready for church!” Illegal for “Forcing a child to adopt specific beliefs or ideologies against their will or without proper understanding.”

“Say that again and I’ll wash your mouth out with soap!” Oops. Sorry. A big no-no for “Restricting a child's right to express their thoughts, feelings, and opinions in a safe and respectful manner.”

Constant criticism or negativity? Hello Dad. This was his modus operandi.

Norway was very clean, orderly, and very cold

I am not trying to defend any of these parenting behaviors, especially not the violent ones, but I don’t know a single family that hasn’t run afoul of at least some of them at least once. Certainly not my family! I thought of all the times I spanked my kids, tickled and nibbled them, sent them to their rooms for misbehaving, or pretended to eat their toes and noses. I thought about how easily their laughter, screams, and childish stories could be misinterpreted by a State with the best intentions, plus the violent power (officers with guns) to kidnap my children at will. The thought still chills me.

“You should watch the Netflix movie, Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway,” our Nigerian host said. “Then you will see what goes on here and how difficult it can be for an immigrant like me to assimilate into Norwegian society.”

Fabi and I did watch the film. It tells the true story of an Indian family with two small children, one an infant, and how rigid Norwegian Child Protective Services removed the children when the State suspected the family environment, which was not perfect, was unhealthy.

If you choose to watch the film, keep your eyes peeled for one scene that passes so quickly that is it is easy to miss. The Indian couple is walking through a park in Norway. The pregnant mother is about to eat an ice cream. She removes the wrapper and throws it on the sidewalk. The Indian man, her husband, who is eager to assimilate and gain Norwegian citizenship, stops, picks up the wrapper, and reminds his wife not to litter. “This is Norway, not India,” you can imagine him saying. “You can't do that here.” It's the first of many unflattering scenes of Indian culture.

That’s what I like about the movie. Even though the film was produced by Indians, they were willing to show the shadow side of both Norwegian culture and their own. Not anyone was all good or all bad. As Viktor E. Frankl said in his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning:

From all this, we may learn that there are two races of men in the world, but only these two — the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.

And so it is wherever you go, from the lands of the sun, like India, Nigeria, Texas, and Florida — to the lands of the snow, like Canada, Norway, Michigan, and Russia. There are, as Donald Trump once clumsily said, or as Viktor Frankl said more elegantly, good and decent people on both sides. I find them everywhere I go.

And that is what I saw from the balcony today.

Images of Norway, January 2024

The Northern Lights

Seeing the northern lights is a bit like trying to see a unicorn. Conditions must be just right – clear, dark skies are a must. There must also have been a solar flare at least 18 hours before your night of watching.

Fabi and I were fortunate. The right conditions prevailed and we were rewarded with a spectacular display, some pictures of which you’ll see below. The Northern Lights constantly change and move around, sometimes like a curtain, sometimes with pink, and always awe-inspiring.

Even more fun for me than the Aurora Borealis was watching Fabi’s reaction to them. Long on her bucket list, when they finally appeared, she ran around like a little girl on Christmas morning, alternatively crying, laughing, and shrieking with joy.

Now, she wants to go unicorn hunting for the lights again, but that will have to wait. First, we have a trip to Mexico to complete, where we hope to encounter some whale sharks, the largest non-cetacean animals in the world.

Project Progress

I’ll close this news magazine with an update on the three projects I mentioned last time — the new podcast, Fabi’s book (title TBD,) and my book about Dad and men of my generation.

• I finished the script for the podcast How to Tour America Through Her Music and will commence recording it. That will take several months. If you enjoy the blues, rock&roll, country&western, and all genres of American music and history, then you are going to enjoy this podcast! Watch for show #1 this spring.

• I translated the first four chapters of Fabi’s book from Italian to English (with a little help from Google) and am very excited about it. Boy does she have some stories to tell from her 20 years as a sailor! That book will come out as a serial on Substack in early summer.

• The first chapters of my book, Making the Second Half Man, are available now on Substack. I explain the book’s title and purpose in its Dedication and Introduction, which you can read for free here:

All subsequent chapters are available for a fee, the proceeds of which go to my favorite charities, Doctors Without Borders and charitywater.org.

If you are experiencing financial hardship, let me know, and I will be happy to provide you with free access to the book for a limited time.

That’s a Wrap!

Thanks as always for joining me on this news magazine. I hope it wasn’t too long and worth your time. If yes, please share it with your friends and suggest they sign up. There’s always room for more friends!

Next time I’ll send photos of Mexico, the whale sharks, and other sea life found in the Sea of Cortez…assuming I don’t get eaten by something!