Oslo, Norway - Phew, home again. When will these foreign barbarians learn the pleasures of cold milk and brown cheese for breakfast? Three weeks gone, and I get withdrawal syndrome.

Before I left Estonia I got a chance to see the main event of the song festival I mentioned a week ago, a huge open air concert with classical and traditional choir music. Scott writes more about its importance here. He estimates an audience this year of 60-70 000, which is a lot for a country of barely 1 million, and yet far behind the 300 000 who in 1988 defied the Soviet ban on Estonian culture, and showed up with Estonian costumes and Estonian flags, marking the beginning of the end of the Soviet occupation.

It's a funny word, occupation. Estonians mark their independence from 1920, when their war of independence against the Soviet Union ended, and consider their time under Russian rule since WW2 just a very long occupation. So in their view, Estonian has been independent for 84 years, much the same as Norway will have been independent for a century next year, despite the Nazi occupation. Which of course is entirely rational from a nationalist point of view, but I hadn't thought of it like that before. So easy to forget that the Soviet Union and the East Bloc was just another Russian empire.

Scott took me to see one of the Russian areas of Tallinn, including a large Russian marketplace. The Russians were brought into the Baltics as rulers and workers during Soviet rule. Now they're second class inhabitants, many without citizenship, and far from integrated with the local culture. The situation in Estonia is better than in Latvia, though, where there are just too many Russians for any assimilation to take place. In Estonia you'll find young Russians who speak Estonian, (a requirement for citizenship), and so there's hope for the future.

There are real cultural differences in addition to the linguistic ones. Ethnic Estonians look to the West, to Scandinavia, the European Union and the US. Ethnic Russians look across the border to the East, which I doubt inspires confidence among Estonians. According to Scott, the Baltic peoples didn't so much vote for the EU as they voted against Russia. Which is understandable, considering their history. Also understandable is their strong sympathy for the Chechens. (What is more difficult to figure out is why noone else gives a damn, neither about the Chechens nor the anti-democratic turn Putin's Russia has taken. Not even in Norway. From our coverage of world news, essentially whatever AP and the NY Times says filtered through an anti-American lens, you'd think we were a wronged neighbour of the United States, not one of the few of Russia's neighbours it never fucked up.)

Went next by ferry to Stockholm, then train to Copenhagen. Listened to a kid on the seat behind me whine about how bored he was for five hours. Other travellers are dreadful.

Copenhagen is a good place to spend a couple of relaxing days in, especially during the annual Jazz Festival. This festival is huge. There are about 800 concerts in Copenhagen between July 2 and 11, many of them free outdoor concerts, held on street corners and in parks in the center of town. A lot of great music to hear, and a great place to hear it.

The first time I visited Copenhagen was maybe four days after the 9/11 attacks, and I was in a funny mood, like we all were. I shook off the colleagues I came there with, took a random stroll around town, and came to this wonderful, peaceful garden. I sat down and thought: They could destroy the World Trade Center, they can easily destroy this city, and this garden. But we could build the World Trade Center, we could build this city, and we could build this garden.

It made sense at the time. The irony, of course, is that we never build cities like this - nearly all the great monuments and buildings of Europe were built by our semi-civilized, authoritarian, imperialistic and warmongering ancestors. The reason Oslo, although a great place to live, is no tourist attraction, is that it was never the center of a small or great empire, as Copenhagen and Stockholm were. Vain kings with giant egos and direct access to the nation's treasury build great monuments - free peoples build at best skyscrapers, at worst functionalist apartment blocks and other horrors conforming to modern artistic fads. (Still, there is worse: Doesn't matter much whose army destroys your city, but to have it rebuilt by communists .. Jesus.)

I talked to an Israeli girl in Copenhagen. She lives in Haifa, and I wanted to know what it was like to live in fear of suicide terrorism. Oddly, she wasn't all that concerned. Most attacks, she said, are in the occupied territories, (ie. against settlers and at the borders), and not where she lives. I suppose that's one way to live with it - to know that it's worse elsewhere. To me, that level of threat would be intolerable. To her, the tension has become part of the background, part of what's normal. She had moved to Canada once, but found it boring. With all the tension gone, far away from the big conflict, life became suddenly too quiet, too bland. Something was missing, and Israel was her home anyway. So she returned, and intends to stick with her country, even if she has no hope for peace. In a year, she's off for two years of military service. Israeli women aren't usually sent into combat, but the army is a big institution, and there's enough to do behind the lines. She was actually surprised to learn that Norway, too, has military service. Why? What do we need it for? And it does seem a bit odd. Norway is not surrounded by enemies, we don't live in daily fear of terrorism, and what forces we contribute to NATO and the UN are all strictly professional. We maintain our military service mostly out of respect for the memory of World War 2. It's tradition, a feel-good thing. We're paying homage to a part of our history that just doesn't live here any more. In Israel, it's still lurking outside your door to bite your head off.

Here are some of the pictures I took. Got carried away a bit in Estonia, (and had forgotten the second memory card at home), so there's nothing from the last week.

The cathedral in Trondheim:

Up the Norwegian coast:

Found these guys all over Finland. Now you know where they get their money from:

The Finnish lakes:

The Estonian Song Festival parade in Tallinn. Somebody cancelled the parade because of "all the rain", (they could defy the Russians, but can't stand to get a little wet?), but people had come from all over the country to celebrate, and many decided to ignore those whimps and carry out the parade all the same:

Nice summary and pictures! Glad you came; enjoyed your visit.

And don't be fooled by his intellectually oriented blog, folks. Bjørn can drink like a fish!

This is a great blog. I had no idea our transvestite racists get their money from Finnish supermarkets!

Welcome back!

Beautiful pictures, love those mountains! Welcome back!

Scott: I can attest that statement! I live about a mile from Bjørn, and we regularly meet for movies and beer. :-)

Bjørn: Great pictures! :)

But why stop in tromsø, you still had a good stretch of Norway to your north and east?

Why does it say "SuperMarket" on a store in Finland? Did you PhotoShop a translation on it?

Sounds like you missed the noted Finnish "Wife-Carrying Contest" though:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040712/lf_nm/odd_finland_contests_dc_1

Too bad. Must be something to see.

"Why does it say "SuperMarket" on a store in Finland? Did you PhotoShop a translation on it?"

The word 'supermarket' has been borrowed by most European languages. Similarly the word Hypermarket has been created (I think in France, I don't remember it in the states) for gigantic all-purpose stores (sort of like Wall-Mart on steroids including full grocery section).

Hi, Björn!

I'm in Tallinn right now - it is still raining. Great city, though! I'll be moving on to Saaremaa on two days, and then to Riga.

In Israel, supermarkets are called "supers", even if they are small (A big store is called a big "super"). Some chains use the term "hyper", as in "Hypernet".

Bjorn, you're seriously misguided. The only proper breakfast is coffee and a doughnut.

I was startled the first time I saw a "KKK" shop in Finland, but then I saw smaller stores called "KK" as well as larger ones called "KKKK," and realized that the number of Ks is simply an indication of how big the store is.

I was in Tallinn in 1991, in August. That's right: during the fall of the Soviet Union.

I was on a hospital ship called the Anastasis, we were on a dental outreach, giving free dental treatment.

We left when the "coup rumors" started flying... we had to crack an anchor off its chain at the weak link, under orders from the Soviets.

Bjorn, did you ever visit Oleviste cathedral? It surprised me to see that there was an active Baptist church worshipping even before the Sovs left.

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the voodoo lounge: HMM, July 14, 2004 09:43 AM

(via Baltic Blog) Bjørn Stærk just visited Estonia, and has a post about it up at his blog. One thing caught my eye:It's a funny word, occupation. Estonians mark their independence from 1920, when their war of independence against the...

Rishon Rishon: Exciting Israel, July 23, 2004 01:31 PM

Bjørn Stærk writes a thoroughly entertaining post on his Baltic travels. Among (many) other things, he relates his meeting with a 16-year-old Israeli girl in Denmark: To her, the tension has become part of the background, part of what's normal....