Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake WoBIGon, my hometown, where the first cold front of the fall, the one that really makes a person stand up and take notice, swept through and dusted almost all of the leaves off the trees, so that now when a person walks through the grass, they have to look around for the Rice Krispies they keep hearing.
Over at the Sons of Knute lodge, however, there was a bit of excitement when a letter arrived from Bergen, Norway, of all places. It was a quaint, European letter with a genuine Norwegian frimerke, a very nice one with a snowy owl in winter. Wally Knudsen, the current president of the lodge, opened it and just about fell out of his chair.
The lodge had applied a few years previous to participate in a Young Persons Exchange wherein a person of Norwegian heritage in his or her early twenties who lived in Lake WoB1Gon would travel to Norway for a month, and a Norwegian would come to Lake WoB1Gon, so both cultures could learn about one another, and both of the young people would go back home wiser and more worldly.
The lodge had sent Dylan Haavik to Lillehammer and he had come back no wiser than when he left because he spent his month on top of a 19-year-old redhead named Berit whom he met on the bus form the Oslo airport, except that he had learned some Norwegian phrases no one's great-grandmother would have taught to the barnebarn, on the off chance that she even knew them, which is unlikely since they didn't have webcams or remote control sex toys in the 1880s.
But no Norwegian had ever come to Lake WoB1Gon, for the most prosaic reason that it simply did not show up on any maps available to the Nordmenn. They were not about to send one of their young people to a place that might not, technically speaking, exist. Losing someone else's child in a foreign country, even a grown child, is a major breach of Norwegian ettiquette.
Then, of course, there was a pandemic, and various disasters both foreign and domestic which made it unlikely that any Norwegian could travel to the United States for a month, or would even want to.
Now the Trondheim Cultural Exchange Society had written to the Sons of Knute: "Dear President Hildrum" -- that would be Fred Hildrum, who was the president before the president before the president Wally had replaced -- "we are delighted to inform you that one of our young persons has agreed to take part in the Young Persons Exchange. We regret that it has taken so long for us to fulfill our end of the exchange, but world conditions simply have not permitted it. If you are still willing to receive one of our young adults, please email us at the address in the letterhead."
Wally immediately called a meeting of the Sons of Knute, and this was so unusual that all six Sons showed up.
Oregon at Illinois (2 pm, BTN): The Sons unanimously voted to accept the offer even though they were going to be on the hook for a round-trip flight from Oslo to Minneapolis. "Fair is fair," Wally said, "they paid for Dylan Haavik, after all." So it was official: Someone new was coming to town. Someone new, and his name was Bård Eskeland, a twenty-three year old student and musician from Ingenstedsby, a small village about seventy kilometers to the southeast of Trondheim.
News of his pending arrival brought a lot of excitement to town. Visitors didn't come by very often, largely because of the whole "not appearing on the map" issue, an issue you'd think would have been solved by satellite pictures or digital mapping or artificial intelligence or something by now, but it just hasn't been solved yet. Several of the older folk latched on to the fact that Bård was a musician and expressed hope that he could play the Hardanger fiddle like their grandfathers had. Their grandchildren had hopes that he would look like Erling Haaland, the great World Cup star, or at least know him.
So imagine everyone's surprise when a few days later Bård showed up as a slight, slim, soft-spoken young man with Bob Dylan's 1959 hair and the fashion sense of the Fonz. He didn't play Hardanger fiddle. He didn't know Erling Haaland, though he certainly knew of him, He did have an acoustic guitar and a backpack full of legal pads with song lyrics scribbled on them. Still, this wasn't who they were expecting, not at all. Oregon 24, Illinois 20.
No. 19 USC at Wisconsin (6:30 pm, NBC/Peacock): The townsfolk resolved to get to know Bård Eskeland and to try their level best to conceal their disappointment that he wasn't much like they had expected an actual Norwegian from Norway to be.
Wally asked him a few questions like what he was studying (electrical engineering), and what sort of music he made.
"I will tell the truth," Bård said. "I was told to cut my hair and perhaps keep my tattoos covered while I was here in Lake WoB1Gon because I gather that you folk are quite conservative. I will not be disrespectful while I am here. I play in a band that makes heavy metal music. We are not really a Norwegian black metal band, but we are not far from that either."
"What is your band called?" asked Wally.
"Barna Brenner," said Bård.
"Does that mean 'barn burners'?" asked Wally, who for some reason was at least vaguely aware of the acts of arson associated with Norwegian black metal.
"No, it means 'the children are burning'," said Bård, and Wally was sorry he had asked. Not sorry enough, however, to keep him from asking another ill-advised question.
"What are your songs about?"
"Well, do not worry, they are not about children burning, that is just a metaphor for how the future of all children has been ruined by climate change."
Wally swallowed hard. The boys at the Sidetrack Tap were sure that "climate change" was just the excuse George Soros was going to use to turn the whole planet into a socialist gulag.
"Of course all of our songs are in Norwegian, but I can translate one for you if you would like," said Bård.
Wally decided he would very much not like, but he didn't wish to seem rude. "Sure, go ahead," he said.
Bård pulled the top legal pad out of his backpack.
"Come with me now as we seek for our treasure
We shall find traces of heaven
Breathe deep the ichor of passion
Its fumes going straight to our heads
They tell us we must not
But we know we must
And we will not be controlled
In dark corners we gather
We come together
We connect names and faces
And we write it all down
They tell us we must not
But we know we must
And we will not be controlled
Shame is for the weak
Our strength forbids it
We stand tall together
Unafraid of who we are
They tell us we must not
But we know we must
And we will not be controlled
They tell us we must not
But we know we must
And we will not be controlled."
"Well, that's ... certainly something," said Wally. "What is that song called?"
"Stjålne Truser," said Bård
"I get it," said Wally. "It's all about strength and holding together, so you called it Steel Trusses, like what holds up a bridge."
"That's not what it means," Bård said.
"Oh?"
"'Stjålne truser' means 'stolen panties.'"
"So that's a metaphor, then."
"... no," said Bård. USC 38, Wisconsin 17.
No. 15 Iowa at Minnesota (2:30 pm, FS1): A sense of horror began to wash over Wally, as he realized the Lutheran church basement ladies were preparing a welcoming feast on Friday for someone who for all appearances was an extremely well-mannered sex pest. What was he supposed to do now?
For his part, Bård politely made the rounds of the Sons of Knute and their wives, all of whom asked him few questions about his life but carried on endlessly about their bestemorer and their stories of the old country. He sat at recently-cleared tables festooned with lace doilies from someone's dowry, drinking coffee boiled in ancient enameled coffee pots, trying not to gaze longingly at the Keurigs that sat on every kitchen counter. At the Skogmo house he noticed that everyone else had a cup on a saucer, but his saucer was next to his cup and not underneath it. Elaine Skogmo poured him a cup of coffee, which Bård dutifully put on the saucer, an act which appeared to disappoint her, if not hurt her.
"I am sorry, was I not supposed to do that?" he asked.
"Oh no," Elaine said, "it's fine, I just thought that ... well, my great-grandfather always poured his coffee into the saucer and drank it from there, and I thought that's how Norwegians take their coffee."
"I see. Well, I'm sorry, but we use cups. Just like you!"
By Thursday afternoon it had become clear to the town that Bård just wasn't particularly Norwegian. Not, at least, as they had understood Norwegian ways.
By the time Bård made his way to the Lutheran church basement Friday evening the entire town suspected it had been had, convinced to pay a lot of money to bring over the village idiot of Ingenstedsby. So the dinner was going to be not just a welcome, but a test, to see if Bård could and would pass the real test of Norwegiannness.
Do I even have to tell you?
The aroma of lutefisk filled Bård's nose as he descended the staircase and in his mind this constituted the last straw. He came to learn about America, not to visit fake-Norwegian Disneyland. But, being Norwegian, he politely picked at the stinking, gelatinous sea creature on his plate, and went back for a second helping of creamed peas.
The watching eyes of the WoB1Gonians accepted this as proof that maybe he really was a nordmann after all. Following the dinner, Pastor Ingkvist -- not the one who was here in the Eighties, his daughter Rachel -- stood up and thanked the church ladies for their hard work and invited Bård to say a few words about his first impressions of the town.
Bård rose, walked intently to the front of the room, and began to speak.
"I would like to thank you for bringing me to your lovely town. It has been a long, long time since I have eaten lutefisk, because it has been a long time since I have been hung over."
Nervous laughter trickled across the room.
"The oils of the fish soak up the alcohol in your stomach, you see. Normally on a Friday in Norway, we eat tacos."
The laughter was not nervous now, and it was a lot more raucous.
Bård looked puzzled. "No, we really do. And, while I am sorry to disappoint you, we drink our coffee from cups, not saucers, I don't play the Hardanger fiddle, my mother doesn't do rosemaling, and I do not know Erling Haaland, though I certainly know of him.
"I came to America not for a free trip but because I wanted to get to know Americans. There are many in my country who think that everyone here wears a cowboy hat and carries a gun everywhere" (this made several men fidget in their seats, even though Pastor Rachel had insisted the church was to be a gun-free zone) "and hates black people but of course that is not true.
"I would like, however, for you to stop showing me how Norwegian you are."
The room fell silent.
"If we are having a contest to see who is the most Norwegian, I win. I have a passport to prove it. Please do not misunderstand me. I love that you are proud of your heritage. So am I. But I did not come here to see who you used to be. I came to see who you are. Would you please show me? Thank you."
And with that, he sat down.
Half the crowd was full of righteous fury. The audacity of this man, telling them to show him America in 2026 and not a carefully but wrongly curated version of Norwegian immigrant ways of the late 1800s. But the other half, well, they were relieved. Relieved to hear that they didn't have to pretend to be anything they weren't.
Bård is going fishing this weekend, and he has been promised hotdish and a Jucy Lucy before he goes back to Ingenstedsby. And he told Dylan Haavik that Berit said hello. Then he gave him a little bag with something in it. But they weren't stolen. Iowa 24, Minnesota 13.
Well, that's the news from Lake WoB1Gon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the special teams are above average.
Photo credit: “The news from Lake Wobegon” by Alan Kotok, CC BY 2.0
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