Norway, norway
Norway, Norway,
Rising in blue from the sea's gray and green,
Islands around like fledglings tender,
Fjord-tongues with slender,
Tapering tips in the silence seen.
Rivers, valleys,
Mate among mountains, wood-ridge and slope
Wandering follow. Where the wastes lighten,
Lake and plain brighten
Hallow a temple of peace and hope.
Norway, Norway,
Houses and huts, not castles grand,
Gentle or hard,
Thee we guard, thee we guard,
Thee, our future's fair land.
Norway, Norway,
Glistening heights where skis swiftly go,
Harbors with fishermen, salts, and craftsmen,
Rivers and raftsmen,
Herdsmen and horns and the glacier-glow.
Moors and meadows,
Runes in the woodlands, and wide-mown swaths,
Cities like flowers, streams that run dashing
Out to the flashing
White of the sea, where the fish-school froths.
Norway, Norway,
Houses and huts, not castles grand,
Gentle or hard,
Thee we guard, thee we guard,
Thee, our future's fair land.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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Related quotes
Norway
The wonders of Norway!
Age should speak and,
Many years ought to teach wisdom;
Look to the heavens and see,
The clouds are higher than you.
Of the deep sleep that fell unto man while,
He slumbered on his bed;
Oh Norway! Beautiful as you are,
I need to visit you again.
The wonders of Norway,
My days passed swifter than a courrier;
The wonders of Norway,
A momentary perception of joy;
The wonders of Norway,
Out of the handsome came beautiful;
My ears have heard of you and,
My eyes have seen you too;
I need to visit you again.
Can you pull Babylon with a fish hook?
Bring forth the blind who have eyes;
Can you walk on your head?
Bring forth the dearf who have ears;
Visit and know the wonders of Norway,
It will always be with you.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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At Hansteen's Bier
God, we thank Thee for the dower
Thou gavest Norway in his power,
Whom in the grave we now shall lay!
Starlit paths of thoughts that awe us
His spirit found; his deeds now draw us
To deeds, as mighty magnets play.
He was the first to stand
A light in our free land;
Of our present the first fair crown,
The first renown,
At Norway's feet he laid it down.
We his shining honors sharing,
And humble now his body bearing,
Shall sing with all the world our praise.
God, who ever guides our nation,
Hath called us to a high vocation
And shown where He our goal doth raise.
People of Norway, glad
Go on, as God us bade!
God has roused you; He knows whereto,
Though we are few.
With Him our future we shall view.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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I am living in Norway, where I am under the care of the best cancer doctor in Norway and I can be closer to my family.
quote by Grete Waitz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There was a Young Lady of Norway,
Who casually sat on a doorway;
When the door squeezed her flat,
She exclaimed, 'What of that?'
This courageous Young Lady of Norway.
by Edward Lear from A Book of Nonsense (1846)
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Time For Clearance
Time for Clearance
I was in Norway once, the paradise of social democracy,
I saw many beggars, mostly Roma people who
the inhabitant wanted to get rid of or send them out of
town in the woods where they were not seen. If you are
beggar you got to beg where the people are, foxes and
sheep and have nothing to give. There is a strong sense
of nationalism in Norway. The police did not hesitate to
round up Jews and send them to concentration, and when
the war was over most of the police officers continued in
their work upholding the law. Norway as a nation has never
looked at itself and taking tally of the nation´s behavior
during war years, instead it is lauding the few who resisted
the Nazi occupation and made them into icons. They shot
Quisling but it didn´t stop what made a quisling possible.
Still has not done so. Oil made Norway rich, yet there
is poverty amongst the low paid and incomers for whom
there is little charity. The dark side of Scandinavia- violence, -
hate against people who are different from them… those
who do not fit into the nice, but untrue picture the country
have of herself.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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September travel
September Travel
I’ve packed my suitcase ready to go to Norway in
September, extra jumpers, wooly socks and two
bottles of whisky; well, I’m only staying there for
four days, but there might be a war breaking out.
Booze is very expensive in Norway so I can’t go
into bars, but sit in a tiny hotel room drink good
whisky from a glass in the bathroom, the one used
to brush ones teeth in the morning.
I will be walking around in streets where no one
knows me, there will be rain and I have no umbrella,
and I will end up in one of those expensive bars,
just standing there drinking and talking to no one.
I have unpacked my suitcase, and opened one of
the bottles and sit in my favourite chair drinking
a drop, I will not be going back to Norway this year,
the dog is old and can’t be left alone in a kennel,
poem by Jan Oskar Hansen
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Norse nature
(In Ringerike During The Student Meeting Of 1869)
We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway, fair to see.
Let sweetly the tones go twining
In colors so softly shining
On mountain, forest, fjord, and shore,
'Neath heaven's azure arching o'er.
The warmth of the nation's heart,
The depth, the strength, its songs impart,
Here opens its eyes to greet you,
Rejoicing just now to meet you,
And giving, grateful for the chance,
In love a self-revealing glance.
Here wakened our history first,
Here Halfdan dreamed of greatness erst,
In vision of hope beholding
The kingdom's future unfolding,
And
Nore
stood and summons gave,
While forth to conquest called the wave.
Here singing we must unroll
Of our dear land the pictured scroll!
Let calm turn to storm of wildness,
Bring might into bonds of mildness:
Then Norsemen mustering, each shall see
This is our land's whole history.
To them first our way we wing,
The hundred harbors in the spring,
Where follow fond love and yearning,
When sea-ward the ships are turning.
For Norway's weal pure prayers exhale
From sixty thousand men that sail.
See sloping the skerried coasts,
With gulls and whales and fishing-posts,
And vessels in shelter riding,
While boats o'er the sea are gliding,
And nets in fjord and seines in sound,
And white with spawn the ocean's ground.
See Lofoten's tumult grand,
Where tow'ring cliffs in ocean stand,
Whose summits the fogs are cleaving,
Beneath them the surges heaving,
And all is darkness, mystery, dread,
But 'mid the tumult sails are spread.
Here ships of the Arctic sea;
Through snow and gloom their course must be;
Commands from the masthead falling
The boats toward the ice are calling;
And shot on shot and seal on seal,
And souls and bodies strong as steel.
On mountains we now shall guest,
When eventide to all brings rest,
In dairy on highland meadow,
On hay-field 'neath slanting shadow,
While to the alphorn's tender tone
Great Nature's voice responds alone.
But quickly we must away,
If a11 the land we would survey,-
The mines of our metal treasures,
The hills of our hunters' pleasures,
The foam-white river's rush and noise,
The timber-driver's foot-sure poise.
Returning, we linger here,
These valleys broad to us are dear,
Whose men in their faithful living
To Norway are honor giving;
Their fathers, strong in brain and brawn,
Lent luster to our morning-dawn.
We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway fair to see.
Our present to labor binds us,
Each how of the past reminds us,
Our future shall be sure and bright,
As God we trust and do the right.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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Bergen
As thou sittest there
Skerry-bound and fair,
Mountains high around and ocean's deep before thee,
On thee casts her spell
Saga
, that shall tell
Once again the wonders of our land.
Honor is thy due,
'Bergen never new,'
Ancient and unaging as thy Holberg's humor;
Once kings sought thine aid,-
Mighty now in trade,-
First to fly the flag of liberty.
Oft in proud array,
As a sunshine-day
Breaks forth from thy rain and fog wind-driven,
Thou didst come with men
Or great deeds again,
When the clouds were darkest o'er our land.
Thy soul was the ground,
Wit-enriched and sound,
Whence there sprang stout thoughts to make our country's harvest,
Whence our arts exist,
In their birth-hour kissed
By thy nature, somber, large, and strong.
In thy mountain-hall
Learned our painter,
Dahl
;
Wand'ring on thy strands our poet dreamed,
Welhaven
;
All thy morning's gold
Ole Bull
ensouled,
Greeted on thy bay by all the world.
With thy sea-wide sway
Thou hast might for aye,
Fjords of blue convey thy life-blood through our country.
Norway's spirit thou
Dost with joy endow,-
Great thy past, no less thy future great.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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I want to travel. Maybe I'll end up living in Norway, making cakes.
Oh, when will you stand forth?
Oh, when will you stand forth, who with strength can bring aid,
To strike down the injustice and lies
That my house have beset, and with malice blockade
Every pathway I out for my powers have laid,
And would hidden means find
With deceit and with hate
To set watch on my mind
And defile every plate
In my beautiful home where defenseless we wait?
Oh, when will you stand forth? This detraction through years
For my people has made me an oaf,
Hides my poetry's fount in the fog of its fleers,
So it merely a pool of self-worship appears;
Like a clumsy troll I
Am contemned with affront,
Whom all 'cultured' folk fly,
Or yet gather to hunt,
That their hunger of hate at a feast they may blunt.
When I publish a book: 'It is half like himself;'
If I speak, 't is for vanity's sake.
What I build in the stage-world of fancy's free elf
Is but formed from my fatuous self.
When for faith I contend
And our land's ancient ways,
When the bridge I defend
From our fathers' great days,
'Tis because my poor breast no king's 'Order' displays.
Oh, when will you stand forth, who shall sunder in twain
All this slander so stifling and foul,
And shall sink in the sea all the terror insane
That they have of heart-passion and will-wielding brain,-
And with love shall enfold
A soul's faith wide and deep,
That in want and in cold
Would its morning-watch keep
Undismayed, till the light all the host shall ensweep?
Come, thou Spirit of Norway, God-given of yore
In the stout giant-conquering Thor!
While the lightning thou ridest, thy answer's loud roar
Drowns the din that the dwarfs in defiance outpour;
Thou canst waken with might
All our longings to soar,
Thou canst strengthen in right
What united we swore,
When at Hafur thy standard in honor we bore.
Hail, thou Spirit of Norway! To think but of thee
Makes so small all the small things I felt.
To thy coming I hallow me, wholly to thee,
And I humbly look up to thy face, unto thee,
And I pray for a song
With thy tongue's stirring sound,
That I true may and strong
In the crisis be found,
To rouse heroes for thee on our forefathers' ground.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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Hamar-Made Matches
'Here your Hamar-made matches!'-
Of them these verses I sang;
A thought to which humor attaches,
But yet to my heart sparks sprang.
Sparks from the box-side flying
Sank deep in my memory,
Till in a light undying
Two eyes cast their spell on me,-
Light on the fire that's present,
When faith blazes forth in deed.
Know, that to every peasant
Those eyes sent a light in need.
Sent to souls without measure
The flame of love's message broad,
Gathering in one treasure
Fatherland, home, and God.
For it was Herman Anker
Took of his fathers' gold,
Loaned it as wisdom's banker,
Spread riches of thought untold,
Scattered it wide as living
Seed for the soil to enwrap;
Flowers spring from his giving
Over all Norway's lap.
Flowers spring forth, though stony
The ground where it fell, and cold.
Never did patrimony
Bear fruitage so many fold.
Heed this, Norwegian peasant,
Heed it, you townsman, too!
That fruit of love's seed may be present,
Our thanks must fall fresh as dew.
'Here your Hamar-made matches!'
My thanks kindle fast. And oh!
This song at your heart-strings catches,
That kindling your thanks may glow.
The matches hold them in hiding,-
Scratching one you will find
The light with a warmth abiding
Carries them to his mind.
'Here your Hamar-made matches!'
Only to strike one here,
Our thanks far-away dispatches,
With peace his fair home to cheer.
His matches in thousands of houses,
In great and in small as well!-
The light that thanksgiving arouses
Shall scatter the darkness fell.
His matches in thousands of houses!-
Some eve from his factory
He'll see how thanksgiving arouses
The land, and its love flames free.
He'll see in the eyes so tender,
Through gleams that his matches woke,
The thanks that his nation would render,
His glistening wreath of oak,-
He'll feel that Norway with double
The warmth of other lands glows;
The harvest must more be than trouble,
When faith in its future grows.
'Here your Hamar-made matches!'
No phosphorus-poison more!
The bearer of light up-catches
The work of the school before:-
From home all the poison taking,
Hastening the light's advance,
Longings to warm light waking,
That lay there and had no chance.
poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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We have to find compromises. That's the way it is in Norway.
quote by Kjell Magne Bondevik
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Baltic Fog Notes
Seven days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas.
I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff.
Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon.
Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky,
A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against a night sky,
And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand people here.
Among the Wednesday night thousands in goloshes and coats slickered for rain,
I learned how hungry I was for streets and people.
I would rather be water than anything else.
I saw a drive of salt fog and mist in the North Atlantic and an iceberg dusky as a cloud in the gray of morning.
And I saw the dream pools of fjords in Norway … and the scarf of dancing water on the rocks and over the edges of mountain shelves.
Bury me in a mountain graveyard in Norway.
Three tongues of water sing around it with snow from the mountains.
Bury me in the North Atlantic.
A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray over me and a long deep wind sob always.
Bury me in an Illinois cornfield.
The blizzards loosen their pipe organ voluntaries in winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall rains bring letters from the sea.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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6 degrees Celsius
-6 degrees Celsius.
from my balcony,
yes, the atlas
of my balcony,
with the music
of the masters
pouring forth
from within,
I follow the stars
direction Norway
and Sweden
while around the corner
one looks towards Iceland
and 'those islands'.
Kleve is just across the way
and Paris and Brussels
down the road.
this is my mainland!
poem by John O'connell
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I had to inspect all fighter units in Russia, Africa, Sicily, France, and Norway. I had to be everywhere.
quote by Adolf Galland
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I really enjoy myself in Norway. Because I had started losing confidence in my ability of what I do. But sometimes, man, you just get tired of fighting and trying to prove yourself.
quote by Ike Turner
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sadness on Their Faces
The muse of the Stock Fish of Norway,
With many nationals to enjoy it with love;
But, someone took a gun and killed many people! !
For he was impregnated with hatred,
And that has now brought up the sadnes on the faces of the Norwegians.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Outward Bound
I leave behind me the elm-shadowed square
And carven portals of the silent street,
And wander on with listless, vagrant feet
Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air
Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care
Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet.
At the lane's ending lie the white-winged fleet.
O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare?
Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far --
Gaunt hulks of Norway; ships of red Ceylon;
Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores!
'Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar,
Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun;
Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Karen
At her low quaint wheel she sits to spin,
Deftly drawing the long, light rolls
Of carded wool through her finders thin,
By the fireside at the Isles of Shoals.
She is not pretty, she is not young,
Poor homesick Karen, who sits and spins,
Humming a song in her tongue,
That falters and stops, and again begins,
While her wheel flies fast, with its drowsy hum,
And she makes a picture of pensive grace
As thoughts of her well-loved Norway come
And deepen the shadows across her face.
Her collar is white as the drifted snow,
And she spun and wove her blue gown fine
With those busy hands. See, a flitting glow
Makes her pale cheek burn and her dark eyes shine!
Left you a lover in that far land,
O Karen sad, that you pine so long?
Would I could unravel and understand
That sorrowful, sweet Norwegian song!
When the spring wind blew, the "America wind,"
As your people call it, that bears away
Their youths and maidens a home to find
In this distant country, could you not stay
And live in that dear Norway still,
And let the emigrant crowd sail West
Without you? Well, you have had your will.
Why would you fly from your sheltering nest?
O homesick Karen, listen to me:
You are not young and you are not fair,
But Waldemar no one else can see,
For he carries your image everywhere.
Is he too boyish a lover for you,
With all his soul in his frank blue eyes?
Feign you unconsciousness? Is it true
You know not his heart in your calm hand lies?
Handsome and gentle and good is he;
Loves you, Karen, better than life;
But do consider him, can't you see
What a happy woman would be his wife?
You won't be merry? You can't be glad?
Still must you mourn for that home afar?
Well, here is an end of a hope I had,
And I am sorry for Waldemar!
poem by Celia Thaxter
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Norway
I packed up my bags,
My shoes, my clothes,
My toiletries.
Packed everything
I needed
For my holiday
To Norway.
My mind was set
So was my mood
To have a great time.
But when I boarded
The plane, something
Wasn’t right, as if
Something was missing.
I had taken all caution
And a lot of care to see
That nothing goes wrong
And yet, somehow I knew,
Something didn’t feel right.
I checked all over again
Did a memory drill of my mind
To see what was missing.
But it didn’t have a clue
Despite being so pragmatic,
And ‘right’ in all its social codes.
Politically correct, that’s what they say,
When the mind “knows it all”
Yet I knew it didn’t know,
What was missing, what was so wrong
About not having it with me.
I delved deep inside my feelings….
Then did I fathom what was missing,
Without which I felt so empty and inept.
Yes, I packed all what I could take with me
Yet, my heart remained to be with thee….
And so I left my heart, that wouldn’t budge
No matter where I went, it always had to
Holiday with thee, never wanting to come with me.
poem by Aparna Chatterjee
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