#2 He’s either mad – or English!
‘Surely Norway has been made as a playground for the people of other countries, but especially for Englishmen.’ (Joseph Phythian, 1877)
In this week’s podcast we hear how the tourism industry in Norway was given a kick-start by hordes of Englishmen fleeing the packaged tours and sweaty piazzas of Italy and Greece.
From the middle of the 19th century, the newly-wealthy middle class of Britain invaded Norway. With them came their poetry collections, bottled porter, and jars of pickles. And they set about making the Norwegian wilds into a holiday destination fit for an Englishman.However, when they came face to face with Norway’s flattened class structure, it made them insecure. In the rural farm owners – a class of proud and independent people – they met their match.
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EPISODE PHOTO
The opulent Hardanger Hotel in Odda, built to cater for the flood of British tourists exploring Norway’s West Country.
Photographer: Unknown. Owner: Norsk folkemuseum. Licence: (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
MUSIC
00:00 North by Norway
written on GarageBand by Andrew J. Boyle, adapting the Norwegian folksong ‘I Ola-dalom, i Ola-tjønn’
03:25 Cattle Call
Edvard Grieg, op. 66
version arranged on GarageBand by Andrew J. Boyle
09:30 Land of Hope and Glory
Edward Elgar, words by A. C. Benson. Sung by Clara Butt, retrieved from Wikipedia Commons
10:55 Halling
Edward Grieg, op. 17, no. 7
performed on GarageBand by Andrew J. Boyle
13:35 Don’t Dilly Dally on the Way
Fred W. Leigh and Charles Collins
arranged and performed on GarageBand by Andrew J. Boyle
SOURCES
Johan Bøgh, Fra Bergenskanten (From Bergen and its Surrounds) (Bergen: Ed. B. Giertsens forl., 1888)
Peter Fjågesund and Ruth A. Symes, The Northern Utopia: British Perspectives of Norway in the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2003)
J. C. Phythian, Scenes of Travel in Norway (London: Cassell, Petter & Gilpin, 1877)
Frederick Metcalfe, The Oxonian in Thelemarken; or Notes of Excursions in that Country, (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1858. First edition, 1856)
J. Ross Browne, The Land of Thor (New York: Harper & brothers, 1867)
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