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ANNOUNCER: The following program is a production of
Pioneer Public Television.
[music]
NARRATOR: In this episode of Postcards
Syttende Mai is equivalent to the Fourth of July.
It's, it's their independence day.
We were able to walk right underneath the king,
queen, and their family in the palace and wave at
them, so they were within hailing distance.
What we had to do was learn a phrase that was
prevalent in that county with their accent.
[speaking in Norwegian]
So I go sailing across this,
this glacier you know with this dogsled and that was
just a hoot.
[Postcards theme music]
[Postcards theme music]
ANNOUNCER: This program on Pioneer Public Television is
funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund,
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on November fourth, 2008.
Additional support provided by Mark and
Margaret-Yackel Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm,
a non-profit, rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in
southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.
The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.
Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering
luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark,
and much more.
Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great
location for an event.
Explorealex.com.
Easy to get to, hard to leave.
NARRATOR: Previously on Postcards
[music]
Welcome to Norway!
CONTESTANTS: Yay! [Cheers, applause]
Your great Norwegian adventure
starts right here and right now.
CONTESTANTS: Yes! [Laughing]
Alt for Norge will be a tough journey,
full of surprises and challenges.
GRANT: The basic premise of the show is to take people
who, who have some Norwegian ancestry,
but have never been to Norway,
bring them to Norway, and put them through
challenges to show which one of them
is the most Norwegian.
HENRIETTE: The winner gets to meet their Norwegian living
relatives, which is a very nice prize.
AMY: I was blessed enough to actually go to the place
where my family originates from and this wasn't
something that we all got to do but I,
I was fortunate enough to.
DEB: The Norwegians were pretty well amused,
they had never witnessed lefse being made.
So in some ways it's like a,
a forgotten art.
[music]
[music]
So the, the first show we did was Norwegian teenagers.
There's a rite of passage called Rus where you put
on these baggy red overalls and this cute
little red cap, and you go around town,
given license to be really juvenile and do all kinds
of silly and crazy and wild challenges that the
teenagers themselves in Norway come up with.
So you know to have a 53 year old man dressed like
a Norwegian teenager going around doing Norwegian
pranks and, and stunts, now that was a bit of a
stretch for me, but my team gave it all we had
and we came in one point short in that team
challenge, so losing that challenge meant that the
people on the losing team had to do an individual
challenge to see who gets sent home.
And that happened to be the Syttende Mai,
17th of May, Norwegian holiday,
the biggest holiday in Norway.
Syttende Mai is equivalent to the Fourth of July.
It's, it's their independence day and what
they do is they dress in bunads and bunads are,
it's a type of dress or a suit that you wear,
and it's distinctive of where you're from,
like what county you're from.
We felt like kings and queens you know out there
for Syttende Mai of course.
And so we all got dressed up,
was fed a delicious breakfast,
and then we went out and they saved us places in
this parade to watch these children go by with their
teachers waving their flags,
and we were encouraged to join them,
so we did and we were able to walk right underneath
the king, queen and their family in the palace and
wave at them, so they were within hailing distance,
and that was very neat.
And the fact everybody was happy and they were
together with their families,
that was such a fun day.
[music]
Welcome to Compin Elementary School.
CONTESTANTS: Thank you.
Local schools are a very central part of our
national day celebration and that's why this week's
final challenge takes place here.
You now have two hours to learn the
Norwegian national anthem.
And when you're done rehearsing,
you have to perform it in front of
a crowd of Norwegians.
My father and my father-in-law,
these 100% Norwegian men, used to sing in the
Norwegian men's chorus, Nord Cap Chorus in
Minneapolis, and every concert began with
them singing, [singing in Norwegian]
and that's, that's all I knew of the song.
I could sing that first line.
But I realized I had never appreciated that Norwegian
heritage because I never bothered to learn the rest
of the song you know.
And by the time I went on the show,
both my father and father-in-law had died,
and when I got up there on stage to sing the song,
I mean it just all came back to me that
this was their song.
[singing Norwegian national anthem]
I felt like I get to do
this, not I have to.
No I get to sing for a Norwegian Syttende Mai
celebration and I, I just took
that as a great honor.
[singing Norwegian national anthem]
[applause] [speaking in Norwegian]
That was emotional.
I mean I've always wanted to sing that and here's my
first time singing it on Syttende Mai in front of
all these Norwegians and I almost was afraid
I was going to cry, I mean I,
right now I mean, it makes me...
my father-in-law used to sing that song and I
never got to sing it with him.
And I welled up with you know tears but after I
sang it and boy did that make a hit in Norway.
They tracked every week online, you know, people
voted for their favorite character and after that
episode where I showed such emotion and pride in
singing the Norwegian national anthem,
my ratings just you know skyrocketed and I became a
celebrity in Norway because of that but I
just, I mean I will never forget that.
My favorite challenges, I really enjoyed writing a
speech for Syttende Mai.
I was really stressed out about it.
We had to say why we were proud to be Norwegian and
do it in front of everyone at this huge Norwegian
festival that they had for Syttende Mai and I was
worried about, you know cause I don't know,
I didn't grow up Norwegian,
and so I don't know what they consider offensive
and what was going to be pushing boundaries but I
didn't go home so that was,
that was good.
This is a country whose motto is based on
happiness and beauty and love and that is something
to take, grab hold of,
and hold it close to your heart.
Norway, you have had to work hard and you've gone
through many battles of hardship with other
kingdoms and more recently within
your own walls on July 22nd.
But no one speaks of these battles,
rather you talk about the times that you came
together as a county and you supported each other
in all of these hardships.
That is a beautiful, beautiful thing to be
proud of and that's something that I
personally admire.
Woo! [Cheering]
One of the other competitions that
sticks out in my mind is obviously the one that
sent me home [Laughing].
We had to, they have different phrases from
different regions and in Norway because there were
so many mountains, the Norwegian kind of changes
every once in awhile.
And so there's different accents,
just like there are here.
And so what we had to do was learn a phrase that
was prevalent in that county with their accent.
[Speaking in Norwegian]
Go back to this man who
studied Norwegian accents.
[speaking in Norwegian]
And if we said it wrong,
we had to run all the way back and relearn it,
then run back and there were five of them.
[speaking in Norwegian]
[speaking in Norwegian]
You could tell they really
wanted to help you say it the right way and you know
they couldn't do much.
Hi.
[speaking in Norwegian]
No, no, no, say it again?
[speaking in Norwegian]
Holy buckets that's a throat thing.
[speaking in Norwegian]
[making throat noise]
I don't know it sounds like
the sound you make before you vomit.
[speaking in Norwegian]
And it took me 16 minutes
because you have to memorize it and I would
miss a word, and I'm not fluent in Norwegian so it
would be easy to miss a word or mispronounce a
word, and so that was what sent me home and I think
that the next person was ten minutes and the one
before that was eight so, I can't believe the guy
who won was half my time.
Well up on this glacier, Joseph and I are taken
there and they show us these dogsleds.
And we start to realize well,
it's going to have something
to do with dogsleds.
And then they show us the, the kind of beepers,
the beeps that you use for avalanches and how to find
an avalanche victim, and our challenge is to ride
on this dogsled off to this hill and go rescue
avalanche victims.
HENRIETTE: Ready, set, go! [Dogs barking]
¶ "Ride of the Valkries" ¶
Alright good guy.
So I go sailing across this,
this glacier you know with this dogsled and that was
just a hoot.
It is absolutely gorgeous up there.
You have all these islands out in the ocean that have
these snowcapped peaks all around you.
It is just beautiful, beautiful place.
And I'm, I'm going across Norway and singing to my
hearts content...
¶ ...say bow, wow, ¶
¶ wow, wow, that is what they say. ¶
For some reason it occurred to me to sing,
"Who let the Dogs Out."
Or maybe you guys like this one better;
¶ Who let the dogs out? ¶
¶ Who, who, who, who, who ¶ -yeah that's it!
[music]
But I get to the avalanche site pretty quickly.
You know I hear that it's up on this hill somewhere
there's somebody that's buried.
So I take my little receiver,
start running up the hill, and you hear beep,
beep, beep, and it gets faster and faster and you
get to the site and it's really fast and you know
it's in this area you start you know punching
down and you hit something,
okay it's got to be here.
And you had this little shovel.
[sound of shoveling]
I guess in my mind I was
thinking oh I'm just gonna dig a little ways down to
find this thing and what I hadn't thought about is
how deep you have to dig.
I'm sure I felt something...right...
...oh man, no!
There's nothing there!
So I went with my pole and I couldn't feel anything-
-oh no, I've been in the wrong place.
But I took out the transmitter,
no I was just off a few inches.
Dug, I saw the jacket of this person,
finally dug him out, pulled him up,
threw him on the, the ice pack and time's up.
And you know, you know the producer said,
"Boy that was really good!"
I said, "Oh, not bad you know."
So now I have to wait for Joseph,
and I don't get to watch him of course.
He goes out there weighing 335 pounds,
his dogs labored quite a bit.
He gets to the side, he runs up to his spot,
he's digging around, and he takes out his shovel
and he starts digging and his shovel snaps.
(bleep)
And he is so strong.
I mean it was just, it became comic relief that
you know he's so strong he breaks
everything he touches.
(grunting, heavy breathing)
[music]
CONTESTANTS: How did it go? How was it?
Oh that was a blast.
You two that was an interesting race.
GRANT: It sure was.
It was fun to watch.
It, it was fun to do, wasn't it?
It was fun.
I'm glad you were entertained.
What happened?
My strengths are going against me I guess.
Grant how did you think it went?
I feel pretty good about it.
I found the dummy fairly quickly.
It took longer to dig than I thought so that's my
concern that maybe it took too long.
But I have to say that both of you did very well.
I mean everyone here is very impressed by you.
Thanks.
And this was a very close race.
Do you want the results?
Yeah.
Sure.
One of you did it in 15 minutes and 27 seconds.
The other one did it in 30 minutes and 45 seconds.
The winner is.
Joseph.
Ooohh.
Way to go guy!
Hahahahaha.
You did it!
(clapping)
Grant, that means that you have to
go back to the states.
HENRIETTE: I'm sorry.
It's okay it's been a great time.
JOSEPH: Good job man.
Great competition.
It was great.
Thank you.
So that's you know the end of the road.
And they filmed me walking off into the sunset on
this glacier as if I'm going to walk,
you know, across the ocean back home
to the United States.
But it turned out that losing that day was about
the best thing that could of happened to me.
For one thing I had not seen or heard from my
family for a month.
And I wrote in my journal that morning that I said,
"Today is a win, win day," I said,
"either I win this competition and get to see
more of Norway, or I get to go home and
see my family.
I can't lose."
The other part was that by losing,
I actually had a chance to get my
family back to Norway.
There was a Norwegian genealogical society,
actually there's two of them,
was watching the show, and they realized I was
getting kicked off the show
at the end of week six.
So they called us as the show was being shown in
Norway and said, "Is there any chance that you could
come to Norway, fly into Oslo the day after you're
kicked off on television?"
So they took us to the homesteads of my wife's
family and then you know introduced us to some of
her family, so we both got to meet family in Norway,
but I was able to show my children this land of
their ancestors and they, they really could see the
beauty of Norway but also they got the fun of
watching me be a Norwegian celerity.
So wherever I went, people would do a double take.
And so I had this kind of experience where,
wherever I went and I'm
apparently a celebrity in Norway.
People in the United States joke and say you
know, "Can I have your autograph cause you've
been on the show?"
But they don't really mean it.
In Norway when people asked for my autograph
they actually wanted it.
I once had a couple of guys on motorcycles...
You did?
Who were going from Chicago to Denver who took
a detour to Alexandria, Minnesota...
To meet you?
Did, did they go to your
church service or anything?
You, you know the funny thing is they,
they just showed up in town.
I don't think they knew what Alexandria was like.
Okay.
They just showed up at a motel,
just happened to be a motel managed by a member
of my church...
Sure.
And they just asked, "Would you happen to know
where Pastor Grant lives?"
And she said, "I think I can tell you."
And she actually called me at work and said,
"I have a couple of gentleman who would like
to come see you."
She didn't say anything more,
she just said this.
And these guys come, and here they are,
two Norwegians who traveled hundreds and
hundreds of miles out of their way
simply to meet me. Oh cool.
And it's just like what have I done to do this?
But it's like they think I'm the celebrity and it's
just such a kick.
I know I love telling people that I've been on a
Norwegian reality show because they kind of look
at you like, "Really?"
Yeah they laugh when you say that right?
Yeah they can't believe that you actually have
been to Norway to be on a reality show.
This year Alt for Norge decided to do
a Minnesota reunion.
[music]
[music]
So I was really excited to find out that
they were having a reunion in Minneapolis,
St. Paul, and they just had everyone who wanted to
come or lived in the area could go and get to know
past cast members and new cast members,
cause season four just got done being filmed,
and just kind of get to know each other and talk
about our experiences and what the differences were
and cause once, it was a very unique experience and
I can tell you as much as I want about it and I can
be excited about it but ultimately it's,
it's hard for anyone else to understand the
situation that you're put into and everything that
was willingly, you know, thrown upon you and so it
was just fun to get together and talk about
those things and inside jokes and,
and stuff like that.
And were you able to tolerate it,
you didn't have to go to
poison control or anything?
Oh yeah that was, no, no that didn't
bother me one bit.
We were taking pictures for a magazine that is
very popular and someone made,
made note of the Norwegian national anthem,
and so we just ended up singing the Norwegian
national anthem right there on the balcony of a
very nice restaurant and, and it was fun.
[singing Norwegian national anthem]
[singing Norwegian national anthem]
We had one Norwegian who was
singing it with us and some people knew it very
well and others like me don't know it very well,
but we still tried our best and I was able to hum
along cause I remembered the tune.
[singing Norwegian national anthem]
[Clapping and cheering]
I would go back to Norway in a heartbeat.
I'm actually currently saving up to try and go
back to Norway.
I would like to go and explore and actually hear
the history from my family and I know that my family
who, my mom and brother and sister would like to
go as well and maybe we can
all go together someday.
I definitely think that I would go back to Norway.
Probably I would bring my spouse
and maybe some others.
It would be fun to go and just see some of the
places that we didn't get taken to.
Out of a thousand people, they chose ten of us to
go, and we were very lucky.
So I was, I was very lucky I got to go.
Norway is just drop dead gorgeous.
There's, there's no where you can go in Norway that
isn't absolutely beautiful.
In fact we often would say,
"Really they should have a postcard of this place.
They should have a postcard of that place."
You could make a postcard of every location that we
visited in Norway.
Norway is very, very beautiful.
The people were very, you know very kind,
considerate.
The camera crew, I really enjoyed them.
[Speaking in Norwegian]
Okay. So down there?
Yeah.
And then up?
Up yeah.
Okay.
[speaking in Norwegian] Down and up.
[speaking in Norwegian] Thank you.
I think watching Alt for Norge you'll,
you'll get a good sense of how Norwegians are.
And it's very easy to compare Norwegian
personality types and the things that they grew up
knowing how we as Minnesotans grew up.
Minnesota really prides itself on being Norwegian
or having a Scandinavian connection,
a lot of Scandinavian culture,
and I thought I knew what that meant,
but now that I've been to Norway and met the people,
part of me can say I can see where this comes from.
I understand why people are the way they are.
We are very rich in culture.
We take pride in that and our forefathers and what
they do and to see the rosemaling,
the making of lefse, some of the very traditional
things that our forefathers did and to
keep it going I think is a way of honoring them and
the very difficult lives that they had
in coming over here.
And so the reality show was a lot of silliness,
but there's a lot of really good things about
our heritage here.
I think you can find out a lot about yourself and I
mean I learned an incredible amount of who I
was and why I was raised the way I was,
it's very Norwegian.
But there's also a part of Norway that we've only
skimmed the surface of that we have these clichés
and stereotypes of what Norwegian culture is and I
think it's maybe its time to make a bigger connection
between Norway and, and Minnesota.
[music]
[music]
[music]
[music]
[music]
NARRATOR: Do you have an idea for the Postcards team?
Email us, postcards@pioneer.org.
Have you missed a show you'd like to see?
Pioneer on Demand has all of your favorite
productions available to watch online at your
convenience, including
past episodes of Postcards.
ANNOUNCER: This program on Pioneer Public Television
is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage
Fund, with money from the vote of the people of
Minnesota on November fourth, 2008.
Additional support provided by Mark and
Margaret-Yackel Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm,
a non-profit, rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom in
southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.
The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center.
Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering
luxury town homes, 18 holes of golf,
Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark,
and much more.
Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great
location for an event.
Explorealex.com.
Easy to get to, hard to leave.
[Postcards theme music]
Captioned by Pioneer Public Television 2014 [Postcards theme music]