On Identity

People make fun of me a lot for talking about where my dad’s from. I think it’s because most people who talk about having foreign parents come off as pretentious and I’m sure I do. But I still feel awkward talking about it. It often serves to cause me more anxiety than it’s worth to talk about it. But the whole issue of my dad’s identity leads to my own issues with mine.

I think it’s fairly obvious that I’m a white woman and thus haven’t had to struggle for much in my life in middle America. My mom is from Southern California. My dad was born in Norway and raised in Toronto, Canada. I think in modern day we think of the Scandinavian countries as the examples for the rest of Western society to follow (although we often ignore their homogeneous populations and current issues with immigration). However Norway’s wealth came after their discovery of oil fields off the western coast in 1969. My dad immigrated to Canada with his young parents only a couple years before this discovery. The Norway my grandparents knew was much different than what we know it for today. My grandpa was born in the midst of World War II, when Norway was controlled by Nazi Germany. He’s recounted to me the stories of going to bed at night and waking up to see the mountains covered in the symbols of resistance. My grandma was born near the end of the war in Europe, but she speaks of the war as if she were alive. They both, but especially my grandpa, are into the long-term rivalry with Sweden.

My dad has inherited little of their old school Norwegian pride. He agrees that Swedish, Danish and Norwegian could be grouped as one language. If the idea is brought up around my grandpa, he bristles. My dad has always told me that it’s passed down resentment from the decades of mistreatment received from when Sweden ruled Norway. But this doesn’t mean my dad is no longer attached to his birthplace. He still reads Aftenposten, the most popular Norwegian newspaper and wears his red, blue and white on May 17, Norway’s equivalent of the Fourth of July. And I personally think he acts very Northern European, by the way he dresses and speaks.

All this begs the question of what I am. I know this has no actual bearing over the course of my life in the US, but rather my sense of personal identity. I feel awkward saying my dad is foreign because although it’s technically true, most kids who stake this claim have a stronger sense of attachment towards their parents’ home country. But my dad’s raising was in a country just a few hundred miles north of here. I still feel a certain attachment to Norway. I’m a horrible speaker, but I can read some Norwegian. We visit my dad’s extended family every two years or so. Little of this eases my question of identity. I still feel very attached to Norway and my family there, but for now I'll say I'm kinda Norwegian.