I Was a Teenage Norwegian
by
Norwegian culture and language as experienced by an American teenager who spends a year in Tromsø, Norway, on an AFS scholarship.
Imagine spending the last year of high school 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Not in an igloo or twenty-foot snowdrift, but in the heart of a small Norwegian town where you make life-long friends and fall in love for the first time.
This coming-of-age story, set in the early 1960s, is about an American adolescent becoming a teenage Norwegian. The story is full of midnight sun, mid-winter darkness, and Northern Lights. It is about picking potatoes, walking up and down Main Street, taking ferry rides, and learning to stand cod liver oil. The account of a year-long journey explores the tension between the alienated American youth and the small-town Norwegian teenager inside him. It includes jokes, pranks, silly stories, incomprehensible teachers, and even a high school dancing class.
Black-and-white illustrations, including photographs, drawings and map.
Includes glossary.
Imagine spending the last year of high school 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Not in an igloo or twenty-foot snowdrift, but in the heart of a small Norwegian town where you make life-long friends and fall in love for the first time.
This coming-of-age story, set in the early 1960s, is about an American adolescent becoming a teenage Norwegian. The story is full of midnight sun, mid-winter darkness, and Northern Lights. It is about picking potatoes, walking up and down Main Street, taking ferry rides, and learning to stand cod liver oil. The account of a year-long journey explores the tension between the alienated American youth and the small-town Norwegian teenager inside him. It includes jokes, pranks, silly stories, incomprehensible teachers, and even a high school dancing class.
Black-and-white illustrations, including photographs, drawings and map.
Includes glossary.