Norway is a lovely country, charming people, gets a bit cold and way too dark in winter. It’s also the northernmost country in Europe — not even counting the Spitsbergen Islands, which are a part of Norway and which hover around 80° North. I went up to Tromsø on a winter solstice to see the Northern Lights — well worth the trip! But it was never an empire, never exported its language, and almost everyone there speaks English nowadays. So who would want to learn it?
Well, Norway has a long literary tradition; its famous authors include Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Knut Hamsun, and Sigrid Undseth, all of whom won the Nobel Prize, Henrik Ibsen (who for some reason did not), and a lot of others. But they’re not all of them all that well-known outside Norway, so there may not be good translations, or translations at all.
Which is why Mayor Pete Buttigieg decided to learn Norwegian:
"Winners Take All" author Anand Giridharadas wrote on Twitter that Buttigieg had taken him and his Norwegian friend by surprise at a campaign event by speaking to his friend in fluent Norwegian, explaining that he learned the language in order to read books by a Norwegian author.
The Hill reported this as well as an exchange with a Norwegian reporter at an event in Columbia, SC, where Mayor Pete answered him in Norwegian.
This is not the only time this happened. The BBC ran this story yesterday:
Writer Asne Seierstad was introduced to Pete Buttigieg, a presidential candidate and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, at a music festival in Texas last week. Without missing a beat, he began to speak with her about literature - in Norwegian.
Mr Buttigieg has "a South Bend accent", she says, but otherwise his Norwegian was excellent. Still she felt confused and wondered: "Why would an American learn Norwegian?" As it turned out, he'd decided that he wanted to read the work of Norwegian novelist Erlend Loe in the original language.
Turns out Mayor Pete speaks seven languages besides English: Maltese (from his father, who was born on Malta), Arabic and Dari from his army service, along with French, Spanish, and Italian (his mother is a linguist). And Norwegian.
In this country, being bilingual (much less multilingual) isn’t always an advantage. Newt Gingrich mocked Mitt Romney for speaking French during the 2012 campaign (anyone whose first name is that of an amphibian should think twice about making nasty cracks), and of course the GOP had a field day with John Kerry’s French speaking skills. (Kerry also speaks several other languages.)
Still, I have to say I am starting to be more and more impressed with Pete Buttigieg (enough that I even mastered how to spell his name!). Anyone who picks up a language just for fun and does it well enough to converse easily with a native speaker earns high marks in my book.
And mastering a foreign language doesn’t just give you a language skill. it’s essential if you want to gain real insight into how another country thinks. That’s why the State Department insists on language skills as an absolute requirement for tenure. (I know of a few diplomats who have learned six or seven languages in their careers.) So if Mayor Pete doesn’t get the Democratic nomination, maybe the next president should make him Secretary of State.