Photochrome fjords

[baleanoptera]

Now this is just cool. The US Library of Congress has uploaded hundreds of old tourist photos from Norway. Not only are they from around 1890 to 1900 but they are in photochrome! Please, allow me to geek out and be a nerd, but I love the strange colours of photochrome.

Comments

[losyark]

Oh, GORGEOUS.

Please forgive my obvious ignorance; I love local costumes, and I love that, for instance, the Japanese sill wear kimono on formal occasions - do you or anyone in your family still wear a traditional garment like that for an occasion?

I sometimes (often) pine for the traditions that being a nation of amagalmated cultures has robbed from me. My personal history is German and Deutch, with some sprinkling of the British Isles which has given me my reddish hair and freckles, but there is none of that particularily in my immediate heritage. I'm 7th generation Canadian, but I don't even know what that means.

Go back a decade more than that 7th generation ancestor, and the land my family owns - and has always owned since - belonged to the Mohawk, and their tradiations aren't mine either. The heritage and culture of the land isn't mine to claim, but neither is the heritage and culture of the place my blood comes from (Trust me, I had a delightful 2 year argument with a Scots friend about this very topic and we agreed in the end to disagree, and that my nation exists in a strange limbo on 'not'. NOT Native American, but NOT European either, but NOT American too).

I find the idea of a 'not'-culture especially hard because the Americans have blatantly CHOSEN a shared heritage. They have a cultural costume - jeans and tee-shirts, cowboy chaps and gansta hoodies - they have national music and national food. They have claimed that which is NORTH American as JUST American, leaving Canada with... touques and beaver tails and split pea soup?

If you go back at the tourism adverts for Canada 100 years ago (or even now), the focus is on teh beauty of hte land, the heritage of the country (Native, mostly) and the peaceful coexistance of many cultures together. There's no one unifying image of what a Canadian is, beyond the flag. (One red bar fo the Atlantic, one for the pacific, a white field to represent the land and a red leaf to represent the people, all Canadians despite colour or creed)

So yes, I am always deeply facinated by local costumes and architecture, some way of saying "This is who I'm from" without having to resort to a national flag.

Also? I totally want to visit Norway one day. It's GORGEOUS. I'm so happy we're flist-friends; I learn so much about your stunning country with each post.

(Anecdote of my New Year that made me think about King Olav a lot that night; the Prime Minsiter of Canada was at the same USA/Canada hockey game I was. *I* had better seats than him. Then a tussle broke out between an American and Canadian fan a row over from him and he just sort of looked away and retended it wasn't happening. Heh! Then later, at the Gold medal game, someone in just hockey shorts and painted GOLD ALL OVER just walked right up to him and shook his hand. Huh. Canadians.)