Påskeferie

Easter is the first ‘holiday’ I’ve spent abroad. Sure I’ve had school holidays but this is the first one where I was acutely aware of the specific traditions my family had in Australia and thus could sort or compare to Norwegian traditions.

My experiences of Easter in Australia have always been quite focused around the chocolate and easter egg hunt side of things rather than religion. If the school holiday managed to align with Easter then we would often spend it at my Gran’s house with my mum’s side of the family. There would be the gifts from ‘the Easter bunny’ waiting for us on the kitchen table when we woke up on Easter Sunday and, if we were staying with my Gran, there would usually be an Easter egg hunt and a sort of scavenger hunt where my siblings and I were each given clues and sent on a wild goose chase around the house. I’m not sure if this is what most families in Australia do. Honestly, I’m finding more and more that when people ask me questions about Australian traditions I tack ‘at least that’s what my family does’ onto the end of each answer.

Easter in Norway is a little different to what I’ve understood Australian Easter to be. I acknowledge that my experience and my knowledge of other’s experiences of Easter in Norway do not represent everything but I will try to explain what I have come to understand is involved in a typical Påskeferie.

To start off with the Easter break always means a week off school for students. We finish on a Friday, a week before the Easter Long Weekend and come back to school after Easter Monday. In Norway, the Thursday before Good Friday is also a public holiday. I wouldn’t say that Norwegians celebrate Skjaertorsdag (Maundy Thursday) so to speak but they get a day off work. It is also because of this that many Norwegian families leave to go on their holidays on Wednesday afternoon.

It is very typical for Norwegians to go to their cabins for Easter. Most families have a cabin or have relatives who do so around 2/3 of Norwegians go there during Easter break. Cabins or hytta vary in size and available amenities. I’ve stayed in one with no electricity or running water and a drop toilet but there are some that a person could comfortably live in all year round. I wasn’t able to go to a cabin during the Easter break, instead I stayed with a Rotarian and his family, but I did get to learn about 2 surprising easter traditions: Påskenøtter and Påskekrim.

Påskenøtter: This actually translates to Easter Nuts but is used to label the quizzes done during the Easter break. Back when many cabins had no electricity or radio signal people did quizzes to pass the time during the evenings. Most cabins have very large quiz books and there are large quizzes in the newspapers around Easter time. There are also quizzes on TV every night during the break where people send the answers to a certain number and go in the running for a prize. The questions aren’t necessarily Easter-related and can be about anything and everything. I actually really like this tradition (I’m a sucker for a good quiz) and it’s something I’d like to make a tradition for my family in Australia.

Påskekrim: This translates to Easter Crime. During the Easter Break (and even a little before) there will be Påskekrim on TV every night. They are just crime shows (think Vera, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Poirot etc.) but for some reason it is common place for one to watch them during the Easter break. This tradition isn’t just limited to TV though, radio stations play crime stories and many people read crime novels just because it is Easter. I have searched the internet and asked many people but I still have no idea why Norwegians become so infatuated with the crime stories around Easter time.

Norway has the Easter Bunny just like Australia however what he/she brings is slightly different. In Norway it is quite common for people to receive decorated paper egg shells that have been filled with lollies and chocolates. Lollies are as much a part of the holiday as chocolate is, something quite different to Australia.

The Easter Break is now over and there won’t be another public holiday or school holiday until May (there are actually 4 public holidays in May). I hope you had a good Easter and that you take a moment to spare a thought for those of us who still have snow forecasted even though we are well into Spring.

Until my next blog post,

Alicia

This wasn’t my egg but as I’m currently struggling to get my photos down to the required size for the blog I’ve included this to illustrate what I have described above.