Norway and Me... or Was I a Norwegian in a Past Life?

By Harold Emert

Below are pics of Norway's new Consul to Rio de Janeiro, Trond Gabrielsen, a former Norwegian journalist, who so graciously received our foreign press club yesterday for a briefing-breakfast about Norway's contribution to Brazil's ecological development, the reduction of CO2 in this part of the planet, and new fuels and sources of energy — wind power rather than the traditional petroleum/oil, rather than the "drill, drill, drill, baby" favored by Trumpites and, unfortunately, Trump's puppets here in Brazil.

The Norwegian contribution and investment in Brazil's future environmental development will be further revealed 21–24 September at Riocentro (where the 2016 Olympic games occurred), Pavilhão 4 — stands X52 and Y52 — for an international conference called ROG.e 2026.

Brazil can only thank Norway for its generous annual contributions to saving the environment and the always threatened "lung of the earth," the Amazon forest.

I say "annual" except when the (now jailed) anti-environment right-wing father of the current leading Presidential candidate rudely (as usual) rejected Norway's generous annual contributions.

A link with Norway that began in New York

Although I have never been to Norway, a part of me has been there spiritually since I was a copy boy working the night shift at the now defunct Herald Tribune in New York City.

My colleague, of Norwegian descent (newly arrived in the big bad city called New York), also studying for a Master's degree in Oboe (!) — whom I shall call "IP" — kindly offered me her couch to sleep over in her Manhattan flat so that I didn't have to travel late at night back to my parents' home in far-off Queens and return again to Manhattan the next morning to travel to New Haven, Connecticut, for lessons with the distinguished oboist Robert Bloom.

Since then, my connection with Norway has included receiving almost daily pictures of Fargo, North Dakota (the USA), which was settled by Norwegians. In this far-from-the-big-city region, an annual double reed summer festival is held.

The inhabitants of North Dakota, once a rich (until Trumpian times) farm belt state, seem sturdy, highly individualistic persons who still face freezing winters and the rural isolation which brings together people in warm friendships and old-time (unfortunately) social and cultural gatherings.

Only recently I set a poem for narrator and oboe called "Dakota Strong," which rings out the praises of the favorite state of a great President, Theodore (Rough Riders) Roosevelt.

But these Norwegians, and those of Norwegian descent, seem to be complex persons!

Witness the film Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value, about a divorced playboy Norwegian movie director/filmmaker and his two lovely daughters, including a talented actress (who stars in an Ibsen tragedy).

The director's wife, who herself was persecuted by the Nazis because of her anti-Hitler activities, ended her life committing suicide by hanging herself — a shadow which forever haunts her surviving family.

And the movie is about the director's attempts to recreate in a film of his own what led to her suicide.

Why this touching, sensitive film didn't win more Oscars than only the best foreign film is for Hollywood to answer.

Back to Norway — and football

But back to Norway and me: impressive during the World Cup was how Norway's team, led by an unbelievable striker, beat out Brazil — and afterwards the winning footballers graciously embraced the losers, and striker Erling Haaland apologized to Brazil for winning!!!

And only about last month did I receive a long-distance telephone call from... a Norwegian oboist who dreams of visiting and performing in Brazil.

The next chapter in my Norwegian link? Every year I am invited to perform and have my compositions played in the double reed festival in little Norway, North Dakota — but somehow I can never get there.

Theodore Roosevelt ("I would never have become President if it wasn't for North Dakota") is the main character in another work I have composed, based on TR's almost fatal visit to the Amazon.

And surely the Norwegian oboist will call me next year with dreams of visiting Rio de Janeiro.

And there is always the music

Musically, there are always the lovely works of some of my favorite composers: Grieg, Nielsen and the Brazilian Alberto Nepomuceno, who studied with the great Grieg and whose grandson Sérgio Nepomuceno was one of the directors of the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, which brought me to Brazil. (Our orchestra performed the Grieg piano concerto in London in 1974!)

Viva Norway!