Recontextual

On shit

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Author Bår Stenvik gave a lecture in Oslo yesterday, presenting his newly published book "Skitt: Mennesket, møkka og kulturen" (Shit: The person, the dirt and the culture). In the course of an hour, he described his own experiences with dirt, as well as many philosophical and cultural views on shit (which in Norwegian can mean faeces, but also any other type of dirt). Bår grew up on a farm - and later spent much of his young adulthood trying to escape the stygma of being a dirty farm boy. But while studying at The New School of Social Research in New York, he came to the same conclusion that Mary Douglas had written about long ago in "Purity and Danger" - that "dirt is matter out of place". Cleanliness and filth are primarily social constructions, not physical properties.

Stenvik's book contains nearly 300 pages about what we think about shit, together with stories about the "clean lines" of architectual modernism & kitchen design, social rituals, morality, shame, loathing and disgust. Great stuff!

However, my favorite example in this genre still remains the TV episode in Seinfeld where George attends a dinner with his girlfriend's family, and can't resist finishing off the leftover dessert:

Virtual travel in the Ottoman world

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:53:00 +0000

During 2011, UNESCO has celebrated the life of Evliya Celebi, an Ottoman traveller born in 1611. Over the course of forty years of the seventeenth century, Evliya Celebi wrote a book entitled Seyahatname - The Book of Travels - which describes his experiences with people in various parts of the world.
In London, a group of historians, musicians and multi-media artists were inspired by Evliya Celebi's work. They thought that this author could be a representative for larger social processes:
In the 17th century travelling such vast distances would have been no easy feat, yet in many ways these travellers embodied what was happening on a much larger scale worldwide. As we travel through Istanbul, London, Vienna and Cairo, we find that these stories and cities do not exist in isolation, rather they are intertwined and are influenced by each other.

In order to communicate these relationships, the project group decided to build a physical exhibition that would only be open for only a few days. The primary function would be to create a virtual exhibition on The Book of Travels. They write:
We really wanted to share the full experience of being immersed in the physical exhibition, and decided that the best way to do that was to share both the overall experience of standing in the room, and the ability to wander up close to each component and almost reach out and touch each panel.

The photo-mapping technique used is similar to how the Google art project has allowed virtual visitors to wander through various famous art galleries.
Although the physical/virtual exhibition was taken down in London, the project is still alive on the web and as a travelling exhibition. I notice that the British Council will be opening The Book of Travels in Thessaloniki just before Christmas this year:
http://www.britishcouncil.org/greece-society-evliya-celebi-exhibition.htm

Zamzam - the water of pilgrimage

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 15:49:00 +0000

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of arriving at Oslo airport just as a charter flight with pilgrims returned from Mecca. The baggage claim area was full of men in taqiyah prayer caps and women in burqa robes, all searching for their luggage. Beyond customs control, throngs of family and friends stood waiting with flowers, food gifts and welcoming posters. Nearly all travellers had large plastic containers in cloth sacks on their baggage carts on the way out. Thats how I knew they had been to Mecca, even without asking them.

The plastic containers being wheeling out were filled with water originating from the Zamzam well, only a few meters from the Kaaba in Mecca. Millions of pilgims drink water from this well every year, and it is considered a miracle that it never dries up.

According to one story, Abraham's young son Ishmael was thirsty, becoming more and more upset when he wasn't given water. Finally, Ishmael got so frustrated that he started kicking the ground. At that spot, a spring suddenly gushed forth, allowing him to drink. That is where the Zamzam well is.

Zamzam water can also be an aspect in travel marketing, as Emir Aviation advertises a gift of 10 liters of Zamzam water for every person flying on a pilgrimage with them. Could this be the airline that the Mecca travelers I saw had returned with?

Other religions also consider water from certain sources to have special properties. Christian use of Holy Water and Hindu belief in the healing power of the Ganges are perhaps the best known. I had intriguing discussions with people about this while collecting material for the exhibition "Farewell - Death and bereavement in multi-cultural Norway". That exhibition was on tour for several years, but has recently been set up permanently at Oslo City Museum in Vigeland Park.

Automated music: the Phonola

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:56:00 +0000

Before the advent of the gramophone, tape recorder and mp3 player, inventors made constant attempts to develop automated musical instruments that could play pre-programmed music without the need for trained musicians. Barrel organs and music boxes had been around since the early 19th century, but these both required complicated systems of handmade metal pegs and levers, which were quite expensive and time consuming to make.

Eventually, a number of mass-produced paper roll systems were developed, where holes could be punched in various places to control the notes played on a piano. In the USA, the "pianola" or player piano used such rolls. In 1902, Ludwig Hupfeld unveiled a similar system in Leipzig, Germany, which he called the "Phonola".

Ringve Museum has a phonola from 1917 which it uses for demonstrating automated music rolls. Unfortunately, one of the problems of demonstrating with original instruments is that things break. Especially things that are close to a hundred years old. The video above shows the Norwegian conservator Jan Petter Brennsund studying and repairing the phonola's bellows system, which had developed holes in its rubberised fabric. The repair reveals a dilemma shared by Ringve and many other museums: Should the museum keep this object as a passive exhibit in order to better preserve it for the future, or do musical performances provide such educational and aesthetic value that some damage occurred through use is warranted?

Google art tours

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Using the same technology as it uses for "street view" in Google Maps, Google has been allowing virtual visitors into a series of art museums for over a year now. Google calls it "The Art Project", and writes:

The Art Project is a collaboration between Google and some of the world's most acclaimed art museums. Powered by a broad, connected suite of Google technologies, the world's great works of art and museums are now within reach to an unprecedented global audience.

In vicariously travelling through a few museum galleries today, my experience has unfortunately been more of frustration than wonder. There seem to be large numbers of art works that I am NOT actually allowed to get near to, and many galleries are completely blanked out - in the same way that Google blanks out licence plates when photographing streets. The approved mode of use for The Art Project is apparently to focus on the specially profiled art works, while wandering the galleries gives the visitor a feeling of the exhibition rather than total access.

Blank areas in the galleries of course make The Art Project an excellent example of how complicated intellectual property rights can be in museums. Who's permission is needed in order to be allowed to show which pieces? But the general idea of the project is great. Perhaps I should try to appreciate endeavours for what they are, and not for what they aren't?

Drone developments

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:52:00 +0000

During a recent concert in Trondheim, flute maestro Shashank Subramaniam mentioned that Indian musicians owe Steve Jobs homage for creating portable computers that could provide good drone accompaniment on stage.

While drones have traditionally been provided by someone playing the stringed instrument tanpura, modern Indian musicians often replace the tanpura player with electronic "shruti" boxes or - more recently - an application on their iphone, mac or pc.

Does the spread of tanpura apps spell the end for the musical instrument tanpura itself? Although there might be fewer physical instruments being made in the future, the low cost and easy availability of such drone applications might lead to many more prospective musicians having tools available for them to practice and perform with - thus both increasing the number of active players and perhaps awakening audiences to insist on sometimes experiencing "authentic" tanpura accompaniment. Could this be a development to follow along with?

Ukulele libraries

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:13:00 +0000

The Trondheim Public Library has started offering ukulele packages to visitors. A ukulele, instrument case and instruction book which can be borrowed for a month at a time. The library has three sets to start with, and will increase the number if they prove to be popular.

The Oslo city library has been doing this for several years now - leading to quite a number of new musicians...

Dacia Tales

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 04:12:00 +0000

MY BEAUTIFUL DACIA from stefan constantinescu on Vimeo.

How do the objects we surround ourselves with influence how we look at the world, and the ways in which the world impinges upon us?

"The Last Analog Revolution / A Memory Box" at the 2011 Venice Biennale includes a wonderful 75 minute documentary film by Stefan Constantinescu entitled "My Beautiful Dacia". The Dacia is a brand of auto produced in Romania since 1968, the year the film maker was born. Constantinescu depicts the story of his own life through the history of the Dacia (particularly the ubiquitous model 1300), as well as the relationships of many other Romanians to this car.

Constantinescu provides this description:

My Beautiful Dacia is a light hearted and humoristic portrayal of the evolution of Romania from Communism to Capitalism, seen through the eyes of its most emblematic symbol, the Dacia automobile. In our film, we will follow different generations of Romanians - from the old nostalgic to the young entrepreneurs - showing the present transformation of Romanian society. The connecting point between the different stories is always the Dacia car: first, a symbol of the ambitions of Communist technology and now a reflection of the new global economy. In 1999, Dacia was bought by Renault and nowadays it’s a best-selling car in developing markets.

There is also a copy of an autobiographical children's book by Constantinescu for browsing at the Biennale, complete with pop-up Dacias and pull-out pictures.

Well worth a visit - if youre in Venice! Until November 27th, 2011.

Live streaming at ICOM-CECA

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:22:00 +0000

In a few days, I will be traveling to Zagreb to give a presentation on "Philosophies of Interpretation" for the 2011 conference of the ICOM Committee for Education and Cultural Action. I unfortunately won't have time to stay for the whole conference, but the organizers have arranged for live streaming on Tuesday, September 20th. This gives myself - and many of you reading this - the opportunity to follow along with the later part of the conference.

The program is available at
http://www.icomceca-croatia.com/eng_programme.html

Live streaming on Tuesday, September 20th:
http://www.icomceca-croatia.com/live_stream.html

A new online collection

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:38:00 +0000

After years of effort in digitizing a gigantic handwritten catalog, photographing objects and creating a unified university database system, the University of Oslo Museum of Cultural History will finally unveil its new online ethnographic database next week - on August 24th. However, you can already search in the database online. At the moment, it is available only in Norwegian. Searches can be made by name, region, collection, theme, material...and - most importantly from an international viewpoint - "outline of cultural materials" code. OCM code 534 represents musical instruments. Take a look at what shows up:
http://www.unimus.no/etnografi/khm/#/listView?search=534&startRecord=0
Other tests also retrieve large numbers of objects:

OCM code 322 represents woodworking.
OCM code 323 represents ceramics.
OCM code 764 represents burial practices and funerals.
OCM code 226 represents fishing.
OCM code 301 represents jewelry and ornament.
OCM code 532 represents representative art.

Within each search, it is possible to refine the lists by checking off other relevant terms for the objects found. What makes this all possible are the embedded OCM codes added during the process of typing in the catalog text.
My congratulations to the Museum of Cultural History, and the museum IT network MUSIT for the work they have put into this project. Now that they have come this far, creating a multilingual interface based on OCM codes should be a relatively simple task. I look forward to seeing that sometime in the future.

Discovery tables

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:53:00 +0000

Last year, I visited a charming exhibition at the National Library of Ireland called "Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival". One of the things I liked about the exhibition was the inclusion of multi-touch "discovery tables", which allow access to high definition archival material that otherwise wouldn't fit as exhibits.

Today, I discovered a series of videos where curator Catherine Morris discusses the exhibition, and the discovery tables. Take a look a 8:25:

Of course, Alice Milligan is not the only exhibition using this style of digital archive presentation. In the Zagreb "Art Deco" exhibition (on until the end of this month), the Museum of Arts and Crafts papered a whole room with reprints of magazines and newspapers from the 1920's & 30's - while making the same scans available on a touch screen in the middle of the room. A great effect!

communality on the radio dial

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:57:00 +0000

Long before the Internet, one trawled the airwaves - searching for treasure.

Community radio during the late 1960's had a profound effect on many listeners in the San Francisco Bay Area, including myself. Discovering that there were alternatives to standard political rhetoric and top-forty entertainment was an encouragement, opening vistas in unexplored directions.

Cese McGowan, Indi Higham and Hugh McAllorum were important radio voices at KTAO in Los Gatos during that time, but it was station manager Lorenzo Milam who was most influential, albeit behind the scenes. Lorenzo would assign a task to a DJ - for example to make a program about love songs from different cultures using the gigantic ethnic record collection at the station. Or organising a five day Javanese gamelan festival in December. Or an overview of African drumming, Norteño music, Irish bagpipes, political debate or renaissance poetry...

Through his work at KTAO, Lorenzo Milam was attempting to create situations for intellectual stimulation that he himself had experienced a decade before while volunteering at KPFA Berkeley. He writes:

How wonderful, then, it was, to find this communality on the radio dial. Those of us who had a love for Joyce and the Beats and Marlowe and Bach and Dallapiccola and Telemann and Louis Armstrong and Blind Gary Davis and the Music of Macedonia had, at the same time, an antidote to the world that had suddenly gone off the track. Here was a voice of reason, one beamed at us with gentle calm, telling us that it was, indeed, wrong to destroy the country that we loved for a single, dark, knock-'em-dead world view.

The string drum

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:42:00 +0000

One of the most intriguing musical instruments of India is the string drum known as "khamak" or "katho". This is a small two-headed drum with a string attached to one of the heads. The player plucks the string while pulling it at various tensions. The result sounds halfway between banjo and tablas.
Khamak is one of the instruments of Bengali musicians such as Babukishan Das Baul (in the above video), but is also played by folk musicians in other parts of India. Notice the khamak players in this pungi/bean band performing at the Chandigarh Carnival in Punjab & Haryana:

Music and ageing

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:15:00 +0000

Today, I received the offer of free access to articles published in Cambridge Journals in 2009 and 2010 until August 30th, 2011. Great! Who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to spend a summer vacation reading scientific literature? If interested, YOU can also access these journals by going to the Cambridge Journals website!
One of the articles I discovered is "Musical taste and ageing" by Jill Harrison and John Ryan (in Ageing & Society 30, 2010). Similar to Bourdieu's works on social capital, the authors propose that

Taste not only helps to make sense out of the endless array of products available on the cultural menu, but is also through consumption and display a way of signalling group membership, social location, identity and self.

The study is sociologically oriented, based on questionnaire survey material from 1982,1992 and 2002 from all over the USA.
The authors mention a problem that also I have run into when interviewing people about what music they like: Do the names of artists or styles really mean the same thing to all informants? Harrison & Ryan write:

It is impossible to know, for example, what type of music a respondent was thinking of when asked if he or she liked ‘new age’ music. There will have been considerable variability in the respondents’ knowledge and interpretation of the types of music and artists associated with each genre.

In their conclusion, the authors state that respondent's musical tastes were generally narrow as young people, wider during middle age, then narrow again once reaching retirement age. One of their interpretations is:

First, there is the possibility that older adults’ tastes are selectively pruned as a response to declines in social network size. A varied taste pattern becomes relationally less necessary as a strategy for interaction with the people in one’s network. At the same time, given that new tastes are encouraged by wider, diverse and expanding social networks, the tendency for older people’s networks to contract and to become homogeneous in age is unlikely to foster exposure to new musical forms.

Omeka on my mind

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:43:00 +0000

What Is Omeka from Omeka on Vimeo.

I've just been looking at Omeka - an open source publishing system for museums, libraries and archives that can be used both as a database, website and online exhibition generator. Sounds interesting! I'll have to try setting it up on a server to do a test.
The software is created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Virginia. This is the same organisation that produced that wonderful bibliographic tool Zotero, and who's stated aim is to "democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past".

The devil's drones

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:38:00 +0000

Madonna has done it. So have Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

Roncos do Diabo is one of many music groups that play around with the "sinfulness" of music. Their name means "the devil's drones", and their performing style is considerably wilder than most Portuguese folk bands.

Você quer dançar, diabinho?

Žminjska Polka

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:17:00 +0000

In 1999, Livio Morosin & Dario Marušić released the album "Bura Tramuntana". One of the cuts is "Žminjska Polka", a traditional Istrian dance tune in a new arrangement. "Žminjska Polka" became an instant hit on the Croatian pop charts, and is still heard regularly on tv, radio and at clubs. The CD received the "porin" award for best ethno-album in 2000.

Study days as inclusion

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:26:00 +0000

I've noticed that Fiona Kerlogue from the Horniman Museum in London is organizing a "Romania Study Day" on June 24th that will be open for both museum professionals and the general public. The flyer states:

This day is an opportunity for museum curators and those with an interest in Romania to find out about the Horniman Museum’s project to research the Romanian collections and bring them to a wider audience.

Inviting various interested communities to participate in researching the collections is a great idea. Bravo, Fiona!

What is a mediatheque?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Is mediatheque a word pertaining only to centers of audio, visual and digital media (such as at the British Film Institute), or does it stand for collections of all kinds of media - digital, printed and other?
As the museum I work at is in the process of planning a mediatheque itself, I recently visited several mediatheque's in Paris to learn how they function, and what they focus on.

Sarah Baumfelder from la cité de la musique describes the mediatheque she works in as both a music library, a multimedia center, an educational center and a children's activity center. She herself leads vocational training in the mediatheque for people planning careers in music. Her students combine study on mediatheque books and computers with physical meetings at seminar tables. In addition to teaching, Sarah and other employees prepare information for inclusion in online and local digital collections: Catalogs of printed documents and sheet music; archived audio and visual recordings of concerts at the cite de la musique; archived audio and visual recordings of conference presentations; a digital catalog of musical instruments and photos in the collection of Musee de la musique; educational material about music and musical instruments; lists of music courses and educational institutions, as well as a guide to online resources in music.

Sarah pointed out that the online and local versions of the mediatheque are both structured in the same way, but that the local version contains access to considerably more resources - which copyright restrictions hinder from including online.

At Musee du quai Branly, I was graciously received by mediatheque director Anne Faure. Anne informed me that her museum inherited vast quantities of objects, books and archival material from two older institutions: the Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, and the musée de l’Homme. Much of this material is available either in the reading room on the ground floor (available to the general public) or in the mediatheque proper on the 5th floor (available only to researchers). Her staff of 38 mediatheque employees have been busy digitizing photos and archival texts for years. There is still no end in sight for work that needs to be done, but finding funds for it is not easy.
Similar to la cité de la musique, the Musee du quai Branly makes catalog information available online, but allows access to audio-visual material and commercial database services only from computers in the mediatheque, due to copyright restrictions.
I was also told that the mediatheque had experimented a few years ago with a media room for children and young people. The service wasn't considered a success, however, as the room used wasn't very pleasant to be in, and the computers needed a large number of staff to assist visitors.
From these two examples, it appears that French mediatheques er mainly research libraries containing ALL kinds of media.
If YOU have knowledge about mediateques in other countries, I would love to hear from you!

The mirage of similarities

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 07:18:00 +0000

Ce que montrent les images. Philippe Descola (1) par laviedesidees

What does an image illustrate? How can we interpret the intangible world of ideas through tangible media? Is there a one to one correspondence between things and their depictions, or do we need special models to decrypt the embedded meanings?

Anthropologists Philippe Descola and Anne-Christine Taylor have taken up this challenge in the exhibition "La fabrique des images", currently being shown at Musee du Quai Branly in Paris.

The exhibition text states:

Images depicting things that are similar in appearance do not necessarily refer to the same invisible properties of reality. To class them according to their formal characteristics alone - type, subject, medium, technique - reveals nothing about the circumstances in which and for which they were made, nor about the figurative conventions their creators followed.
A landscape, a mask, a portrait, a body painting do not have any universal significance and do not have the same effects across time and space. To grasp this one can contrast two images that resemble each other yet cannot be assembled.

The exhibition can be seen until July 17th, 2011.

Golden roads to hell?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Tue, 31 May 2011 12:48:00 +0000

The recently opened exhibition "Is music sinful?" at Ringve museum questions the role of music in society. Does music spread perversion and immorality? If so, what should we do about it?

YOU can join in deciding "Is music sinful?" at http://ermusikksyndig.no/en

QR codes in museums?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:08:00 +0000

I've been noticing more and more publishers making the use of "QR code". QR code stands for "quick response", and may be read by any bar code scanner or - more importantly - by the camera of any smartphone. Adressavisen in Trondheim, Norway has started integrating QR code in their articles to allow readers to link to online media tied to their printed media.

QR codes are also making their way into museums. The above video shows how Derbyshire Museum has added multilingual wikipedia links to their regular labels. I have heard that Trondheim museum of Art plans to include QR codes for information about museum exhibits, but hasn't yet done it.

Digitalt Museum will soon also include QR code generators in their database of objects in Norwegian museums.

I would be pleased to hear from people who are involved with QR codes in museums. How does the public respond to the codes? What percentage of visitors use them? What types of information do visitors inquire about, which might be included as links in QR codes?

The ethnography of garbage

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:51:00 +0000

Nordiska museet in Stockholm, Sweden is currently showing an exhibition entitled "Garbage". As one can see from the exhibition documentation photos on Flickr, developing the exhibition included using both historical and ethnographic research methods. The museum writes that:

Garbage is a thought-provoking exhibition about keeping and throwing away, about what garbage actually is and the emotions we feel about it – nostalgia, uncertainty, anguish and aversion. And about what it was like long ago, when hardly anything became garbage.

The Swedish exhibition text says more: "150 years ago, the rate of consumption was lower - and garbage was part of a natural cycle. The exhibition includes objects telling that almost nothing was garbage before - patched and mended clothes ended up as insulation in the timber wall, or women’s sanitary napkins were made from a worn shirt and stuffed with rags. Recycling has historically been the norm."

The exhibition also includes a recycling laboratory, where visitors can transform various forms of garbage into sports equipment.
You can see it in Stockholm until September 25th, 2011.

citizen historians

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:58:00 +0000

I've been studying the "Children of the Lodz Ghetto" project at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is a collaboration between a team of experts and "citizen historians" using online databases and other internet tools. The project started in 2008, aiming to document the lives of as many as possible of the more than 13,000 children who signed the Lodz ghetto schools album in 1941.
Children of the Lodz Ghetto is an example of lay persons being integrated into original research, where volunteer efforts can make a real difference on what stories will be known about people from the not so distant past.
This is a style of collaboration that many other institutions would do well to try to duplicate. My congratulations to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and its "citizen historians" for being in the forefront!

Asphalt Easter

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Winfree Papuga) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:23:00 +0000

Although Norwegians traditionally travel to the mountains at eastertime to extend their skiing season, the latest issue of "Byavisa" in Trondheim has published a special issue on "asphalt Easter" for people who will remain in the city. On the front page, Byavisa says "Read about everything that the city offers during easter week: Tango, the country's best coffee, television stars playing Jesus and BMX-show in an elite class".

However, we still can't escape discussions of the mountains. One article in the newspaper claims that unused mountain cabins are proof that Norwegians have more money than they can use. Journalist Odd Ragnar Myhr asks "I wonder what Southern-Europeans would have said if they knew what the normal investment in land was here in Norway? And what amount of money people invest in their cabins?". He claims that there are around 500,000 cabins in Norway, and that most of these are only in use for around four weeks per year. If one compares expenses, it would be necessary to stay for at least 60 days at the cabin before one cabin-day would cost less than a whole week at a hotel in Southern Europe.
Myhr says "No matter what, we would need more than blood-red figures to take the dream of owning a cabin away from us Norwegians. It is part of the national genes, and in the joy of digging through massive snowbanks."