Syttende Mai

The 17th of May.  Norwegian Independence Day.

Almost as soon as we arrived in Stavanger we began hearing about the holiday.  The two main things that we learned were that 1) people dress up for the holiday and 2) a lot of ice cream is consumed.  At the post office one day last week we picked up a schedule of the festivities and made plans to attend the first parade of the day.  I bought syttende mai napkins and a small Norwegian flag for Rory to wave at that parade.   

Sunday morning we got dressed up - Rory and me in dresses and Stepler in a suit and tie - and followed the stream of people down to the city center for the parade.  Many of the Norwegians (particularly the women) were wearing traditional clothing, bunads.   The first parade is made up of students from the various schools marching down the street carrying Norwegian flags while singing and cheering.  A few of the schools had marching bands which Rory particularly enjoyed.  

After the parade we went through the market area where food, candy, balloons and trinkets were sold.  We bought Rory and red, white and blue pinwheel that she enjoyed carrying for the rest of the day.  I was quite tempted by the ice cream, but it was cold.  So I got a 7-11 coffee instead.  

We returned home for lunch.  Continuing our celebration of the day we had grillposers, Norwegian hot dogs.  Not quite the same as American hot dogs, but they were okay.  Rory really enjoyed them, saying "hot dog" again and again and eating and entire hot dog!

After Rory's nap we decided to go to the final parade of the day.  When we got to the spot where we wanted to watch the parade people were already lining the streets.  This parade included many community bands and all sorts of sports clubs and after-school activity groups - soccer, handball, badminton, swimming, dance, drama and many others.  I'm glad that we got out again for the final parade because it was much livelier than the first.  It was quite long though and when there was a break in the action we headed back home.