I recently caught the second half of “The Last Samurai”, starring Tom Cruise, on TV. I first saw this film (“Den Siste Samurai”) in early 2004 in Oslo, when I had not long arrived in Norway for a six-month stay as a medical student. This was the original English-language version with Norwegian sub-titles. However, at that stage I did not know very much Norwegian, and the not-infrequent verbal exchanges in Japanese were also sub-titled in Norwegian, so a certain amount of the storyline was ‘lost in translation’!
I remember being impressed with the film, despite not being a big Tom Cruise fan, and its themes of loyalty and honour and being true to oneself. The choreography of the martial arts scenes remains quite stunning.
It reminded me of another film which I love, “Dances with Wolves”, and caused me to reflect upon ‘why this is so?’.
Both carry the story of a ‘stranger in a strange land’, and the theme of redemption and enlightenment through becoming immersed in another culture which resonates with your soul more strongly than that which you were born into. Through a combination of adversity and necessity, the stranger integrates into a very foreign culture and begins to question why his own allegedly superior Western culture is hell-bent on destroying ‘the way of the warrior’.
This is a story which is in some way my own, and it is no surprise that I feel empathy for the key protagonists. The timing of my trip to Norway came at a very difficult time in terms of my personal and business situation, and I knew that by being away for an extended period I would become powerless to control the forces of darkness waiting in the shadows and it was highly likely that my worst fears of a disastrous outcome would come to pass. When I arrived it in Norway was cold and dark with a lot of snow on the ground. I got off to a rocky start accommodation-wise, and the silences and lack of cooperation from home were ominous. I felt torn and wished I could jump on a ‘plane and return home.
That all changed when I had a chance to take up cross-country skiing. I was living at Kringsjå, a student village on the edge of Oslo next to a large lake (Sognsvann) and the vast Nordmarka forest which extends into the hills around Oslo. Cross-country skiing was my salvation, and Nordmarka was my sanctuary, a place where a felt truly happy and free for the first time that I could remember. I started learning Norwegian, made some Norwegian friends, joined a Norwegian church choir (Gamle Aker Kirke Kor) and decided to embrace what it is to be Norwegian. I felt at home and at peace and as if I had finally found the place where I truly belonged. When the time came to leave I did not wish to return home to Australia and leave my new life, and there were plenty of signs that the storm clouds were gathering and that I was going to be dragged out of the Vortex into some sort of living hell. This feeling of impending doom proved to be uncannily correct.
Over the following years I began to wonder whether I had experienced a phenomenon often referred to as the ‘collective unconscious’. Ever since I was a child I had been fascinated by the Vikings and the midnight sun and Scandinavia was the one place in the world that I longed to visit, and a strong factor in my choice of university was whether I could learn Swedish there. After my late great-uncle died, I found a box of his photographic slides at my mother’s house, and amongst them were several slightly faded slides from his trip to Norway in the 1950s. I was told that the fjords of Norway were his favourite place, and I later learned that this feeling was shared by his niece, my late maternal aunt. Neither of my parents have been to Norway so I cannot say what they might have felt if they had also experienced Norway’s breathtaking beauty, but I hope that, like other members of the family, their genetic imprint would have caused them to experience the siren song of the land of the Vikings.
That all changed when I had a chance to take up cross-country skiing. I was living at Kringsjå, a student village on the edge of Oslo next to a large lake (Sognsvann) and the vast Nordmarka forest which extends into the hills around Oslo. Cross-country skiing was my salvation, and Nordmarka was my sanctuary, a place where a felt truly happy and free for the first time that I could remember. I started learning Norwegian, made some Norwegian friends, joined a Norwegian church choir (Gamle Aker Kirke Kor) and decided to embrace what it is to be Norwegian. I felt at home and at peace and as if I had finally found the place where I truly belonged. When the time came to leave I did not wish to return home to Australia and leave my new life, and there were plenty of signs that the storm clouds were gathering and that I was going to be dragged out of the Vortex into some sort of living hell. This feeling of impending doom proved to be uncannily correct.
Over the following years I began to wonder whether I had experienced a phenomenon often referred to as the ‘collective unconscious’. Ever since I was a child I had been fascinated by the Vikings and the midnight sun and Scandinavia was the one place in the world that I longed to visit, and a strong factor in my choice of university was whether I could learn Swedish there. After my late great-uncle died, I found a box of his photographic slides at my mother’s house, and amongst them were several slightly faded slides from his trip to Norway in the 1950s. I was told that the fjords of Norway were his favourite place, and I later learned that this feeling was shared by his niece, my late maternal aunt. Neither of my parents have been to Norway so I cannot say what they might have felt if they had also experienced Norway’s breathtaking beauty, but I hope that, like other members of the family, their genetic imprint would have caused them to experience the siren song of the land of the Vikings.
