Prison garb? No thanks!
Inmates are issued a starter pack of prison clothes upon arrival. Many would rather use their own clothes as a way to reclaim some power for themselves.
Humanities
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Viking house remains found along planned E6 road route
Archaeologists at NTNU have discovered the remains of a Viking house from the early Middle Ages. It is a “very rare find,” says project manager Merete Moe Henriksen.
From royal crown to a crown of thorns
Church art from the Middle Ages reflects the dramatic societal changes that were underway during this period. Artists changed the way they depicted Christ from a regal figure with a crown of gold to a suffering Christ with a crown of thorns.
Using new technology to find shipwrecks on the ocean floor
An estimated three million shipwrecks lie in seabed graveyards around the world – with as many as 1000 of them around Svalbard. Each of them has their own unique story — one that’s made much more accessible with new technology.
What is community, really?
A community can be anything from people gathered at the same type of music festival to commuters who recognize each other on the train, a quick meeting with colleagues in the cafeteria or an online chat group.
Name change in the United States brought economic payoff
Many immigrants changed their names when they came to the United States at the turn of the last century. People who changed their first names often landed better-paying jobs.
Museums can give us better beer, paint and omega-3
Natural history collections aren’t just dusty financial sinkholes. Actually, they can be gold mines for industry.
Unique Middle Age tapestry gives insight into medieval times
Norwegian churches in the Middle Ages were decorated with embroidered tapestries that told Bible stories almost like a comic series. The Høylandet tapestry is the only one of its kind that has survived the march of time.
Japan’s cuteness phenomenon is hundreds of years old
You’ve seen the pictures and the products: Japanese teenage girls in a pastel little-girl world, and children and adults who love Hello Kitty products. They’re all part of the Japanese kawaii phenomenon, which actually started several hundred years ago.
Boys still lag behind in reading
When boys start school, they recognise fewer letters and their corresponding sounds than girls do. The difference is just as great at the end of the school year.
Cheerful Madonna with a lot of bling
A Madonna figure from Grong municipality is one of the best preserved and special church sculptures in Norway from the Middle Ages. She looks like a sweet, friendly girl who’s been asked to model for the sculpture.
How forgetting about Middle Age treasures saved them
One of Scandinavia’s finest collections of church art from the Middle Ages lay hidden and forgotten in Norwegian churches for centuries. Indeed, this long forgetting is precisely what preserved the unique church art.
Improve your Norwegian with tailor-made language app
Choose from 77 mother tongues and 6 Norwegian dialects. A new app offers customized Norwegian language exercises based on your native language. The newly launched app could prove a useful tool in adult education, too.
So what is “gand” sorcery – really?
Some people may have heard about the magical phenomenon of gand. When life seems to be against you or you’re plagued by one misfortune after another, you might jokingly say that you’ve been ‘ganda’ if you’re Norwegian. But what did gand really look like and why do we associate it with the Sami people?
Men are men and women have to watch out
Women who work on ships have to take responsibility for not being sexually harassed. This is the message according to a new book on gender, sexuality and power structures in large organizations.
Eiderdown farming – a living cultural tradition
For centuries, perhaps millennia, people and birds have interacted with each other. The tradition of eiderdown harvesting from this northern duck is still practised.
What the Vikings put in their pillows
Not too many people are able to identify birds by examining a single feather. But a number of folks need to know that sort of thing, and it can actually save lives.
Scandinavians shaped by several waves of immigration
So you think people in present-day Sweden and Norway are different from each other? It turns out that would have been closer to the truth some 9500 years ago.
Houses reused for over 1000 years during Stone Age
We’ve always heard that Stone Age people lived in caves. It turns out that’s not the case. They often lived in earthen huts, which they reused and kept up rather than building new ones.
Mystery in the bear cave
The oldest known bear bones from northern Scandinavia have been discovered in a limestone cave. But the cave also contained a mystery.
Pope said ‘no thanks’ to Norwegian coins
Norway minted its own coins during much of the Middle Ages. But the coins didn’t always impress outsiders or even the Norwegians themselves.
An Italian agricultural community seen through a 50-year-old looking glass
Fifty years ago an anthropologist studied and described an Italian agricultural community that was characterized by poverty, the Mafia and vendettas. Now his anthropological dissertation has been translated into Italian and is helping the community to understand themselves better.
Thousand-year-old cathedral surrenders its secrets, stone by stone
The secrets of St Olav’s shrine and Nidaros Cathedral have drawn pilgrims for nearly a thousand years. Curious researchers have also made the journey, eager to solve the mysteries locked up in the cathedral’s stones.
Archaeological finds unearthed on the fly
What was supposed to be a simple excavation to allow for the expansion of a church cemetery turned into a treasure trove of historic artefacts, including a decorative fitting from a book “imported” by Vikings from Ireland.