Another amazing fun fact for you budding young linguists among us, adding to the “nautical” theme emerging from
the blogosphere's meme-machines lately:
...In norwegian, the word for “octopus” is, literally translated, “
ink-squirt” (blekksprut)...Just listen to the
lovely sound that word makes, as you smack your lips to the cadences, oh those watery ink-spurts of doom; metaphorically speaking, of course...
Closely related is the not-so-seductive-sounding, far more prosaic swedish version: “
ink-fish” (bläckfisk), showing once and for all that the differences between the two nations are determined by
far more than a petty revolution (nor) or the ability to sell cheap meat and booze to border-crossing tourists with oilmoney in their pockets (swe), namely the ability to get the
species right!
But then again, only the Way of Nor has anything resembling a "real" coastline- that of a REAL sea! So any self-respecting nor-lad or –girl would know from the very earliest age, sat on their father’s lap at the dock slicing cod’s tongues for pocketmoney, that a fish is a fish is a fish, and those who aren’t, are sure as hell something else and even more peculiar indeed...
And that goes for the clever little octopus too, which only the warm-climated nations would bother to eat, choking on the rubberish suction cups-
we’ll make do with a scabby sheep’s head as delicacy on christmas eve (-well, in the west-country anyway, but they were always bloody wrong’uns- tenant farmer roots hard to beat, so they’re hardcore- sucking out the eyes with benevolent sighs, praising the season as they kick back another "secret" sip of aquavit from their hipflask, this is teetotal bible-belt country after all-
but oop north, you know, on the other hand, they eat dried/salted codfish, roasted in potash lye, with a sprinkling of salt and some hot melted butter, oh yum yum yum
yum-!)
-Anyway. Even with such
fascinating peculiarities mentioned, we haven’t yet
started counting those weird, "unclassified" underwater thingies which aren’t edible or very useful either way, from a non-scientist perspective: Those horrific monster-fish, curmudgeoning with wide-angled jaws, their blind eyes firmly fixed on an abstract horizon of “food”. Odd, waxen fin-creatures with fluorescent-glowing antennas, radiant sonars ensnaring their prey...
...Who knows what secrets the deep will hold? The bottomless pit of undiscovered terrors, or a hidden liquid-filled paradise where soft-skinned creatures have their murky lair, down there in the deep dark sea, on submarine cliffs overgrown by clinging nests of the stickiest, bubbliest seaweed...Neptune’s Lair.
...Did you know that the inventor of the outboard boat motor was a norwegian? –That’s right.
Ole Evinrude (1877- 1934), another one of those beggarly but apple-cheeked young lads who, carpetbag in hand, a shilling in their pockets, emigrated to better futures over the ‘dam, setting up communities in the US of A and giving birth to the term “
squareheads”- their neighbours’ nickname for these rather naive, too-honest-for-their-own-good (ex-)norwegian weirdos, who got ripped off in business and saw with much-ingrained scepticism on the drinking.
- Oh, the little puritans, eh? What a generalising cliché. Technicoloured sobs. Pat on the back all round. So. back to reality:
...Now, where were we?...Ah. The emigrants- Poor, poor sods...If the potato famine spawned
anything good at
all, it must’ve been the fact that sons of poor slave-waged tenant farmers could jump on a boat and arrive to new possibilities in a land far far larger than their own, even though this new land was “built” on indigenous blood and another form of slavery,
far more brutal than the hierarchy at home would ever be. But that’s another story, for another day...
(...And the treatment of "new" immigrants from hotter climates in the "old country" today? -Yet another story to be told. And not all stories are good ones. But enough- We digress. I'll continue.)
...And the dried cod? Apparently it’s a delicacy- in Italy. "
Stoccafisso"- the stuff happy man-bellies were
born to love. -Yeah, we aim to please. A clever cook is one who understands the subtleties of seafood cookery tricks, and won't hesitate to add alien flavours to the mix- In that sense, that Jacques Costeau bloke was a jolly good fellow, I bet he liked his
bacalao salted, smelling of tomatoes and well-prepared cod...No cunning shark in sight, human or otherwise.
-Yes, "
under the sea"...The great watery deep. Where the underwater streams go, where the anemones shine, lies an undiscovered land...Where we weave our lullaby-stories, for those winter-dark nights. A story for all. For a seaman in Vanuatu. Or a midwife in Sandefjord. -
Blekksprut!
