Quotable notes (07/02/06)

Quotable notes

"... I will now take a long step back in time, to the Viking era. The great Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl promoted the theory that the people of Scandinavia originally came from this part of Europe, from Azov. The historical ties between our two countries date back more than a thousand years. Old Norse literature records close contacts between the people of Kyivan Rus' and the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

"So 'globalization' is not an entirely new phenomenon. People from different parts of the world met, exchanged views and found wives many centuries ago. Longboats carried people far across the seas and down great rivers, as the web does today.

"Norway's hero king, Olav Tryggvason, spent his teenage years at the court of Volodymyr the Great, in Novgorod, and later moved to Kyiv, around the year 980. He was followed by Olav Haraldson, who was later canonized. St. Olav spent the last year of his life here in Kyiv as a guest of his friend Yaroslav the Wise, leaving his young son Magnus behind with Yaroslav.

"Soon afterwards, Olav Tryggvason's half-brother Harald Hardraade, later King of Norway, came to Kyiv. He married Yaroslav's daughter Elizaveta, who became Queen of Norway.

"This is Europe. There are ties among people, cultures and traditions. It is exciting to be back among old relatives, so to speak, and to connect with our shared history.

"One hundred years ago, the Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, an ardent champion of Norwegian independence, campaigned vigorously in European newspapers for the right of Ukrainians to use their native language, which was, as you know, restricted under the rule of Polish nobles and Russian tsars.

"In (October) 1906, he published an influential article in Le Courrier Européen defending the rights of oppressed Ukrainians in Halychyna. Ivan Franko, the great Ukrainian writer and nationalist, translated many of Bjørnson's works into Ukrainian.

"A couple of decades later, the Norwegian explorer, scientist and humanist Fridtjof Nansen helped save many Ukrainians from starvation in the famine that followed the end of World War I and the Soviet Revolution. ..."

- Jonas Gahr Store, Norway's minister of foreign affairs, speaking on May 31 at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (excerpted from the full text of his speech published on June 20 by Action Ukraine Report).

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