Potatoes and Pioneers

Is your fate set?

I have wondered before and now I’m wondering again.

“You control your own destiny,” my American friend once said on the phone. Matter-of-factly. But it was like those words handed my soul the reins and gave it the go-ahead. Because I don’t know (know-know) if that’s true. I have always hoped it is. But there are gnawing voices and suspicions that say otherwise. “Vi er mer like enn du tror,” my dad says. And talks about family patterns that have started feeling less like fun quirks and more like a carosel I can’t get off.

I was browsing the fiction section of the university library today when I noticed a book entitled Du kan ikke lage en potet. You cannot make a potato. Fun title. But it caught my eye because that’s the the central theme of the book I think about everytime I think about destiny: Svøm med dem som drukner, by Lars Mytting.

I read Svøm med dem som drukner in the 11th grade, first year of high school, for a school assignment. Everyone did presentations on our books and I remember I thought mine was pretty good. I don’t know what the presentation’s more precise theme was, but I had a PNG potato looming in the right corner of every PowerPoint slide— until I revealed what I thought was true theme of the book, which is (spoiler?):

People think they are their parents’ offspring, but they are really their clones — like a potato.

Potatoes do not propagate like plants do, I learnt from the book. They replicate themselves. Main character searches for his family’s history. Learns that like the potaters he’s harvesting, he’s been his father all along.

Or that’s how I remember the potato thing now. It’s been almost ten years. Was it the dad he was looking for, or someone else?

The next year, in another Norwegian high school class but now at UWC, I read a book with a similar theme. Jeg forbanner tidens elv, by Per Petterson. About a young man who has the chance to go up and out. Decided to “self-proletarize”, become a Worker, instead. Be the change you want to see in the world? He was a communist in Norway, I remember that. In most of the book he is searching for his mom. I know there was a physical pursuit, but I’m sure there were inner journeys to mom-land too.

In this book, the mom had wanted him to be better off than she was. But he decided to stay put. Still, even though it was his decision, it did not feel like he was the master of his destiny. There was no reins-in-hand feeling, at all. When I read the book back in high school, I recall it was like there was some dreary slimy entity that took control of him, and made him do it. It was sinister, it was going down and it wanted to drag him down with it. The choice was outside of his true realm of control.

—

A while after I read the book, I was home in Oslo on a break. I sat on Marie’s bed and marveled at her pretty things and mesmerizing high school life as she cleaned her room. She had started reading more, and I browsed her bookshelf. All books in the Norwegian language. At that point I had switched sides long ago and couldn’t remember the last time I—outside of school— picked up a book in norsk. I even went to an international now, where everyone spoke English.

But I admired Marie for her shiny ownership of who she is. I felt bad about my preference. Cringy. I am norsk, too, after all. And proud of it, yes yes, I love where I’m from.

So I wondered why I preferred residing English books to Norwegian. Was it really some internalized Norway-hatred, after all?

After some reflection, I do not think it is. At worst, it is only a fraciton of that. When I thought about these two books together, Svøm med dem som drukner, and Jeg forbanner tidens elv, it solidifed a sneaking feeling I have had: Norwegian adult* books are depressing!

I don’t want to be set in my fate. I don’t want to be a potato.

Meanwhile, the heores of the Ameircan books I read had AGENCY. Their actions could mess everything up, and make everything good again. It was up to them, and it mattered. I had never encountered a potato in any American book I have read. The protagonists are cowboys instead. Bending the world to their will. Same goes for the movies, too.

I guess that’s all I have to say on the matter. If the message we take in from books and movies and songs matter, I would rather be a cowboy than a potato. But that does not mean I don’t love Norge.

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*Norwegian teen and kids books are the best. On a recent trip home I read Markus og Diana before bed. I laughed out loud, I got reary eyed, and I looked forward to going to bed each night. Good stuff.