Velkommen til Norcon 27 ! Welcome to Norcon 27 !
Ja, vi elsker dette landet ! Yes, we love this country !
If you heard about Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Knut Hamsun, Sigrid Undset, Alexander Kielland, Jonas Lie, Lars Saabye Christensen, Jostein Gaarder, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Edvard Munch, Christian Krohg, Edvard Grieg, Johan Galtung, Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen, Thor Heyerdahl, Erik Skjoldbjærg (his 1997 ”Insomnia” inspired a 2002 Hollywood remake in English language), Liv Ullman, etc., you’re a very cultured and cosmopolite person, congratulations !
If you heard about the vikings, fjords, gorgeous blonde damsels, topics as „norwegians have bears and wolves in their gardens, and eat fish everyday”, „light or night all year long”, „inhumane winters”, and you believe all you heard, you must be a fantasy fan mixing facts with…to much fiction ! The fjords and the gorgeous blonde (and not only blonde) damsels are real. So were the vikings. The rest is just clichés . So, you’re full of clichés just as old barns are full of bats !
The main thing is that Norway is a peaceful (Norway is rated the world’s most peaceful country), nice, cultured and civilized country that never extended it’s “humanitarian aid intervention”, it’s “brotherly love, disinterested help and support” with tanks, planes, missiles, warships, troops, army, navy, airforce, etc. On the contrary, historically, Norway was invaded again and again…out of “brotherly love”, because was probably in big need of “disinterested help and support”…
If you’re a SF fan you should at least heard about Jon Bing and Tor Åge Bringsværd. At least !
The best is to have a look at the Norwegian Science Fiction’s page from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction :
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/norway
Norcon 27 (The National Norwegian Science Fiction Convention) will take place at the Science Library of the Oslo University.
Norcon’s Guests of Honor are the Norwegian fantasy writer Kristine Tofte (author of the novel “Song for Eirabu – Battle of Vigrid“, 2009 ; the second part is called “Song for Eirabu: Vargtid” and was released in June 2012), the famous american SF writer Pat Cadigan and the englishman Kim Newman (horror & fantasy author).
“Norocon is inviting you to three days of science fiction, fantasy and science-related activities, such as panels and interviews with the Guests of Honour, popular science talks and discussions, exhibitions, on-and offtopic discussions, games and much, much more!
Norcon 27 will be a great chance to meet friends and new people sharing your interests in books, comics, games, films and pesky green monsters !
Norcon 27 runs the weekend of the 14th to 16th of March 2014, so Make Room! Make Room ! in your calendar !”
Norcon’s organizing comitee consists of Cirstyn Bech-Yagha, Gunnar Bakke, Anette Lauenborg, Rolf Andersen, Heidi Lyshol and Elisabeth Bakken.
Norcon is a volunteer organization that has held fantasy / sci-fi festivals in Oslo just about every other year for the past 40 years.
The festivals include specific SF&F themes, discussions, exhibitions, auctions, games & fun, as well as famous writer guests from home and abroad.
Several younger Norwegian writers in the genre will also be present due to a longer program block under the auspices of ubok.no!
http://norcon27.no/
https://www.facebook.com/Norcon27
„Norway (Norge : Bokmål ) ; Noreg : Nynorsk), officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Scandinavian constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island.
Norway comprises the western part of Scandinavia in Northern Europe. The rugged coastline, broken by huge fjords and thousands of islands, stretches 25,000 kilometres (16,000 mi) and 83,000 kilometres (52,000 mi) and include fjords and islands. Norway shares a 1,619-kilometre (1,006 mi) land border with Sweden, 727 kilometres (452 mi) with Finland, and 196 kilometres (122 mi) with Russia to the east. To the north, west and south, Norway is bordered by the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea, and Skagerrak.
At 385,252 square kilometres (148,747 sq mi) (including Svalbard and Jan Mayen) (and 323,802 square kilometres (125,021 sq mi) without), much of the country is dominated by mountainous or high terrain, with a great variety of natural features caused by prehistoric glaciers and varied topography.
Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres (148,747 sq mi) and a population of a little above 5 million (5,136,700). It is the 2nd least densely populated country in Europe. The country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. From 2001 to 2006,[15] and then again from 2009 to 2012, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. Norway has also topped the Legatum Prosperity Index for the last five years. The OECD ranks Norway third in social mobility and fourth on the 2013 equalized Better Life Index. From 2010 to 2012, Norway was classified as the most democratic country by the Democracy Index. Spoken Norwegian, Swedish and Danish form a continuum of mutually intelligible dialects and sociolects.”
“Ja, vi elsker dette landet” (Yes, we love this country), we love this non-EU rich arctic oil paradise („Norwegians enjoy the second-highest GDP per-capita (after Luxembourg) and fourth-highest GDP (PPP) per-capita in the world. Today, Norway ranks as the second-wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation.”)
That’s interesting to notice that in North America there are people of Norwegian descent roughly equal in number to the current population of Norway.
“According to the last US census, almost 4,7 million persons identify as Norwegian Americans. In the 2011 Canadian census, 452,705 Canadian citizens identified as having Norwegian ancestry.”
