Proud heritage
Velva native to teach Norwegian at UND
By ANDREA JOHNSON, Staff Writer,
POSTED: August 16, 2008
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Melissa Gjellstad, a 1994 Velva High School graduate, enjoyed beautiful scenery during the two years she spent studying in Norway. Gjellstad will begin teaching Norwegian studies at UND?this fall.
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Melissa Gjellstad planned to major in the sciences when she started at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., in the mid-1990s, but a need to fill her foreign language requirement changed her mind. She signed up for Norwegian and "I just fell in love with it," said Gjellstad.
Now, after conducting post-doctoral studies for the past two years in Norway, Gjellstad is about to start work at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks this fall as an associate professor of Norwegian studies.
Gjellstad, a 1994 Velva High School graduate, said her years of visiting or living in Norway and of studying and teaching about the language have given her a different perspective on the Scandinavian country than might be gained at the Norsk Hstfest.
For instance, the culture at the Hstfest focuses on the heritage of the pioneers who settled here in the 1800s. When she lived and taught at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she finished her master's degree, Gjellstad also found a close cultural connection to Norway, but said the Norwegian-American culture there seemed to be a generation removed from North Dakota's pioneer roots and more focused on the fishing industry and contact with modern Norway. In Indiana there wasn't the history and close cultural ties to Norway that she found in North Dakota, Minnesota and Washington state, said Gjellstad, who was a lecturer in Germanic Studies and West European studies and coordinator for Norwegian Language and Culture at Indiana University in Bloomington from 2004-2005. One of her goals at UND will be to continue to develop interest in modern Norway and to encourage students to take advantage of the opportunities they will have to visit Norway and to study abroad.
Gjellstad said Americans will have no trouble visiting Norway, since so many people there begin learning English in preschool or the early elementary years and much of the television programming is in English. They might have more of a problem if they want to practice their Norwegian, since so many Norwegians are proud of their American-style English. When Gjellstad wanted to practice her Norwegian, she had to urge her Norwegian friends to speak Norwegian with her instead of their excellent English.
She said Norway is a very modern country, grappling with the typical concerns of a Western country. Her own post-doctoral research focuses on how women and family relationships are portrayed in 1990s Norwegian literature. For instance, one of the ongoing discussions right now is whether Norway's family leave policy should be even more generous and egalitarian than it currently is. Iceland, for instance, splits parental leave after the birth of an infant into thirds, with the mother taking the first third of the child's first year off, then the father taking the next third, and the parents having a choice of each of them will take the final three months off. In Norway, Gjellstad said new moms are more likely to take time off than new dads following the birth of a baby, so Norwegian newspapers have run a lot of stories about why that might be. Norway, like other Scandinavian countries, has a strong social welfare system. Norwegians get five weeks of vacation a year and are less likely to take their cell phones or laptops along on vacation so they can check in with the office. When they do, it's still unusual enough for newspaper stories to pay note to the new trend disapprovingly.
Gjellstad said Norwegian newspapers are also paying a lot of note to the American presidential election. Barack Obama seems popular with Norwegians. Gjellstad said she enjoys politics and sometimes talked with her Norwegian friends about what is going on in the United States.
At the height of the long days of summer, what some Norwegians call "The Cucumber Days," the Norwegians she left behind in Kristiansand are enjoying outdoor activities. Gjellstad said she's sure she'll be back many times to Norway in the coming years. She's looking forward to assuming her new position at UND and continuing to build interest in Norwegian studies there, she said.