Gorbatsjov hamsters Mack Ale?!

As I've been improving my Norsk vocabulary, I've stumbled across a couple of things that I wanted to share here.

I laughed until I cried when we were leaving the Ølutsalg on Friday. Ølutsalg translates literally to 'Ale Out Sale' in English, or 'The Beer Store' in Canuck. It wasn't the amount we had to shell out for a six-pack of Mack's Håkkon Øl that brought me to tears. On the way out was a mock newspaper article, the title of which read, 'Gorbatsjov hamstret Mack-Øl.' It was complete with a not-too-endearing picture of everyone's favourite Russian. I asked Liz-Iren what 'hamstret' meant. She paused, pondered, and explained that it means that he 'hamsters' Mack beer.

It turns out that there's a verb 'to hamster' in Norwegian that describes the act of stuffing your face full like a hamster does. It was a combination of two thoughts that brought me laughing to tears: first, Gorbatsjov stuffing his cheeks with Mack Øl bottles; and second, the notion of saying to a friend, 'Man, I really hamstered that Whopper last night!'

About the Mack Øl - Shannon made the astute observation that the beer they brewed here tastes a bit more 'creamy' than what we're used to in Canada. Apparently that's because it really IS brewed the 'old fashioned way.' I don't know any more details about the process, but Edmond, our Lithuanian friend, is working at Mack for the summer. I'll have to ask him about it. The Håkkon I had was a dark beer and it went down easy. The Mack Tank, which is pronouced 'Mohk Tohnk' and is what's on tap around town, is a bit more like your stock Canadian beer. But thicker and creamier.

I can't figure out what's funnier: the text, or the picture of the bum cheeks - I mean, road bumps - above it.

Spill her? I hardly know her! Actually it translates to 'games here,' which is only a little less suggestive. These signs are all over town, and the games they refer to are lottaries.

People are getting a kick out of how I say another Nord-Norge dialect word: Kafarsken! It's pronouced like 'Ka-FUSH-kin!' and the best translation they could give me was, 'What the heck?' It's apparently the sort of thing you'd expect to hear out of an old fisherman. I'm adding it to my list of cute expletives alongside the Spanish 'Hijole!' (Hee-OH-lay!).

While it's on my mind: many thanks are in order to Phil Steinke, whose generous contribution of scads of web space on the Engineering Society Web Server at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada is allowing me to bring you this continuing saga, complete with dozens of high-resolution pictures. If you're reading this from Norway, send Phil an e-mail. If you'd like, you can read more about him here. Introduce yourself, and tell him your favourite fish or seafood. Go ahead - click it! No, really! We can tally up the votes and I'll post the results here later.

And more thanks are in order for a newfound friend, Mona, who loaned me her bike for travelling around town. There are far too many good things to say about Mona to tack them on to this hamster article, so I'll save them for the Kardemommelover ('Cardamum Law') piece I have in mind.

The Norsk know what I mean. As for the Canucks - well, keep reading! For now, you can try using the word 'hamster' as a verb in casual conversation.