As a child, I could tell you a lot about fjords and olive trees, even though I had never seen either one.  This is because I grew up around a lot of Norwegians and Palestinians.  The Norwegians were my

Tromsø

neighbors and classmates in Minnesota, the Palestinians our family friends, part of the handful of Arabs that we knew who gathered together for special occasions.  I didn’t think of Norway and Palestine together beyond my childhood.  One was all about snow and Nobel peace, and one was all about sunshine and the opposite of peace.

But this past year I went to Tromsø, Norway for a magazine article, and I discovered an unexpected link:  It turns out that this small Arctic Circle city, gateway to polar bears and reindeer, is the sister city of Gaza.

One of the few constant refrains I grew up with was, “If you forget your people, then who else will remember them when they need help?”

The answer to that question for many people from troubled lands is apparently Norway. Volunteering, whether abroad or at home, seems to be as much a part of Norwegian culture as waffles and jam.

In Tromsø, I met over hot chocolate with Knut Borud, the current secretary of the board of the Gaza-Tromsø Friendship group.  Like all the other board members on the Gaza-Tromsø Friendship Committee, he is 100 percent Norwegian.  He has lived in Norway all his life, a married high school teacher with teenage children.  He shrugs when you ask him why he has been involved with helping the Palestinians since the 1980s, visiting twice.  “There is something wrong there,” he explains simply, with that Scandinavian calmness.   “In 2001, we formalized our efforts to help when our mayor visited Gaza and signed the sister city pact. Contact has become more and more difficult as the situation has gotten worse but we continue.”

Knut teaches video production to high school students, and one of the Gaza Tromsø group’s projects is helping Gazans film their own stories.  One young woman, Nehal Afana, a cinematographer in training, was even brought to Tromsø to learn about developing a film art center for youth in Gaza, like the Tvibit Filmhouse in Tromsø for aspiring local artists.

“Yalla To Gaza” is a film made by  Gazan director Ashraf Mashharawi and features Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Tromsø native.   Along with fellow Norwegian Dr. Erik Fosse, were the only two foreign doctors allowed into Gaza during the 2008 bombardment.

In the video, Dr. Mads talks about the dignity of the people of Gaza, but sitting above the Arctic Cirlce, listening to Knut talk about a place so far away, a place for which he has no obligation to help, I thought equally of the dignity of Norway and all people who help others just because they have the freedom to do so.

http://vimeo.com/11712883 (Yallah to Gaza)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJndfs4Ctt8  (Nefal’s story)

And for a look at the magazine article that took to Tromsø, the home of the northernmost mosque in the world: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201201/ramadan.in.the.farthest.north.htm