Language matters. The American writer and activist Rita Mae Brown said ‘Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where people have come from and where they are going’. On the face of it, this can often be taken to be about using ‘appropriate’ or ‘cultural sensitive’ terminology. Although this is undeniably a crucial consideration when using stories in a manner respectful to both the community they come from and the audiences receiving them, there are frequently more nuanced and more complicated issues.   

In the Little Norway storytelling project, there were multiple linguistic issues to be considered. The most obvious one, using archival source materials in English, Norwegian, and Danish, may have seemed like the biggest challenge.  Although this presented some challenges in the collection stage, any issues were mitigated by a member of the team having the ability to read these languages relatively fluently. However, in the curation stage – where materials had to be presented in translation – the issues of language and voice were much more subtle and complex.   

Little Norway dealt with ‘big history in a small place’, it captured all the torment and suffering of people displaced by war, forced from their homes by a barbaric invading army, compelled to flee across the North Sea to an alien (but welcoming) community, and to live in a strange place for number of years unsure of their ultimate fate. They faced life’s highs and lows in extremis. The storytelling had to reflect and capture their voice.   

One single word from the Little Norway project can serve to highlight the importance of getting language absolutely right, and illustrates voice beyond simply translations. That word is LANDFLYK.

This Norwegian word can often be translated lazily as ‘refugee from one’s country’.  Yet this was a sloppy and utterly inappropriate rendering of it for the context of the Little Norway project. The Norwegians in Scotland rejected the label of ‘refugees’, eschewing it in favour of ‘exile’. This is apparent in many of the archival sources from the time; they saw themselves as displaced and in exile and had found refuge but their overriding belief was that they would return home to Norway, and their domicile in Scotland was temporary.  Understanding this, both as it appeared explicitly in the archival sources, and also as it existed implicitly and ethereally in their mindset was crucial in telling their stories authentically. Landflyktighet was not about refugees, it was about exile and recognising this subtle but significant nuance demonstrates language matters, often very profoundly.