Folklore Fights the Nazis: Humor in Occupied Norway, 1940-1945

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Summary: Humor as Psychological Warfare
Review: "Hitler and Goering were once out driving. Passing through a village, they ran over a pig. Goering thought he should find the farmer and apologize for what had happened. He was gone a very long time and received very fine hospitality. When he returned, Hitler asked why he had stayed so long. 'Well, there was so much celebration in the house over what I told them,' Goering replied, 'and finally I had to join in.' 'What did you tell them?' 'That the pig was dead.' This was one of hundreds of jokes told by the Norwegians from 1940 until 1945. While the phenomenom of occupation humor has certainly not been ignored, the role it played in developing a resistance mentality among the Norwegian people has until now been largely unexamined. This humor was expressed in overtly anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi jokes, but it was also found in snide replies, double-entendres, insinuating newspaper advertisements that were not understood by the occupying forces, children's stories, and even Christmas cards. Kathleen Stokker, extending an earlier study by Magne Skodvin, observes that "wartime humor granted a voice to those deprived of free speech, discouraged the undecided from hasty attachment to Nazism, and helped the initially amorphus group of individuals opposed to Nazism to develop a sense of solidarity." Norway was a neutral country in 1940, and just as it had done during World War One, it hoped to remain neutral. Geopolitical realities, however, including the German desire to control access to Swedish iron mines, made Norway and Denmark Hitler's first victims following the end of the Phony War in April of 1940. The Norwegians did not surrender. King Haakon VII established a government in exile in England, and the Norwegian people would wage one of the bravest and most effective resistance campaigns of the war. The popular image of Norwegian resistance has been created by films such as "The Heroes of Telemark," but there were tens of thousands of ordinary Norwegians who resisted in more subtle ways, even if it were only to wear a red cap in defiance of their occupiers. Stokker points out, however, that the image of a people united against oppression is only partly true. There were many Norwgians who did acccept and serve the new National Government headed by Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian Nazi Party. But these people were for the most part shunned, and Stokker points out with brillliant originality the way the resisters used humor to debase the collaborators. Stokker, a professor of Norwegian at Luther College, is the author of the most widely used Norwegian-language textbook in America. She draws upon a large number of interviews with survivors of the Occupation, archives in the Norwegian Resistance Museum and the University of Oslo, and "joke notebooks" kept by women who experienced the event. It is a delightful book,well-crafted and historically meticulous. As other societies have discovered, oppression can be endured with humor, for it is a valuable form of psychological warfare. The Norwegians developed that humor, as Stokker so aptly proves, and in the process maintained the spirit that was necessary to prevail. As one reads the book, and looks at the drawings, posters, and cartoons, one gains a deep appreciation for the courage of a people. One also gets a good laugh! Dr. Gerald D. Anderson Department of History North Dakota State University