It takes a village to make a shanty: Nordic Immersion Shanty bridges cultures

Some years ago, I had a student (or what we at Concordia Language Villages call "a villager") who came to the Norwegian village with plans to build a Norwegian skigard as his service project for our high school language credit program. Atle submitted, as part of his proposal, a diagram with instructions for the Norwegian fence written in specialized "construction language." I was, frankly, a little skeptical that he would be able to pull it off, but he got the go-ahead to do it. Despite a full schedule on his hands, he set about the work of re-creating this old-style fence and enlisted the help of other high school credit villagers to complete the task. Years later, this fence is a natural part of the landscape at the Norwegian village. Every time I look at this solid structure, I think of Atle and the people on his team who worked so hard to get it done.

This was our year. As staff members, we often talk dreamily about what we'd like to do as our "service project" for the villages, given time and resources. This year, we decided to go for it. We wanted to build something that bridged between villages (Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish), between ages (from our pre-K villagers to our adult participants), between our summer and winter worlds, and most importantly, between our immigrant history and our immigrant future. The Art Shanty Project was a perfect venue for us to create a Nordic Immersion Village iskoia.

Our first technical meeting was held at a Perkins in Alexandria, in the shadow of the giant Viking statue. We brought craft sticks and glue and talked for hours about what the shanty would look like and how we would use it—even after it comes off the ice and makes its way towards the Nordic villages in Bemidji. We were preoccupied with the goat that tops the sod roof building and discussed it incessantly. Do we want a live goat? Papier-mâché? Lawn ornament? Animatronic? The possibilities were endless.

As we settled in to work, the details began to sort themselves out—first the skids, then the floor, then the wall frames, and so on. Step by step, nail by nail, board by board, we have covered every inch of this shanty with our happy attention, wearing four pairs of socks and long underwear. Emails and facebook messages skidded across the contintent (and across the ocean): a villager from Illinois offering a hand-painted item, a staff member from Colorado with tips on goat access, a family from Missouri wondering when to take time off work to come visit, and many Scandinavians wishing they could be here right now. It's been rather wonderful.

Throughout the process, we have had the benefit of warm-hearted advisors and donors who have been generous with their time, space, expertise, and resources. Our door, windows, and log-siding were donated by Hannah and Magnus, who have also contributed innumerable hours and incredible talents to the project. Bjorn, our designer, has journeyed back and forth from North Dakota to spend time with us planning and building in the cold, while Magda has been doing creative logistics and legwork. Iben and Reidun, with their hands already full, have been steadily reeling in their weekend plans.

The all-important goat started as an animatronic reindeer in Magna's Uptown apartment, became a concrete sculpture in Margaret's studio in Red Wing, turned a glorious caramel color in Kaia's guest room in Faribault, and was finally installed on the peak with a nametag around his neck: Geitost Julebukken. Each village also discovered or created its own installation piece to bring in, representing something distinct from the culture of their nation.

We are grateful to Jens and Pia for their work on transportation (in addition to building), to Frode for letting us use his garage, to Jon, Mark, and Margot for their investment in thinking/working steps through with us, to Gorm for driving into town to build and staying on a little longer, to A Very Small Arts Fund and Magda for financial support, to the Art Shanty Project for making this possible, to the many volunteers who helped us build and will help us run activities, and to CLV villagers and their families, program staff, support staff, and leadership staff for inspiring this project in the first place and for their effort in preparing young people for responsible citizenship in our global community. We love and live this vision.

And thank you to Atle and to all the villagers who, like him, manage to surprise us with something wonderful. You know who you are.

To read more about us, visit nordicimmersion.weebly.com.