Danes and Norwegians were part of the same country for hundreds of years, and they’re still family.
Although I’ve chosen to live in Denmark, I have a personal relationship with Norway. My grandmother’s family comes from Norway, and as my mother was growing up, her mother told her that our family was Norwegian royalty.
Never mind that there was no modern Norwegian royalty until 1905, when the country became independent, and our family came to the U.S. thirty years before that. My mother grew up being told she was a lost Norwegian princess. I think it was something that her grandparents, who were immigrants, did to make their kids feel special.
Fast forward sixty years, and my mother and her sister, who would, of course, also have been a Norwegian princess, got a chance to visit Norway for the first time. My mother, who has a good sense of humor, wore a crown on the plane. She and her sister got crowns at a costume store and wore them on the SAS flight to Norway. She said the stewardesses really loved it. When they got off the plane, they did the royal wave. And they went to the Royal Palace and had their picture taken out front, wearing their crowns.
So, bottom line, I’m not sure the Mellish family is welcome in Norway anymore.
Family envy
Danes and Norwegians were part of the same country for hundreds of years, and they’re still family. Written Danish and written Norwegian are very similar – so similar that I once tried to find a Danish-Norwegian dictionary and was told there was no such thing. The spoken language is a little more different, but Danes and Norwegians can understand what the other is saying.