Scandinavium #10: Christ, it's a holiday blitz
{520 words, 1 figure, 3 minutes}
Monday, June 6th, is another Norwegian national holiday. To be specific, it's Whit Monday, which is part of the Pentecoste Feast. It's another Christian Easter holiday holdover from Norway's past days of being a Christian country. Having grown up in secular America, I never realized how many Christian holidays there are. Heck, I know Islamic holidays better because I grew up in Dearborn. But ever since Easter, it has been what I call a holiday blitz. Here's a rundown:
April 13-17: Easter holidays [Påske]
May 1: International Labor Day
May 17: Norwegian Constitution Day [Sjuttende mai, lit. tr. Seventeen of May]
May 25: Ascension Day, the 40th day of Easter [Kristi himmelfartsdag, lit. tr. Christ Speeding-to-Heaven's day]
June 5: Whit Monday, the 50th day of Easter [Pinse]
And now for some sports-style statistics: four of the six weeks from May 1st onward were shortened by holiday, each by one day. Of the nine weeks from April 10th to June 10th, there have only been three, solid 5-day work weeks. What's worse is that I took a vacation to Japan from the end of April to the beginning of May, which spread over three different work weeks. Because of the coincidental timing, it means that since April 10th, I haven't had a single 5-day work week at the office until … this past week! Even with the conference last week, I didn't attend the very last symposium because I flew out at noon on Friday, which happened because I bought my ticket late. And now in visual form:
Turquoise days are national holidays in Norway. Salmon days were spent in Japan. Note: weeks portrayed as beginning on Monday.
Well, that's just what's on paper. In practice, I think I still went to work during most of the Easter break because it was odd to me to take that time off (many Norwegians take the entire week off). And I still come in on some Sundays for a few hours. But no wonder I don't feel as productive as usual, barely cramming in an experiment in where I can at the last minute. And all that travel does wear down on the homebody spirit.
Crazy as it is with all these holidays in a row, after next week, it's a Norwegian holiday drought until Christmas, practically 6 months later. As an American, I suppose this is in exchange for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving, which sounds like a much nicer spread in comparison. Although, it's true that most of July is usually dedicated to long holidays, though, mandated by law that Norwegian workers be allowed to take at least 3 weeks of uninterrupted holiday in the summer. It's a big deal since so many people are gone that most of the laboratories are shut down. Since I only worked five months last year, I "only" get 10 paid vacation days this year (instead of 25; trust me, I know), most of which I already spent on Japan. But with a week in Grenoble for the ESRF beamtime experiment followed by a week in South Korea for the International Conference on Neutron Scattering, I'll be traveling just as much as the Norwegians. It will be, as my housing co-op at Michigan used to say, a "work holiday".
P.S. Yes, Pinsen (Pentecoste, the -n denotes "the") is another one of those holidays that gets counted in Norwegian, so technically today (Saturday) is called pinseaften (Pentecoste Eve), Whit Sunday is 1.pinsedag, and Whit Monday is 2.pinsedag. Joyous.
