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Archiver > NORWAY > 1997-11 > 0879375247


From: <>
Subject: Re: ADM. AND GEOGRAPH. UNITS IN NORWAY
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 17:54:07 -0500 (EST)


Hi All,

I feel the urge to weigh in on the administrative and geographic debate. My
first point is that when comparing America and Norway these are separate
issues. They overlap to a degree, but are different animals.

Geographic divisions do not have any government or administrative functions.
They are just a piece of ground with either firm or fuzzy boundries. Lets
take America first and look at examples of firm boundry geographic units. We
have states, counties, and townships (yes, I know we don't have them
everywhere). Within township we further break things down into numbered
square miles and divide the square miles up until we can specifically
identify a piece of ground that is owned by an individual. That's what it is
all about, defining something owned by someone, in the sense of a legal
entity. Someone can be a person, governmental entity, a company, an
association, a church, or whatever. Somewhere I have the deed to 1 square
inch of ground that I secured in some fund raising campaign.

Within counties and townships we have identified areas with firm boundries
called incorporated muncipalities. These muncipalities are called cities,
towns, villages, hamlets, thorps, or even burgs. It is sort of in the eye of
the beholder and tends to be related to size but not necessarily. How many
of you have seen the wonderful musical set New York City named "On The Town"?

Once you have an incorporated municipality with specific boundries called
city (or whatever) limits, a different method of breaking things down for
ownership is used. Municipalities are broken down into subdivisions made up
of city blocks and individual lots within each city block. Again this is to
define a specific unit for ownership.

Now let's take a look at fuzzy geographic units. We have the Gold Rush
Country, the Iron Range, Down East, Upper New York State, Southern Minnesota,
Northern Iowa, the Rockies, the Black Hills, and other names. We all know
the area in question but would not be able to draw a specific, agreed to by
all, boundry around it. New England is an exception and there are probably
others, but you get the point.

Some of the above units with firm boundries contain administrative and
governmental entities and may have been designed to contain a governmental
entity. We have a national government, state governments, county
governments, township governments, and municipal governments. All of these
entities can perform any administrative and govenmental tasks not
specifically prohibited by the next largest entity. The 10th Amendment of
the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution states, "The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to
the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The
10th Amendment has been arrogantly ignored with the growth of large
goverment, but this is the basis of the powers of each level of government.
Even with each level of government imposing laws on lower units and thereby
controlling things they probably have no right to control, there are still an
awful lot of things left that each level can control and administrate.

This past summer I was playing tour guide to a couple of Norwegian friends
and they couldn't understand how laws were different all over. Speed limits
are different, hotel taxes are different, what can be sold in stores is
different, and so on. When in the Minneapolis area, which is in Hennipen
County, we went to a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine, or possibly
brandy. We arrived a few minutes after 8 or 9 PM and the store was closed,
by local law. My friends were disappointed and began to say unkind things
about America and our way of doing things. I told them not to worry and
pulled into a gas station and asked where the nearest open liquor store was.
I was directed about 10 miles down the highway into the next county. Just
across the border was a very large and busy liquor store happily making
profits thanks to the voters of Hennipen County, or Minneapolis, or
Bloomington, or whatever. I don't even know what level of government had
passed the law. We didn't care. It took 20 minutes out of our revelery, but
the selection was much better.

Let's move on to Norway. I don't know exactly what the modern Norwegian
method of creating geographical units for ownership purposes is. I imagine I
am going to find out. I do know they have one because they have to. It is
probably not going to be based on anything square.

I have a better idea of what it was like in the last century because I spent
about 2 years trying to get a handle on what a gard really was. It certainly
is not a farm in the American sense. It seemed more like an estate, except
estate was obviously to grand a title. Speaking geographically, here is how
I define the units. It is different than the definitions in Haugen's
dictionary, but I believe more accurate, at least from the American point of
view

There were amts (which are now called fylkes) that are analogous to our
states. Next came kommunes that are analogous to our counties. I don't know
if there was a level analagous to our municipalities. I believe that in many
kommunes there was not. The next division was gard and I will stop and
define it.

A gard was a piece of land that somebody secured ownership to somehow in the
distant past. The gard probably had boundries that were a little fuzzy at
first, but over time they became quite firm. This gard was given a name and
that name stayed with the land no matter who owned it or how much it was
subdivided. My home gard of Hovland was always Hovland and is still Hovland.
I assume it will be forever.

If a gard was subdivided by the owner selling a piece of it, the name
remained the same but it now contained Bruk 1 and Bruk 2. Bruk means " a
smaller farm that was once part of a larger gard." Some gards never were
subdivided and had no Bruk, others could have as many as there were
individual owners.

The last subdivision was the husman's place. If an owner had more land than
he and his family could operate to it's fullest potential, he would provide a
small piece of ground to someone and they could use it for their own purposes
provided that they performed labor for the landlord. The husman could build
a house and other buildings, grow crops, graze goats, or whatever on his
place.

A case can be made that husman's places weren't really a piece of ground
owned by somebody because there was still a landlord who collected "rent" in
terms of labor, or possibly other goods. But husmen had rights to the land.
Generally his eldest son, or daughter if no son, inherited the right to
continue to "own" the husman place. I think of husman with land as something
between an owner and a renter. However, it is irrelavant as far as
geographical division is concerned. Husman's places had firm boundries and
were recogized as geographical entities.

I ask our Norwegian friends to comment and correct me if I am wrong in the
following observations about the sizes of gards and husman's places. A gard
could range in size of crop land (as opposed to the mountains and woods that
could also be part of the gard) from something as small as 1 hectare (10,000
square meters or 2.471 acres) to an average size of 12 to 16 hectares
(120,000 to 160,000 square meters or about 30 to 40 acres). I believe that
the average size farm in Norway today is 30 to 40 acres.

I have been to Årdal and seen Ivarsplassen, the husman's place my Hovlands
emigrated from. (Husman's places kept their names as well, no matter who
lived there.) It is the only husman's place still standing in its natural
state in all of Årdal. I will not burden you with a description of the shock
and emotion I felt when I saw it for the first time. Actually, I probably
will unless Karla directs me not to, but not in this already too long
message. You really need to get a feeling for what their lives were like. I
don't know how they managed to endure.

Anyway, Ivarsplassen was about the size of a city lot. My lot in Santa
Monica is 60 by 140 feet containing 8,400 square feet or 933 square yards
(780 square meters). I don't think husman's places got a whole lot bigger.
Even if the size is doubled, 2 city lots is not large for a family to make a
living on. Remember, those husmen with land were the lucky ones. The only
option for many people was to be a servant to the landlord or the equivalent
of a day laborer. I don't suppose the wages for these people exceeded food
and a place to sleep by very much.

So husman's place was the last or smallest firm geographical division.

Norway has fuzzy geographical units as well. I just can't be sure what they
are because I am not familiar with local fuzzy names. Maybe southern Norway,
northern Norway, Valdres, Gudbrandsdalen, Samiland, the Oslo area would be
some. I don't know. Maybe fuzzy areas aren't allowed or don't exist because
Norway is largely divided in rather clearly defined valleys. Vikadalen,
Seimdalen, and Utladalen are sort of fuzzy names in Årdal but are pretty
definately defined by mountain sides. Anyway, they don't have a governmental
characteristic.

Finally, (was that cheering I heard) I tackle the comparision of governmental
entites in Norway. They have a national government, fylke governments
analogous to our state governments, and kommune governments analogous to our
county governments. Note that Norway has no municipal governments in the
sense of American municipalities of cities, towns, and the like and no
township governments. The kommune govenment is the lowest level.

I am sorry for my long messages but I can't say anything in 25 words or less
and even this sentance exceeds it by one word

Kneel.

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