some Norwegian hippie notes...
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Sun Jan 18, 2004 2:48 pm
Subject: some Norwegian hippie notes...
As Danish police are tearing Christiania apart
in order to wipe out the cannabis culture - http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1465815,00.html
- I'd like to share with you a related tale of my own from May
of last year. As the great international Marijuana March scheduled
for May 3, 2003 approached, and the demonstrators had asked permission
to march through the king's park surrounding the royal castle,
I wrote a mail to the royal family made public on my website
(in Norwegian):
http://uncletaz.com/norsktaz/harldsonj.html
It was an appeal to the king that he permit
the marijuana march to proceed to the royal park around the castle,
to a particular section of this park called "Nisseberget",
which means "the gnomes knoll" - a piece of grass that
has special historical and sentimental value for old hippies.
We used to sit there and smoke cannabis in the late sixties,
and the royal guards had a habit of chasing us out - well, until
one sunny summer day in 1967 or 1968, a gypsy friend of mine
I used to hang out with in Oslo and Copehagen was with me and
a small group of smokers at Nisseberget, and four of the king's
men arrived in full armor, with swords and bayonettes and feathers
in their hats, telling us to vacate the park. My gipsy friend
refused, and he challenged them to remove him by force. Now,
the chief knight - I'm not very good at such titles - ordered
his three subordinates to grab my friend. We watched in astonishment
as this hairy, unwashed, very small teenager wrestled all three
of them to the ground, all at once! Their commanding officer
cancelled the arrest order, then reinstated it, back and forth
indecisively and confused, not recognizing that they were up
against a small hippie with the strength of a Samson or Hercules.
I was eighteen, and I believe he was the same age. Now he tells
this commanding officer that he is a coward unless he puts down
his sword, stops yelling at his subordinates, and does the job
himself, man to man. The chief is a hot head and can't resist
the challenge, subsequently being wrestled down just like the
other three. (So there is a little anthroposophy in here after
all, because this is almost mythological.) The wrestling - four
big men, with hard military training, against one small dope-smoking
teenager - goes on for about fifteen minutes. Then my friend,
needing a rest, rns out of the park with the guards, or knights,
at his heels. We watch the spectacle with open mouths.
Who won? If the king had been present in person,
I believe my friend would have been knighted on the spot for
his valiant stance against the king's own men, if Norway had
not banned the gentry in 1905. The present-day monarch's tragedy
is that he has no authority whatsoever except being the leader
of the military and the ultimate head of the state church. He
is continually being pushed around by the State Department, and
after the incident described above, the king and his guards lost
the jurisdiction over the royal park, which was then given to
the city cops. (This was revealed to me by an insider about eight
or nine years ago.) What a loss for the royal family, for the
guards, and for the hippies! Now all the cat-and-mouse fun with
the royal knights in armor was over, and there were brutal arrests,
beatings in squad cars, and crooked undercover cops stealing
people's weed. So I'm telling the king to order his staff to
open the castle gates if the cops get out of hand during the
march, letting the high demonstrators in and locking the police
out, just like the king of Thailand once did during a demonstration,
to prevent the police from beating up on his children. (It goes
without saying that this made the king of Thailand immensely
popular.) I'm also reminding the king (of Norway) what happened
to queen Elizabeth a few years back - before Britain followed
mainstream Europe by decriminalizing cannabis and marijuana recently.
Somebody in the London crowd gave her a marijuana plant - out
of joy and affection, of course. Her Majesty loved it, and she
put it in the Buckingham Palace kitchen. Well now, the cops found
out about it, raided the queen's royal kitchen, and confiscated
the plant! Now, that's an insult against royalty if I ever saw
one, so I'm advising the king to keep the cops off his properties
and let the people smoke there if they feel like it.
The state church is a topic that brings me
to the next point: In addition to the appeal I wrote to the king,
the content of which is outlined above (including the story about
my strong David/Samson/Hercules gypsy friend), I also wrote an
appeal to the chief bishop, who is very left wing, very liberal
(anti-war, pro-gay, etc.) and a very good and close friend of
the royals, having stood for all their weddings and funerals
and baptisms and what have you. I've been working on him, of
course, trying to radicalize him a bit further by sending him
a link to my 1995 article about anarchist Christianity (not available
in English at this point, but a lot of it is based upon a chapter
in the book "Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism"
by Peter Marshall:
Anyway, the fact that this bishop (Gunnar
Stålseth) is very close to the royals informs me that their
hearts are possibly a lot more liberal and radical than what
is revealed, although I don't expect them to smoke weed on the
castle balcony during marijuana marches, but it wouldn't surprise
me if they secretly fancy the idea. So I told Stålseth
- check out the layout here, even if you can't read the language:
http://uncletaz.com/norsktaz/stalmail.html
....I told the bishop that the marijuana march
needed his blessing, and that I'd asked the king to put in a
good word for me to persuade him to show up and bless the march.
Bless the Flower Children, and remenber that they're being persecuted
by police and fascists, also in Norway, and that the WashIngton-and-the-Pentagon-Establishment
has been waging war against the Flower Children for decades because
they represent the diametrically opposite of the military-industrial
complex.
Bishop Stålseth was on study leave,
however, and it looked like the solemn task of blessing the marijuana
march would fall upon the shoulders of pastor T. Straume of Futurum
Ministries, namely Yours Truly, whom you can see blessing his
flock about ten years ago:
http://www.uncletaz.com/anarchistphotos/blessing1.html
http://www.uncletaz.com/anarchistphotos/blessing2.html
Everything was publicized in the underground
press, so I felt I had to show up (for the first time regarding
this particular event). The king did give his permission for
the march to proceed to Nisseberget, and this permission was
apparently granted before my appeal. But when the hour arrived,
Saturday May 3rd 2003 at 3:00 p.m, the weather was terribly foul
with pouring rain and I wasn't burning anough for this cause
to get all wet, because I live way out in one of the suburbs.
So I let everybody down. I'll try to do better next time.
Cheers,
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
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