View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

It’s morning. Like always, I get up, relieved I no longer have to lie in bed staring at the clock and hoping it soon will be morning, troubling thoughts and worries competing for space in my mind. I brew some coffee and go to the porch to watch as the horizon slowly turns from faint flickers of pink to glorious hues of purple to orange to yellow as the sun slowly rises over the vibrant green of the prairie. And I meditate on life here and wonder at the audacity of my actions to try to rewind the clock and once again become a legal citizen of my home country of Norway.

“Why?” my daughter-in-law, Esther, who is both an American and a Kenyan citizen, asked me this weekend. And I tried to explain, even though, if I had known how long and how complicated and also expensive this process is, I don’t think I would have started it. It just seemed justified at the time.

Each country has its own laws about citizenship. Some countries, like the U.S., will allow you to have a dual citizenship with another country. But not Norway, until recently.

When I became an American citizen in 2004, I automatically rescinded my Norwegian citizenship. And becoming an American for me was a long and difficult process for that very reason. Citizenship, to me, is not just a piece of paper stating what country you belong to, it is identity. Not as strong as the bond of family or identity of gender, but still important.

There were many reasons why I became an American, mostly because I had lived here for a long time and besides my husband, my children and grandchildren lived here. I has a job here and friends. I felt in my heart that I belonged here. But there were also practical reasons. I could also vote and not be afraid of being deported if I happened to become a felon. So I went through a very long process and became an American. It felt right. But it also felt wrong that I had to rescind my Norwegian citizenship. Norway is where I grew up. Where some of my closest family still live. Norway is part of who I am.

So, when Norway changed their laws in 2020 to allow dual citizenship, I thought about it. But then COVID happened and Patrick died and then Erland died and I just didn’t have the energy. But this fall as my birthday approached, I started the process. Some of it had to be done online and some using the mail. I had to go through a whole series of steps, each dependent on the previous step being acknowledged by Norwegian bureaucrats. Within one month of the last step, which was a report of me not being a felon, I had to schedule an interview with the Norwegian embassy in DC or one of three Norwegian consulates. I got an appointment in the one in San Francisco. Feeling nervous and dressed in my best casual, yet interview-worthy clothing, I went to the 39th floor in an office building and rang a buzzer. There was no welcome and comfortable conversations, I just had to hand over my many original documents (copies of which had been submitted multiple times) to be scrutinized by a somber-looking person who obviously didn’t like small talk.  After about 10 minutes, I received the documents back and was told I would be informed by the consulate in New York in about three months of their decision.

Arriving home at three in the morning after a complicated flight, I wondered why at my age, I did this process. But then I thought of my roots and that I now maybe can finally feel loyal to my two national identities, the core of who I am.