They are the moth and I am the flame

OBS! This post is a mess, but I have a lot on my mind so it is hard to be precise..

One thing that I have noticed when I am at the lodge doing my research is that I am very visible. I stand out. Not in the "we are all individual and we all stand out in one way or the other", but I stand out because of my age. I am young, and sadly there aren't that many young people interested in what's going on there. Usually I am the youngest by twenty years, and that make people notice me. When they also finds out that I am actually from Norway they tend to draw to me like a moth to a flame. Everyone wants to talk to me about their family in Norway and who their family is, just in case I know them. I seldom do, though. I love to talk to people, but as nice as I think this is, and I really do enjoy being in the center of attention, it makes my fieldwork a little bit difficult. I tend to loose focus on what I originally was going to study, just because I have trouble finding out what kind of information that is actually important, and what information that may not be that important.
My original idea was to study how the descendants of the Norwegian immigrants feel about their Norwegian heritage.  That means that when I am doing my research down at the Kaffe Stue I can't use it to anything. Almost all the people there actually from Norway. What they are doing is holding on to their Norwegianess, and as fascinating it is for me to listen to their stories, it would never be a part of my paper. But they expect me to be there, if I haven't been there in a while, they start asking for me. And in some way, I actually enjoy being there, I enjoy hearing their stories and discussing Norwegian history with them.

The other problem is that I have some difficulties when it comes to the actual descendants. They are not as Norwegian as I first thought, and it is actually hard to find them. As I said earlier, a huge part of my fieldwork is participant observation, so I can't go around interviewing everyone that have a Norwegian Heritage. It would be good to observe them as well. With that said, the people that I do meet, is more than willing to talk to me. Maybe my problem is more of a luxury problem. I get too much information, and I will have a BIG job when I come back to school to sort out what is important and what's not important.


PS: I went to a random dentist Downtown to fix my tooth, and what do you know, his wife had Norwegian family and was second generation Norwegian. They actually are everywhere!