Campers dance, make crafts during Viking tour

As temperatures last week climbed toward triple digits, local kids enrolled in vacation Bible school at La Cañada’s Lutheran Church in the Foothills kept cool by invoking the cultures, customs and climate of Norway in a weeklong “Expedition Norway.”

Participants spent the week learning more about the Scandinavian country, making Norwegian-inspired snacks and crafts. A group of more than 40 campers, most of them young children, decorated windows with snowflakes and posters reflecting scenes of modern life in Norway.

“I liked learning about the food and what games they played,” said 10-year-old camper Rena Jeoung. “They talked about reindeer, and there’s a lot of snow — I really want to go there.”

On Friday, two female members of the local Edvard Grieg Lodge 6-074 of the Sons of Norway, a brotherhood that celebrates Scandinavian heritage, showed the children native clothing, called “bunad.” They talked about the Vikings and the poverty that caused citizens to immigrate to places like America.

“What do we know about the Vikings — were they good or bad people?” Jo Ness, past lodge president asked the children. “Maybe they were both. Only 3% of the land in Norway is arable, so many of the Vikings, in order to survive, went trading and raiding.”

Afterward, Ness and Judith Gabriel Vinje invited the group to join them onstage for a bit of Norwegian dancing, which involved a hop-skip-step move set to violin music.

As a way to help campers learn about the importance of helping others, organizers helped the kids raise a combined $543 donations in support of United Cerebral Palsy.

Campers also made videos of themselves dancing for an online video campaign called “Dare to Dance” in support of Finley Smallwood, a 3-year-old Corona resident with cerebral palsy whose adoptive parents are raising funds for a life-saving operation. A website, doyoudaretodance.com, is chronicling the response with some help from KTLA-5 News.

“It’s a way for them to give back to the greater community,” said Lisa Jenks, a lifelong member of the church who serves as its children’s ministry coordinator.

The purpose of “Expedition Norway” is to expose children to a cultural heritage they may not otherwise learn about, according to Gabriel Vinje. Though she herself has Norwegian roots, members of her family didn’t participate in the traditions of their elders, so it was up to her to bring them back to life.

“We weren’t raised in it. It was considered old-fashioned,” Gabriel Vinje said. “I was able to resurrect the roots I never knew I had.”

Gabriel Vinje said she hopes what the campers saw and did inspires a curiosity about their own heritage and those of others they might meet.

For 11-year-old camper Kate Saeva, that certainly was the case. The Glendale resident admitted knowing nothing much about Norway on Monday when vacation Bible school began. By Friday, that knowledge had grown.

“I learned about the Vikings and the Norwegian foods,” Saeva said, recommending a soup she tried. “They were really cool.”

Does she think she might want to visit the country some day in the future?

“Definitely,” she said.