Norwegian | Indian/Caribbean/Portuguese/South American/Scottish
When I get asked how I identify I find it difficult to separate race, ethnicity and nationality. I find it hard to describe and often wind up just ticking ‘mixed’ on questionnaires as there is nothing to really capture my racial/ethnic make-up! I have in recent years begun to tick ‘other’ as there is nothing that adequately captures who I am (‘mixed’ often refers to a mix of afro Caribbean and Caucasian). If pushed, I would say British, Norwegian, Vincentian although ethnically I am a mix of native Carib, Caucasian (Norwegian & possibly Scottish) & Indian with a bit of Portuguese thrown in for good measure! I am non-religious and straight.
My Dad is from an island called St Vincent & the Grenadines in the West Indies. My Dads’ Mother & her family were of Indian descent. His Dad (my paternal Grandfather) was of mixed heritage (Native Carib & Portuguese / South American as well as some Scottish). Interestingly, when my Dad has tried to trace back his family tree, he found that on his mother’s side in 1912, a young man by the name of Joshua Morgan married a young woman by the name of Catherine Bacchus. They grew up on the island of St Vincent, being the first generation of children born to Indian immigrants to the island back in the late 19th century. Whether escaping persecution, seeking freedom or just looking for a new beginning these early Indians came to the island with dreams of establishing a new home. They were indirectly forced to abandon their familial Indian names in favour of Christian names when settled in St Vincent during the British occupation. It is said that in 1838, from the town of Calcutta 245 Indian men and 2 women boarded ship called the Whitby, while 150 men and 6 women boarded the Hesperus. Together these two ships completed a journey across kali pani (black waters) of the Atlantic Ocean & it is thought my Grandma descends from one of these passengers. James Morgan‘s Mother was a mix of Indian and Portuguese. His Father is said to have been a Welsh man so even my Great Grandfather was mixed-race! We don’t know much about the heritage of my paternal Grandfather unfortunately other than he had a Scottish surname (Sutherland) and was a mix of Native Carib & Portuguese with a bit of Scottish. My Dad moved to London to live with his maternal Uncle when he was 14 in February 1964 at the height of the swinging 60s. He often describes his sense of excitement of coming to the ‘motherland’ being slowly eroded as he was viewed as ‘other’ with his sun darkened skin & West Indian accent. One of his most vivid early memories of life in London is being surprised no one stood up to sing the national anthem in school or stand to attention when being asked a question by teachers.
My Mum was born in a small town called Narvik, just past the arctic circle in Northern Norway. She describes living in an idyllic post war Norway, living the simple but good life with her parents and grandparents. By the time she had entered her early teens and gained a younger sister they moved to a town called Mo-i-rana where she stayed until she was around 20 years old & decided she wanted to travel the world. She moved to London aged 20 in September 1966 taking a long journey by water. Upon arriving she became an au pair working with wealthy Jewish families in Hampstead. Interestingly, despite her Caucasian skin, she too describes encountering racists undertones with people – often commenting on her foreign accent.
My Dad played the guitar in a band & my Mum was an avid music lover and clubber. They met at a gig at the Purple Pussycat in Finchley where my Dad was playing in 1976 and after 5 years of dating got married in 1981. They had two children, my older brother and myself. Interestingly my brother and I look very different, most people question whether we are related let alone brothers as he has been told he looks more native Carib / South American & I have been told I look more Mediterranean or Middle Eastern. So yes, people find it hard to place us!
My parents always had a natural affinity and curiosity for one another’s cultures – coming from a cold climate my Mother yearned for the heat & beaches & my Father coming from a tropical climate was excited about colder climes. This meant they had a natural & mutual respect for one another’s heritage & culture. They travelled to one another’s homelands (as well as many other countries) pre & post children – instilling that love of travel & cultural sensitivity in my brother & myself from a young age. My earliest memories of experiencing each culture was through music (Vinci soca or Norwegian folk), food (fried bakes & salt fish, plantain, drum oil BBQ cook ups, red belly cake, rum cake or vaffle kaka, brown cheese, cream cakes, salmon, reindeer meat, blabarssoppa [warm blueberry soup] to name but a few), key festivals / celebrations (e.g. Norway’s independence day on 17th May) and wider family be that local or visiting the respective motherlands. Also, memories like my Dad buying mangos or yam from ethnic shops when we were little as you couldn’t get them from local supermarkets.
My Mum’s side of the family is predominantly Caucasian given the racial make-up of Norway. On my Dad’s side things are a little more mixed given the years of assimilation and I have cousins who are part Jamaican & Trinidadian (so more visibly Black) as well as more Portuguese Indian (so more visibly olive). All of my Mum’s family still live in Scandinavia & although we visit one another it is much more occasional than growing up with my cousins on my Dad’s side of the family.
I feel interracial relationships are very much the norm these days vs. when I grew up and rightly so! Despite growing up in London, my parents lived in a suburb of East London which was predominantly working class and White. They bought a house on a close where my Dad was often referred to as ‘the darkie’ by neighbours & growing up kids on the close said they weren’t allowed to come to our house to play because ‘we were the kids of the darkie’. I was aware of it however much they tried to protect us from it. I think for my Grandparent’s generation; on my maternal side the culture was and to a certain extent still is quite monoculture so marrying out of race would be a big deal. On my paternal Grandparents’ side, whilst there has been racial mixing since the late1800’s, for my Grandma’s generation there were racial tensions between the Indians and blacks of the island & interracial marriage between these groups was a real taboo.
Not knowingly or consciously but perhaps unwittingly my culture has had some effect on my choice of partners. I think it really comes down to gravitating towards an openness engendered by shared cultural values and experiences. My wife (British Indian) was very surprised when we shared similar cultural & familial values & even had similar experiences growing up in immigrant houses (e.g. plastic carpet protector all over the carpets, remote controls being kept in plastic & sellotaped, having big unwieldy families with lots of cousins all getting together at each other’s houses or family functions where the kids would go mad running around or jumping on the bed whilst the adult women would cook up big steel pots of food & the men would chill drinking whiskey/rum). I guess I wasn’t able to share these cultural experiences as instinctively with those from the area I grew up in.
Being able to travel to such wonderful and different parts of the world with a personal insight and connection to the people there from a very young age has been something I have come to appreciate as I have gotten older. When I was younger, I just wanted to fit in with everyone, and there was not much multiculturalism around! I wanted to visit Cornwall to see my Grandparents or go on holidays to Butlins rather than going to St Vincent & the Grenadines / Norway / Sweden / Canada to see family on a coffee table holiday (coffee table holidays where you spend most your time sat at different families coffee tables saying hello after ages of not seeing each other / or not having met them!). As I have gotten older, mainly when I went to uni, I started to appreciate my cultural heritage & see that it gave me a unique perspective on the world. It’s also a great talking point when meeting new people.
I think I had most difficulty with my mixed identity when I was growing up as I just wanted to fit in and be like everyone else. There was a real desire to belong wholeheartedly and not be some of this and that but not quite enough to rightfully say you truly / fully are. There was always this sense of being an outsider, of not quite fitting in, and my base level of cultural references were very different to those I grew up with. The other hard thing is people forgetting / not realising you are mixed-race and casually making racist comments or jokes and then saying, ‘oh sorry we didn’t mean you’.
Growing up we were exposed to both sides of our parents’ culture & I love that I can pass that on to my own children as they grow up. This is predominantly through food, drink and music. From the West Indian side it is things like chicken roti (a mash up of native Carib and Indian), salt fish and fried bakes, plantain, yam, curried goat, rum cake, Encona hot pepper sauce is used with practically every meal (a slight digression but strangely my British Indian wife from Wolverhampton [which has a big Caribbean diaspora] also grew up with this), scotch bonnet peppers being used in a lot of cooking. Rum punch, fruit punch & mauby are classic staple drinks. Soca music is just instantly uplifting, sunshine upbeat music that makes you feel good although the lyrics are actually pretty suggestive when you listen to them as an adult!
From the Norwegian side it is things like having cured / pickled / salted fish, reindeer, caviar, brown cheese, cream cakes, vafflekaker (Norwegian waffles not to be confused with Belgian ones!), kjottkaker (beef cakes or meatballs), cranberry sauce and cloudberry jam as well as drinks like aquavit. Also through art and artefacts; Mum having Norwegian trolls all over the house, lots of reindeer horn ornaments, hand embroidered fabrics esp. at Christmas with the world God Jul, having Nisa the Christmas elf dolls come on out Little Christmas Eve Eve. As well as these gorgeous paintings of Norwegian landscapes. Her Uncle Arne was a famous painter and he passed on some of this work to her. We also always had (and still do) hand knitted Norwegian socks to keep us toasty in the winter. My one regret or sadness is that I don’t speak Norwegian (esp. since having a child of my own) – although I can understand and follow a conversation, I am not a fluent speaker. Whenever I would visit my family in Norway they would always want to practice English and would say ‘why do you want to speak Norwegian, only 3 million speak that!’.
We were lucky to visit both countries multiple times as children as well as have family from both sides come to visit and stay with us in London. As an adult we have travelled back many times too, most recently we went to St Vincent & Bequia for my Dad’s 70th birthday earlier this year which was fantastic as my brother and I took our respective children too. I think that exposure as a child is a massive education & teaches you about people more than any school or textbook can. It’s the feeling of the cold or heat hitting you as you get off the plane, of seeing excited strange faces ready to welcome you at the airport like they have known you forever, it’s the sights & smells of a new world which over the years become familiar. I remember experiencing the midnight sun, seeing kids play football outside at midnight, where I was struggling to get to sleep in Norway & getting excited to have a proper family cook up on the beach in St Vincent with a local goat! It’s taught me that underneath it all we all share common hopes & fears regardless of the language we speak or colour of our skin. It’s enabled me to be able to have a natural empathy & understanding for people of different cultures, to be confident & not scared by the unfamiliar.
With age my appreciation of my unusual make up has increased to the point that it is something I am proud of rather than wanting to hide. The various strands of national and ethnic culture that have been passed down both sides of my family have amalgamated to create something new and special. I am hoping this continues for future generations of our family. More than anything I want my daughter to be proud of her roots & not feel the confusion or alienation I did growing up & I am feeling more confident of that becoming a reality.
If I were born again, I wouldn’t change a thing (other than being able to speak to my Mor (maternal Grandmother) fluent Norwegian), every journey my ancestors have made has led to my being here today. It has afforded me the life and unique family I have and that is pretty amazing.