'Square Egg Story' in Norwegian news today

[Lunnan & Hjort]

"Lost in the Andes" makes it to Aftenposten and NRK2:

As we know, Egmont recently produced a Grand de Lux book with
"Best of Barks", published simultaneously in Norway, Denmark and
Sweden, in connection with Barks' 100 years anniversary. Egmont
used this opportunity to invite readers to "vote" on "the best Barks story
ever". One could vote by email or using cellulose substances. When I
checked near the end of the voting week (after Barks' birthday;
a formal deadline seemed not to have been given), about 1000 votes
had been placed in each of the three countries.

It was not a surprise that the "Lost in the Andes" (from oneshot #223, 1949)
was voted the most popular Barks story, by Norwegian readers. It has
always enjoyed particular fame in this country because it stirred up a
veritable linguistic-political storm when it was published in 1963; the
people of "Plain Awful" (Gufseplassen) spoke "New Norwegian", more
precisely, in the (beautiful) dialect of Voss. _Some_ of the New Norwegian
clan felt publicly insulted. -- It is perhaps a little surprising that the
voting
patterns in the three Scandinavian countries seemed to match extremely well
(I have not seen the final results; this was simply my impression after
visiting the three websites at the end of the voting week). In particular,
the "Lost in the Andes" won not only in Norway, but also in the sister
countries. (I had some comments about this earlier on the DCML,
hinting that the voting system might have been biased towards this
particular story.)

The Aftenposten newspaper commented on this result on their first page
today, and used most of the back page for a well-written, informative
report on this. They commented of course on the 1963 language debate
temperature, and there was a photo of Barks from his 1994 visit.

The "cultural TV channel" NRK 2 also featured this news story tonight.
I was somehow invited to their daily (?) "cultural news" (?) hour show
(20:00 -- 21:00), and was interviewed ("live") about the square eggs story,
the influence of Barks, etc. We also saw a brief video made earlier today
from the little township of Voss, which thanks to 1963 Duck translator
Vivi Aagaard is eternally placed on the cultural-political map of Norway.
They had children read some of the Voss-lines from the story (reading
from the "Best of Barks" book, which has kept the 1963 translation).

There is a definite limit to what can be shown and told and explained and
discussed about any topic in a six-seven minute slot in a TV programme,
but I guess the result was fair & ok for the purpose.

The Donald Duck comics have always been enormously popular in
Scandinavia. What is less obvious and worth contemplating is the degree
to which "everyone" now knows also of the Main Creator, Carl Barks,
and even of Don Rosa and a couple of the other Disney comics creators.
10-20 years ago rather few would know the name of Barks; now his
is really a household name. -- The other guests of this TV show had
some minutes to chat outside, before the programme started. And these
other people (an editor of a women's magazine, a couple of musicians)
instantly recalled both the Barks name and the details of the square eggs
story, just from glancing at the cover of the "Lost in the Andes" comic
I had brought with me. Such a tremendous, universal popularity and
recognisablity could not have been in Barks' wildest imagination when
he finished the story in late 1948...

Nils Lid Hjort (who needs to wash off his TV make-up)