Do you have a small part of America in your heart, good memories from there or simply want to experience something fun and different?
Welcome to "The American Lista"!
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Out here on the Lista peninsula, we have a long history of emigration to the USA, and the special thing is that so many returned home to Lista with memories and things from there.
Have you wondered with curiosity, and not irony, why grown-up people, especially in Southern Norway and Northern Norway, bear names like Larry, Steve, Sally, Claire, Glenn, Gladys and Grace? Have you also wondered why the cars in small towns are called Buick, Cadillac and Pontiac more often than in the cities? Is it nosebleed USA admiration — or do the names have a background you can understand and sympathize with?
Lista in Agder was its own municipality until 1965 when it became part of Farsund, but it was a special municipality that the city residents and shipowners in Farsund saw as quite harry. The houses had screendoors (extra mesh doors on the outside of the front doors), large American cars, kitchen fittings made of chrome and plastic, and a unique language in which English words were Norwegianized. The "trunk" is, for example, the car's trunk, the "laisen" (as in license) is a driver's license and "Ã¥ bodre" (to bother) is an invitation to care or not: "You don't need to bother me".
Both women and men traveled on the America boat in search of work and happiness, and ended up flocking together in the borough of Brooklyn in New York. Here there was a Norwegian bar, a Norwegian shop and a Norwegian community, but what separated the emigrants and the migrant workers was that they mainly returned home. Some had several longer working stays "over there", and on Lista many meant that they were going to New York and not Farsund or Stavanger when they mentioned that they were going to take a trip to the city. Most people sent home huge moving loads, equally huge cars and all the electrical items meant that several houses in Norway had a new 100-volt power system installed.
Ethnologist Siv Ringdal has highlighted this in her books, "The American List - with 110 volts in the house" and "Laupskaus Boulevard", as well as in exhibitions she has made on the subject. In this way, she has documented an important part of Lista's history, which we have now built on through the American Lista and the American Festival.
On a daily basis, you can experience a lot of this at Brooklyn Square in Vanse, which is the first official American address in Norway.
Every year the American Festival "Last weekend in June" is organized in Vanse with, among other things, Street Parade, AmCars, concerts, food competition, Street Dance, stands, Gospel Brunch & lots of fun!