Janteloven is alive and well in Valley Villa. Provo. Utah.
Let me introduce you to a Norwegian concept that I studied at the University of Minnesota some thirty years ago.
It was created by Norwegian/Danish author Aksel Sandemose. It is called “The Laws of Jante,” or in Norwegian, “Janteloven.”
These so-called social laws are how small-town Norwegians govern their own existence and the existence of others:
You're not to think you are anything special
You're not to think you are as good as we are
You're not to think you are smarter than we are
You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are
You're not to think you know more than we do
You're not to think you are more important than we are
You're not to think you are good at anything
You're not to laugh at us
You're not to think anyone cares about you
You're not to think you can teach us anything
I’m here to tell you, friends, that this noxious mindset is alive and well here in our apartment building, Valley Villa.
Just this morning, this Sabbath morning, I opened our patio blinds to find a large stuffed animal had been disemboweled on our patio – the fluff was scattered around our patio, and even stuffed inside our empty flower pots. There was not a shred of anything on adjoining ground floor patios. I don’t believe it was an animal who did this randomly. Not when so much of the stuffing was planted in our flower pots. Some person or persons unknown deliberately did this to us.
That is only the latest petty piece of personal insult that has been offered us.
Previously when we have shared haiku poetry on our storage room door it has been defaced and anonymous hateful communications have been put up on our storage room door deriding our poetic efforts and telling us to give up and get out.
In the past anonymous persons have gone to the Valley Villa office to complain of our various, and spurious, infractions of the building rules. And we have gotten warning letters from the building management based on these false reports.
I have never hidden the fact that I spent most of my adult life as a professional circus clown. I’m proud of it. But some people are very uncomfortable about my past, and have told me so right in the building lobby.
As many of you know Amy and I delight in cooking large nutritious meals and then offering them for free to our friends and neighbors here at Valley Villa. We enjoy sharing God’s bounty with others. But we are saddened that some people have gone about spreading rumors that our food is tainted, even poisoned. We have heard it said that we are charging money and making a profit on our free community meals. We are not. And never have. And never will.
It seems obvious to me that because Amy and I express our creativity openly and often in many different ways (including my latest creation of “Poet for Rent”) and because we have a very special and vibrant love story that is probably unmatched in the annals of Church history, mean and petty minds have decided we are persona non grata here at Valley Villa. We don’t fit in. And should be encouraged to either keep quiet and learn our place or leave.
Well, I, for one, would be glad to leave. In fact, I will be making inquiries on how to get a mortgage on a small house where Amy and I can live without any further mean-spirited persecution from our pygmy neighbors. Lacking that, we will be looking at other apartment buildings to move into. The bottom line is that I, personally, want to get the hell out of this despotic, narrow-minded, warehouse for simpletons and the narrow-minded.
Having said all that, I must add that we have received some gracious and gratifying messages from a few of our neighbors here at Valley Villa from time to time. I do not wish to discount them. But that does not alter the fact that I want to take Amy and I somewhere free of Janteloven. I am willing to admit that perhaps the Lord wants us to stay on here at Valley Villa, doing what good we can. But honestly, I’m gonna need a pretty clear sign from heaven to believe that. Amy says it more succinctly, and faithfully: “If we’re meant to leave here we will find a way to finance it. If not, then the Lord means for us to stay.”
Amen.
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I have received numerous posts in response to the above Janteloven personal essay. Here they are, verbatim: