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You read the article on pages 28-31 of the January 2004 issue of "Viking" magazine describing how this program works. The
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process is simple: you save cancelled stamps and turn them in to your lodge. The lodge will get them to Tubfrim headquarters in Nes
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byen, Norway. Consider getting your children and grand children involved in the collecting. More about this later in another issue.
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Helping handicapped children in Norway. It is amazing how much good a cancelled stamp can do.
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Here is the linguistic explanation, contributed by Mr. Bjorn Bakken of Norway, as an answer to a query from a philatelic newsgroup.
The bi-language "problem" of Norway is briefly due to the following:
Norway was under Danish rule for 500 years (1300's to 1814). Not a violent occupation but all formal administration and written language was in Danish. One of the two current written languages (called "Bokmål") developed from this Danish writing and uses the form "Norge".
One unofficial theory states that the name comes from the form "Nordrige" - the Northern Land. However,
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after the Danes were forced to cede Norway to Sweden in 1814, Norwegians became very focused on their true national heritage, which is very pronounced in the late 1800's through poetry and paintings. People traveled the countryside gathering folklore, culture and language and then "constructed" or rather "re-constructed" a new Norwegian language based on dialects (called "Nynorsk" = "New Norwegian"). In this language the name form is "Noreg", again unofficially originating from "Nordveg" - the Northern Way/Route.
Since then we have continued to argue about which language is the "best" or "original" Norwegian. Never able to reach a
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conclusion, the Norwegian Parliament has decided that both languages are of equal status, and all official documents must be in both forms. This applies also to stamps, which alternates between both forms of "Norway". In my opinion, a very expensive and dissatisfactory solution, as both languages are so equal that none have troubles reading the other....
Note that these languages are only formally used for writing, as most Norwegians speak dialects more or less similar to one of these, depending on where in the country they live. In addition, we also have the Sami people with their language.
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