Terje, or whatever he’s calling himself this week, is a averagely intelligent, averagely handsome, averagely young Norwegian man. He’s a student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, where he studies neither science nor technology, but rather history and English. He’s also got a BA in Social Studies, and hopes to the gods he won’t have to use these qualifications for teaching.
In his heart, Terje nurtures and harbours a dream about getting a grip on himself, improving his self-discipline, and taking a MA in either history or archaeology. Some nights, when he is especially satisfied with his own studying, Terje even hallucinates of a PhD position and a life of research into everything old and mouldy.
When not studying, Terje enjoys kicking back with a good book, movie or television show — reviews of which can for the most part be found here –, preferably of the fantastical variety. Science fiction works for him, too, but if he can choose, he’ll usually go for fantasy. Not that Terje is much of a romantic — he’s too much of a misantropic cynic and has studied way too much history for that — he just likes the whole genre fiction thing, and of all genres, fantasy and science fiction are the ones with potential for the largest scope.
Politically, Terje is a liberal Scandinavian social democrat, but he doesn’t talk much about that. He likes to think about it, but not talk.

Posts
“and taking a MA in either history or archaeology”
Archeeology? My gods, man, I’ve attended a couple of archaeology-lectures, and the one thing they had in common was a total lack of anything resembling fun.
7. May 2008 @ 22:51 ( Permalink )
Really? Because I had four archeology lectures last Fall, and all of those were interesting. Of course, they were all topically rather broad, and I don’t really think they were representative for the field in general, but it was still enough fun for me to decide trying at least 30 sp of the stuff.
7. May 2008 @ 23:41 ( Permalink )
I always wanted to study archeology. Then I attended some classes, and quickly praised the gods I’d never actually signed up for any exams in it…
I might have been unlucky, I suppose, but… I don’t really care about layers of dirt and the evolution of axe-heads and the patterns of vases and the use of metal detectors and professors walking in formations across meadows.
8. May 2008 @ 00:24 ( Permalink )
Hehehe, thanks for the warning. Gonna keep in mind this fall that if I don’t like it, I’ll drop out and take some other courses instead. Seeing as I’m hoping to be able to write my Master’s thesis on some aspect of Medieval history, I guess there shouldn’t really be a problem finding other relevant courses. a refresher course in German strikes me as relevant, as does the Old Norse course they have here, the introduction to Latin, the ditto to Old Greek (if they have one; I’ve become really fascinated by the Byzantine Empire lately), maybe some Arabic, religious science (or whatever it’s called in English; “religious science” sounds like theology or “science as dictated by religion”, or some such), more history, older philosophy, and stuff like that.
8. May 2008 @ 00:53 ( Permalink )
My professor is strongarming me into doing German on my own this summer. I last did German six years ago, and then I got a 2 in the subject.
Sigh.
“Religionsvitskap” is properly called “Religious science” or “science of religion” in English, or “Religionvissenschaft” with a German loan-term, but commonly dubbed “Religious history” despite it being misleading. In Norway, UiO teaches religionshistorie, and UiB religionsvitskap, but UiB themselves translates it to “religious history” on their English pages because it is a much more common term in the English language.
The basic difference is just one of approach -religious history is slightly more attuned to following the developments of particular religions or religious concepts etc, while science of religion is more analytical. I guess you could roughly equate it to the difference between history and sociology, maybe. In practice, though, they’re one and the same in just about every way.
To further muddle the matter, there is a long-standing tradition in the USA of having religious history and theology be the same faculties and even taught by the same professors - something that is obviously more or less gone from the much more secular Western Europe. So in the US, “theology” often appears as a third term almost interchangeable with the other two, whereas it in Europe obviously is another thing entirely.
8. May 2008 @ 01:52 ( Permalink )