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The Dugnad in Our DNA
Traditionally, dugnad (a Norwegian word) refers to "the collective
effort of individual Norwegians who sacrifice their personal desires,
and allow their own sense of 'normal' to be temporarily disrupted, for
the benefit of their community or country. On March 12 of this year,
after the first Norwegian died from COVID-19, Prime Minister Erna
Solberg called for a national dugnad. She asked everyone in Norway to
band together to reduce the spread of the disease. As a result, the
country contained the outbreak, avoiding massive numbers of infections
and deaths. To my knowledge, I don't have any Norwegians in my family
tree. But a concept similar to dugnad lives in my DNA." Phyllis Cole-Dai
shares more.
