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Oct 3, 2020

"There is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak." --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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.