We'd come to learn about vikings at the museum in Oslo, but the exhibit is quite small so now we're learning about samurai.
It feels slightly wrong though. Sort of like how it feels when someone else shares your exciting news before you do and steals your thunder. I wonder if Japan is annoyed at Norway for telling everyone about the samurai? Perhaps if I ever visit Japan I'll just pretend I haven’t heard anything about them, just to be polite.
It's all very interesting and there are some traditional outfits on display. Each one elaborate and unique. They all have little mascots on their helmets to represent their clans. One of the helmets has a crayfish on it and I can only imagine that this is what you get when you go to lodge your clan-naming paperwork and find out all the good ones are taken.
The samurai were all about code and tradition and honour. Not a lot of room for whimsy and seeing-what-feels-right kind of vibes. One of the worst things you could do as a samurai was bring shame to yourself or your family. If you overstepped that line, you were expected to end your own life by harakiri, which involved slicing your stomach open with your sword.
We had a samurai sword in our house growing up. My grandpop brought it back from the war and it had ended up at our house where it was kept hidden behind the couch. The code for our sword was slightly different in that there wasn't one and it was mostly used by my brothers and I when my parents were out, where we would retrieve it from behind the couch and try to cut a bunch of stuff with it. I think we tried to cut some fruit once. I say 'try' because it was fairly blunt and any attempts at some form of analog fruit ninja were thwarted by the bluntness of the sword. This safety mechanism meant the majority of fruit in our house continued to live in peace and harmony, as did mine and my brothers' bellies from the consequences of shaming ourselves and our family.
The samurai would not have approved.
Shame is mostly ok these days I think. For anything major you can generally weather the storm by just laying low, putting out an apology video or hiring a PR firm. A low-level, mild shame also means you're a human that's growing and changing and putting yourself out there. Shame and embarrassment can be healthy and often just part of a diversified portfolio of other potent and volatile human emotions that come with being a flawed human. This is what I'd tell the samurai anyway.
In the viking exhibition there are remnants from the 7th century. Helmets, chainmail, swords, piles of coins with patterns stamped onto them. I imagine them jingling in someone's pocket a thousand-plus years ago. I stare at a fragment of a shield with a spear sticking out of it which feels like a moment frozen in time. A moment where someone almost died. Did they die right after this? Or did they survive and then live a long life?
There's hand-crafted jewellery with intricate designs and it's so impressive to witness what people were capable of back then. Later, KB tells me about a kid twisting his arm around trying to take a picture of one of the exhibits with his Apple Watch.
I sometimes imagine suddenly being transported back to that time and what I would do, how I would contribute now that I’m stuck there. I don’t think I would have anything to offer. No practical skills. Not unless they had any printers that needed setting up.
Walking around a museum and looking at the exhibits, I try to fully feel it. Feel the weight of it. Sometimes a sliver will make its way through, but it's hard. It almost feels too far away. Too far removed.
I appreciate museums more now that I’m older, I think because I’ve felt enough time pass. I can look back at the eras of my own life with that same sense of alienation. As a kid, time can feel like one continuous uninterrupted line, but then as then as time passes and you get older, fault lines begin to appear and the earth moves apart, creating current and past versions of yourself. Even during transformative and transitional periods of life, the fault lines can appear out of nowhere and you're surprised to look back at a very recent version of yourself with distance. It was only very recently that you could still feel the uninterrupted line.
Eventually after a decade or two, you could line up all the versions of yourself and the people at each end would almost be strangers.
I imagine walking around the museum of my twenty-something self, staring at the exhibits and trying to put myself in that person's shoes. Staring at an old hat. A drawing I did. The two Hawaiian shirts I bought when that was a trend.
I stare at the objects trying to transport myself back there. To fully feel it. Feel the weight of it. Sometimes a sliver will make its way through, but it's hard.
I can still feel the remnants of what it was like to be that version of myself. Fear. Excitement. Shame (mostly from the two Hawaiian shirts).
But they're all somebody else's emotions leftover in my brain.
And the shame is blunted by the knowledge that who I am right now will one day be a past version.
And I'll look back in the same way. Trying to understand who this person was.
After a long period of civil war in Japan, it finally came to an end and the samurai had to find new lives and careers. Many were given jobs as civil servants. They took up hobbies like poetry, calligraphy and flower arranging. They became new versions of themselves. No doubt trying to assemble chrysanthemums amidst eye twitches and violent thoughts as their repressed bloodlust simmered away.
There isn't much more that takes our interest at the museum so we head towards the exit, passing the gift shop on the way out. There are shiny plastic viking helmets and shields. I spot some swords and feel a flicker of the past.
I suppress an eye twitch and push down a rising urge to slash out at an apricot.
Maybe our past versions aren't that distant after all.
The ‘museum of me’ is staying firmly inside my head
good writing with a dash of amusement thrown in for good measure