The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly
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Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking
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Vil Du Ha Mer Ris? Norway is probably the only country where thousands of people are asked at dinner every day "Would you care for some more spanking" ("Vil du ha mer ris?"), and where most people are happy to accept. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the country is full of happy spankos, but that we use the same word "ris" for spanking and rice. That "ris" means rice is no big surprise (compare French "riz" and German "Reis"), but that "ris" also means spanking needs an explanation. Originally, "ris" is the last part of the Norwegian word for birch rod, "bjerkeris", and the word just means a collection of twigs, "bjerkeris" = "birch twigs". In the old days, the birch was the standard implement for corporal punishment in Norwegian homes and schools, and gradually the word "ris" became the standard term for any kind of spanking. As "ris" also applies to twigs in nature (e.g. a dense growth of young birches), the word has a tendency to turn up in place names. Next time you visit Oslo, you may want to visit Ris School or Ris Church. To get there, just take Metro Line 1 to Ris Station (the next stop is called Slemdal which most modern Norwegian will automatically translate into "Naughty Valley", but unfortunately this interpretation is historically incorrect). As most Norwegians surnames are old farm names, the term "ris" can also be found as part of many family names. If you are interested in football, you may have come across John Arne Riise who has played with reasonable success in France, England and Italy. The Tradition Of The Birch Rod When you read older literature, you get the impression that there was a birch rod in all Norwegian homes, either on display to discourage unwanted behavior or more discreetly tucked away in a corner. "The birch behind the mirror" is still a standing expression in Norwegian, and refers to a hidden threat, something along the lines of: "If you don't behave yourself, you know what will happen...". It may, e.g., be applied to junior politicians who take their right to express personal opinions a little more literally than somebody supposed them to.  It is hard to tell how common birchings were in the old days, but we get a certain impression from the childhood memoirs of the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset (1882-1949). Undset, who is primarily known for her novels from medieval Norway, won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1928, and was raised in a liberal and well-educated family (her father was a highly respected archeologist). Although Sigrid and her two sisters were reasonably well behaved, their parents still kept a birch rod behind the mirror in their bedroom, but when Sigrid was finally sent to fetch it, it was so dry that it fell to pieces almost before it may made contact with her backside. An English translation of her memoirs, The Longest Years, exists and may even be recommended to people with no interest in spanking - it gives a very vivid picture of how it is to be a child (as opposed to how it is to be an adult reminiscing about how it is to be a child).Another Norwegian writer who reflects the nation's obsession with the birch, is Margrethe Munthe (1860-1931), an elementary school teacher who wrote a vast number of songs for children. Many of the songs are quite moralistic, and the birch is seen as a natural consequence of naughtiness and disobedience. In the political climate of the 70s and 80s, these song were heavily criticized and their poor author was depicted as something of a moral monster although she only reflected the ideas of her time. The documentation we have, seem to indicate that Miss Munthe was a very popular teacher, much ahead of her time in many political and educational questions. But there are also school records which show that she did occasionally practice what she preached... I should add, perhaps, that corporal punishment in schools was abolished in 1936, and that corporal punishment by parents was made illegal in 1987 (until then, parents had an explicit right to punish their children within reasonable limits). Spankings In Literature And Film If we turn to fiction, I can remember a number of spanking references in the (even then) old books for children I read forty to fifty years ago. There are also several spanking scenes in the novels of Aksel Sandemose (1899-1965), arguably the best writer of his generation, but most of them are disturbing rather than erotic. The short story Av en født forbryters dagbok (From the Diary of a Born Criminal) by Sandemose's contemporary Johan Borgen (1902-79) is regularly studied in Norwegian high schools. It is told by a little boy (the born criminal) who thinks his grandfather is a stick (the old man is sick and lame, has retired to his room upstairs, and attracts attention by bumping his stick in the floor) and has an ardent desire finally to receive the spanking he has been threatened with for so long. The phrase "I want to get spanked" runs through the story almost like a refrain. At the end of the story, the boy has been spanked and is quite happy about it although it did hurt - in fact, "everybody was happy except Dad who was sad because he had to spank me". The story is not erotic in any sense, but must have struck a chord with many a teenage spanko. In 1966, a small publishing house brought out an anonymous, erotic novel Uten en tråd (Without a Stitch) by somebody they claimed was a "well-known author". The book was immediately banned as pornographic, and the author was identified as Jens Bjørneboe (1920-76), a respected and established author, but something of an enfant terrible. As with most banned books, the foreign editions outsold the author's more serious books and for a short while brought relief to Bjørneboe's strained finances.  Without a Stitch (bad as it is) has become something of a secret classic, a book that nobody reads, but everybody has read. From our point of view, it is mainly interesting due to two spanking scenes, both of some psychological interest. In the first scene, the heroine, a girl of nineteen, is spanked by her inexperienced boyfriend for her shameless sexual behavior, but it is clear that the real reason is a mixture of envy, male chauvinism and lack of self-confidence. The second scene is quite sad - in Hamburg, the heroine runs into a middle aged, outwardly successful business man who can only obtain sexual gratification by strapping her (and to some extent by getting strapped by her).In 1982, another novel with two spanking scenes appeared, but while Uten en tråd was at least partly a spoof and a parody, Knut Faldbakken's Bryllupsreisen (The Honeymoon) is a serious novel about the break-up of a marriage. The spanking scenes involve the narrators estranged and chronically unfaithful wife: In the first one, she tells how she at age eleven was caught watching her older brother masturbate and quite unfairly spanked by her father. She indicates that the experience created a link in her mind between spanking and sexual arousal, and in a later scene she invites her husband to spank her during a quarrel. He starts with a few tame swats, but when she insists that she deserves a "good hiding", he pulls the belt from her pants and gives her what she craves. The scene ends with a rather brutal anal penetration. The spanking scenes in Bryllupsreisen are quite interesting, although the psychology may seem rather simplistic to spankos. The cultural climate in 1982 was not the best for a serious discussion of female masochism; the book was flayed by the critics, and Faldbakken lost much of his standing as a young and promising writer. But he may have obtained a wider readership...  It was definitely more than the cultural climate that prevented the success of two films and one novel by director and writer Roar Skolmen. His two films, I ungdommens makt (1980) and Lucifer - sensommer gult og svart (1990), are both high on all lists of Norwegian Golden Turkeys, but they do show an intense interest in spanking. In the first one - a rather confused political(?) piece about a Christ-like youth leader (played by Skolmen himself!) - a male, middle aged school principal is caught by members of the Youth Movement and spanked bare bottom by his own students. I didn't find the scene very erotic the only time I saw it, thirty years ago, but others may be of a different opinion. Much more to my taste was another scene where some of the young people in the Movement play a game of "Truth and Dare" and where a very cute and innocent looking girl manages to earn herself a spanking. Unfortunately, she has the guts to walk out on the rest of the party...In Skolmen's second film, Lucifer, the penultimate scene shows the heroine setting the timer on her camera and then provoking a man into giving her a bare bottom spanking. In the last scene, we see the hero receiving an envelope with the photos and a note explaining that this is what he would have done had he been a real man. He sets sails (literally, he is in a boat on a little island off the Norwegian coast) and disappears into the horizon. The whole film is an erotic and intellectual battle between hero and heroine, but unfortunately it is so badly written and horribly acted that the heroine's hindquarters are the only things worth watching. Skolmen is a much better writer than director, and technically speaking his novel Den døende slaven (The Dying Slave, named after Michelangelo's sculpture) is not bad at all. Published in 1982 and dedicated to the young Werther (no less!), it is actually a defense of men's right (or was it duty?) to spank their female companions. The premise is a battle of the sexes (recall Lucifer) were both sexes should be allowed the full use of their own particular strengths. The female strengths seem to be charm, beauty, intuition and ingenuity, while men excel in courage and physical strength - one of the book's redeeming features is that intelligence seems to be evenly distributed. If we men are not to be totally overrun by our mates, we must use our courage and strength to give them the spankings they (secretly) crave and deserve. It takes the hero Georg 131 pages to get to the point were he actually spanks his beloved, and from then on it's downward all the way. Spanking spreads like an infectious disease on Bora-Bora (Skolmen obviously has a thing for islands), but some people don't like Georg's new occupation as a traveling spanking evangelist (yes, he does use his hands to cure), and finally he is spanked, buggered and murdered by two fellow tourists, leaving his beloved Andrée to wander among the columns of the Louvre philosophizing about love, spanking, art, and a lot of other things. The Norwegian Spanking Scene This ought to be a short chapter chapter as I don't really think Norway has a Spanking Scene! We do to a certain extent have a BDSM Scene, though, and I'll start there. SMil is a national organization for people interested in BDSM and organizes meetings and venues in most of the larger cities. They also run a large Internet site, but although this is the only natural meeting place online, my impression is that many spankos feel that they do not really fit in - the logic and emotions of spanking seem in many ways different from most other forms of BDSM. As a lot of people seem to consider SMil primarily a sex site, female members must routinely deal with aggressive, uncouth and uninvited messages from male members.  SMil's website has a quite extensive collection of BDSM stories (1800 by the latest count) and is the natural place to post if you want a big audience and some feedback. The administrators do, however, maintain a strict 18 year age limit, and hence all stories on this site labelled "t" or "c" would be immediately banned (unless you dress them up as ageplay as some suggest). I have posted most of my Norwegians stories on SMil and obtained some good friends that way, but the comments you receive on the site are mainly in the "Like!" or "Hot!" category, and not of much use. If you want to publish in a pure spanking environment, there is a large (about 500 stories) Swedish site for X/F and X/f stories, and a smaller site for (mainly) M/M stories. On these sites there are no facilities for comments and feedback, and posting there feels like throwing a stone into the ocean - you see it disappear, but have no idea what happens next.There have been some attempts to establish Norwegian spanking groups on Fetlife and Spankolife, but there does not seem to be sufficient interest to keep such groups going. A couple of years ago, there were quite a few spanking blogs around, but as far as I know only one such blog is reasonably active for the time being. Fortunately, "Miss Brat: Naughty Stories for Naughty girls" is an excellent blog with a serious main theme: How to be a spanko in a vanilla world and a vanilla relationship. Miss Brat writes good stories and has a fine eye for pictures matching her texts, but her main strength is an uncanny ability to catch arguments, situations and emotions in a few words. So what do Norwegians do when they are not satisfied with the Internet, but want some real action? The most common way is to meet through a website (usually SMil), and see if conversation leads somewhere. There are some traveling "disciplinarians" who take on clients (or whatever they are supposed to be called), and there are occasional "meetings" for smaller groups around themes such as old-fashioned upbringing, but in most cases progress depends on private initiative. And that is probably the best way? Concluding Remarks I have called this a personal essay for two reasons. The first is simply that I have chosen to write about what I know and find interesting - had you asked another Norwegian, he might have come up with something completely different. Obviously, there is no such thing as a Canon of Norwegian Spanking. The second reason is that I have chosen to spice up the text with personal comments, basically because that is the only way I could find to give some flavor to the description of books you have never read and films you have never seen. Hope you enjoyed it! 25 comments:
TheEnglishMaster said...
Enjoyed it very much - thank you! Without meaning to be patronising, your English is superb, and this account is learned and fascinating. 2 November 2011 22:46
Janine said...
What a well-expressed article! It was very illuminating for a non-Norwegian like me--you did a great job explaining the history as well as filling in interesting details along the way. Thanks! :) 3 November 2011 01:26
PinkAngel said...
Fascinating read, I particularly like the rice/spanking thing, although it does make sense when explained lol. It is always nice to learn about different countries and how things differ there, thank you Alef. 3 November 2011 09:28
corncrake said...
Alef, that was really interesting, explaining as it did so much of the background to your stories - and comments which you have made on other stories. I certainly feel more familiar with the Norwegian background. Thank you for that! 3 November 2011 18:46
jools said...
This was such an informative and well written article which started off with such an attention grabbing line! I'd be quite happy to be asked at dinner if I'd like more spanking! haha... I bet many Norwegian spankos either blush or chuckle to themselves when asked vil du ha mer ris? :-D 4 November 2011 11:10
KJM said...
Well thought out and very informative article. Good to learn about other countries and mores. 4 November 2011 18:12
mati said...
I agree with all other commenters that this article is a fascinating read, all the more as Norway seems to be not really a stronghold in spanking. 4 November 2011 18:40
barretthunter said...
Thanks very much! Vewry informative and thought-provoking. 7 November 2011 11:44
bendover said...
Good article. In a lot of ways everything in some way can be educational. B 14 November 2011 18:00
galt54 said...
I am Swedish. The Swedish language is very similar to the Norwegian one. In Swedish the word "ris" also can mean both birchrod and rice (the kind you eat). The only "ris" I get to enjoy in my home is the edible, Asian kind. For my wife is an immigrant from Vietnam - and she is also strictly a vanilla. In the Swedish language we have a cute term which is "risbastu". The "ris" in this compound word refers to the birchrod. And the "bastu" refers to the Finnish steam bath. So "risbastu" means a *really* good whipping with a birchrod. One which really warms up those nether regions of yours which you sit on! Incidentally, apparently corporal punishment in the public schools survived in Sweden much longer than in Norway. For in Sweden the cane was not abolished in the public schools until the year 1958. I was only four years old then - so I never had the "privilege" of feeling the cane on my bottom during my school years. Besides, I grew up in the USA - in northern states where the paddle was not employed. 5 January 2012 02:24
billboard said...
It's so interesting to be reminded of "Without a Stitch." I saw this movie on the big screen with 3 or 4 of my buddies. I was expecting a porn romp and was caught completely by surprise that there was spanking in it. I figured I was the only one whose heart stopped when the young man turned the female lead over the back of that chair and smacked her gorgeous young bottom. I was much too inhibited to mention that part when we shared our "reviews" after the film. The mental images of it haunted me for many weeks - in a friendly way! 3 March 2012 16:54
suemary said...
That was fascinating Alef. I have marked it down as a favourite so that I may go back and study it more carefully. Thank you. 22 May 2012 14:05
oldtom said...
An interesting and informative article which was very well written. If Norway was so enamoured of the birch it ought to be a land of misfits, perverts and losers and not the liberal, tolerant country that it is. That is of course if we accept modern thinking about the consequences of spanking. The recent horrific acts by a lunatic do not invalidate my comment. 22 May 2012 19:25
Eiffel said...
thank you for fascinating look into Norwegian cp in literature. really well written, I particularly liked the reference to a "book which no one reads, and everyone has read". The curious dual meanings of "ris" is quite poetic, something innocent and culinary, and simultaneously a bit more interesting. 25 May 2012 13:36
nibra said...
Thanks Alef. Found through lucky dip. A very interesting and informative and well written article. I suppose that most cultures have a similar story but it takes an investigative mind to mine it. 8 August 2012 09:15
ernalones said...
I knew there was a Norwegian affiliation of "SMil" and it appears to be far more active than the Danish one. They published a magazine "SMil bladet" as early as 1989, though the first couple of issues were called SM bladet. My main reason for writing this comment is that one of the very first stories was norwegian. It was called "Dåpen" - that is "The Initiation" written by Bjørn. The list of affiliations in 1989 tells that the location of the Norwegian affiliation will be disclosed by signing of a membership. All this was 25 years ago. We've come a long way since then. 21 July 2014 18:14
CheekyAurora said...
Interesting article and well-researched; I liked your look at a large array of materials and media. It seems to me that in North America BDSM societies and other things are much more active-I don't know if it's something in the water. 24 July 2014 12:20
comsmomf said...
Wonderfully written article - I'm getting curious to find out more about Norway now! 15 April 2016 20:47
AncientBrit said...
I too found this article interesting and informative. I would guess that you are not Norwegian but an academic expatriate Brit. 4 July 2016 18:08
mols said...
I've actually lived in Slemdal, but despite passing Ris pretty much daily I had no idea of the other meaning of its name. This was a fascinating read that's given me lots of ideas for future reading, thank you! 5 September 2016 08:00
gskydive said...
Very interesting! I travelled to Norway 4-5 times a year on business for about 10 years (mostly to Oslo) from about 2001-2011. As I do in all cities, I looked to the internet for information about a spanking scene. I think I found the group you mention and walked around Oslo for a couple of hours trying to find the meeting - unsuccessfully. As I remember there was a requirement that participants speak Norwegian, which I did not. I figured, what are they going to do - spank me? I was successful in finding a woman on line that wanted to be spanked. Now, I am always on the other side of the whip, but I figured I would meet her and maybe we could work something out. Long story short, I wound up spanking her with my belt but she wouldn't return the favor. An odd evening. She asked for a hard whipping, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Ironically, I would have wanted the same from her. This goes down as one of the oddest spanking encounters I have ever had; I have always felt that I didn't do a good job and I guess I am just not a good dominant! 30 April 2017 21:31
CarolinaPaddler said...
Alef your account reminded me in parts to Last Tango In Paris. 7 September 2020 15:09
Often123 said...
I had no idea of the scene in Norway, or even Sweden for that matter. I have the blood of both countries, but, unfortunately almost none of the languages. Tak, Alef. :) 8 October 2020 20:49
opb said...
Thanks for this very informative essay. It's a shame that our interest is viewed so shabbily that the best writers and directors can't - or don't want to risk - produce really good work. I suppose that the link between pleasure and deliberately inflicted pain is is mixed up with so many other things, including an unadmitted prejudice that whilst vanilla sex might just about be OK to participate in (where did everyone come from we wonder?) any variations are beyond the pale to mix in an Irish metaphor. 28 April 2021 09:17
theo54 said...
Thank you, Alef, for this informative and entertaining tour de horizon of Norwegian spanking culture and history. It struck me that if anyone was to attempt such a thing for the UK, it would be book length, at least! I’ll have to see if I can find any of those film clips online…. 8 November 2023 18:13
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