Shades of Grey

When I lived in Stavanger, I went once or twice to a club near the Quay called the Red House. It held a “shrimp night” where they dragged out a boat onto the dance floor and you helped yourself.

They had a good house band that played all of the early 80’s hits. As the night wore on, they moved onto Norsk favourites, two of which stick in my mind. The first was called Amanda fra (from) Haugesund and everyone sang along to the chorus, which went:

Ja, ingen ga meg en sådan stund
som Amanda i fra Haugesund.
Og ingen har slik en deilig munn,
den er som en rosenlund.
Jeg har hatt i mine arme
forskjellige deilige, varme,
men ingen var dog så god og rund
som Amanda i fra Haugesund!

(Source- Haugesund Council)

At the time, I didn’t know what it meant, just that it was a good tune vaguely reminiscent to “Tulips from Amsterdam”.

I’ve just translated it online:

Certainly , neither donated my a sådan while as Amanda in at Haugesund.
And neither has so a delicious morsel , that is paternal rosenlund.
I’ve had in mine the arm different delicious , ardour , but neither stayed dog saw plump as Amanda in at Haugesund!

Maybe it lost a bit in the translation, but she sounds a right dirty girl!

You can see a statue of her here, the Amanda is Norway’s Oscar award.

There was another song which involved a horse and cart delivering the milk round the mountains. The chorus went:

Humpa Titten- Humpa Totten, Humpa Titten Hoya…

which was onomatopoeic- it was the noise of the bottles rattling together, as explained to me by my friend Hans who had to think about it and listen to the verse before he worked it out.

Update- YouTube has some Norwegians singing a bit of Amanda!