Aw, Shucks...

Once I worked for a progressive company that headquartered in Minnesota, that mother of the giant Mississippi, the land of the 40° F. below zero, Scandinavians, Betty Crocker, the twin cities, and 3M. They would regularly send around experts to advise us in the management of the business and I really looked forward to the visit, in order to show off the facility.

There was the time that one of them and I were considering a solution to a problem/opportunity/crisis and the options we had seemed marginal, improbable, and unlikely to result in anything favorable, even. She uttered a word. “Uf dah,” with a heavy sigh.

The word sounded like she had been struck in the solar plexis with a hard line drive baseball. It kind of explained itself. I asked her what kind of language Uf dah was. She said it was Swedish. I asked her what did it mean? She replied, “I don’t know.”

Well, I thought, didn’t I just recently marry a gentleman who was proud of his Swedish ancestry? Didn’t his name (mine now) end with -son just like the Oles, the Swans, the Johns, the Hendricks, the Anders, the Eriks, the Peters, the Alberts and all of those other migrants from das Fatherland? I determined to get to the bottom of it as soon as I got home. Of course, I forgot all about it until 3 am, when I shook him awake. As I was still a bride, this action did not bring down the house as you might expect, but he mumbled, "What?" And I said to him, proudly, “I learned a Swedish word today!” “What word is that?” He asked. I brought it out: “Uf dah!”

“That’s not Swedish, that’s Norwegian,” he said, and promptly went back to sleep.

I shook him awake again. “What does it mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, and went back to sleep again, this time with finality.

I don’t like to admit defeat easily, so the next day I called 1-411 and got the telephone number for the Norwegian Consulate in Denver, and a nice lady answered the call. I explained that I was calling for a definition of a Norwegian word, and she asked what word is that? And I said, “Uf dah.”

She answered, “I don’t know.”

But then she explained that it is an expression of exasperation, like if you were taking out your garbage and the bag broke and it spilled all over your living room floor, you would exclaim, “Uf dah.” She added, that if the garbage spilled all over your priceless Persian rug, you would say “Fe dah!” At the time I didn’t think to ask if Fe dah was similar to other F words in the English language, but I just let the garbage lay there on the Persian rug and quit while I was ahead. So I thanked her and adopted the word into my own personal vocabulary, right along with Oi Vey because it conveys the same idea. It turns out I use it frequently when no other word expresses your disappointment and dismay, like when you open your tax notice and find your house has been reevaluated upwards when you can’t sell it for half that appraisal, or you learn that you make too much money to stand in line for the free Department of Agriculture commodity giveaways for Seniors, or you do spill the garbage on your living room rug.

My advice is, take the garbage out through the back door and take everything else in stride with an Uf dah. Uf dah is Norway’s gift to us, no charge, help yourself, it's free.