The Peer Gynt Syndrome 

By David Ramati

The Scandinavian fascination with the Middle East probably goes back to pre-history when Norwegian Myth placed Aasegard, the home of the gods, somewhere in the Mediterranean Basin.  In order to understand this phenomenon it is probably best to start with an understanding of how the Norwegian adventurer sees himself.
Henrik Ibsen best defines this self image in his play "Peer Gynt", when Peer replies after being asked if he is  a Norwegian: 

By birth but a
Citizen of the world by creed.
For the good fortune I've enjoyed,
I have to thank America.
I've drawn my library of books
From the latest German scholars' works.
From France, I took a taste in dress,
My manners and my turn of wit—
From England, my enterprising spirit
And an eye for my own advantages.
The Jews have taught me how to wait.
From Italy, I gained a bit
Of a flair for dolce far niente—
And once, when events were violently
Disposed, I stretched my years no small amount with the aid of Swedish steel. (1)

Our modern day Peer Gynts see themselves as latter day Vikings, plundering and absorbing the best that other, lesser cultures have to offer.  They operated military missions in Lebanon, the Sinai, and Hebron.  The Oslo Peace Process is probably the most dynamic attempt to Scandinavianize another people since the failed Trans-Scandinavian Movement of Ibsen’s' day when Denmark attempted to annex Schleswig-Holstein in the Jutland peninsula. [DR1] 

There followed a long period of isolationism in which the Scandinavians were absorbed in their own problems; a process which climaxed in an independent Norway on the 17th of May 1905. 

Two world wars and a cruel occupation re-kindled the Viking spirit and the Scandinavians became the corner stone of the U.N. throughout the world, sending observers and soldiers to almost every continent.  The modern Peer Gynts found themselves attracted to the middle east. 

The Arab world became more than a cause; the Scandinavians saw it as their burden.  In a passage which is almost like something written by Kipling, Peer Gynt speaks with his Arab lover, Anitra:

I'm taking over your education.
No soul Yes, you are rather dumb;
It's struck me, with a certain depression.
But, for a soul, there's always room.
Come here!  Let me measure your braincase—
There's room, room enough; I knew there was.
It's true—you aren't ever going to go
Very deep; a large soul isn't for you—
But, after all, what's the difference—
You'll have enough for all your wants—(2)

The Arab world is to receive a Soul; an education which will take them from savage ignorance to something approaching culture.  Unfortunately the gift is dependent on the capacity of the receiver, and in the case of Anitra, the ability to understand the superior culture is shallow.[DR2]
Anitra represents the allure of the dark Mediterranean Peoples;
emotional, childlike, and definitely the intellectual and cultural
inferiors of the Norwegians.  In order to become a Man, Peer must raise this Pygmalion to a status deserving of his love.  Not the love of equals, but rather, the paternalistic incestuous love of enlightened master and grateful slave.  This approach was used by the Norwegians during the Oslo agreements.  The Arabs were to benefit from Norwegian and European largess in financial terms on the condition that they recognize their basic inferiority and lack of self determination.  The PLO Anitra would be rewarded if only she discarded her primitive HAMAS past and clung lovingly to the new Western Culture of which Scandinavia is the example.  Peer asks Anitra:

Tell me, do you know what it is to live?
Now do you see, my little one,
Why I've graciously paid you court—
Why I singled out your heart
To be, as it were, the foundation stone
Of all my being's caliphate?
Over your longings, I'll be lord.
In passion, I'm an autocrat.
You have to live for me alone.  (3)

The price paid by Anitra for the Oslo Accords is high indeed.  In return for some babbles and the Western definition of a "soul" she is required to abandon her image of self and embrace an alien culture; the western culture which requires her to "live for me alone" is foreign to a desert tradition based on the harsh laws necessary to the self sufficient nomadic peoples.
This obedience to an outside influence cannot last for long.  Anitra takes everything that Peer offers her, but, in the end, when he requests that she change clothes with him:

Your robe wouldn't fit;
Your girdle's too big; your stockings, to tight—
Your paradise—is it much farther yet? [DR3]
Oh, a thousand miles—
Too far!
The soul I promised you, you'll get---
Thanks—I'll make it without a soul.
But you asked for sorrow.
(She cuts him sharply across the knuckles and
gallops away full tilt across the desert.) (4)

With a practicality born of the desert, she takes all that is offered, but, when the Norwegian tries to steal her birthright by changing clothes with her, she finally refuses.  And when she realizes that the Scandinavian promise of paradise is not a real thing, but merely a mirage a "thousand miles" distant, she loses interest.  The Palestinians may find that they can survive without a Norwegian Soul.  They need not betray their origins.  The parting gift is the sorrow that the Scandinavian was courting all along.  That sorrow is the final realization that the Scandinavian will never be accepted as an Arab by the Palestinians.

 Every country in the Middle East has it's Scandinavian Tourist/Soldier; white limbs jutting from his Bermuda shorts, long blond hair flowing from under a mini-kafia many times too small for his head.  The Scandinavian feels he is blending in with the locals...he has become an Arab.  The Arab cause has become his cause.  He maintains a patronizing interest in Arab affairs until, tired of promised paradises a thousand miles away,
the Arabs burn his car or take his valuables.  At that point the
Scandinavians return home for a year or two until the hurt is dulled by distance and time.

The withdrawal period lasts until fatal masochistic intoxication of thee Peer Gynt Syndrome manifests itself, and he finds himself compelled to take up the "Arab Burden" and, once again, the Vikings return to the Middle East.

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(1) Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, P.130 IV. i. , Translated by Rolf Fjelde
(2) Henrkik Ibsen, "Peer Gynt", P.158 IV. vii.  Translated by Rolf Fjelde
(3) (4)  Ibid. P. 160 IV. Ix

[DR1]  In 1863 the policy that advocated closer ties between Norway, Sweden, and Denmark was called Scandinavianism".  This policy resulted in the 1863 annexation of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein on ethnic grounds by the Danish King Frederick III.  When the Prussian army invaded
Schleswig in February 1864, these internationalists, Ibsen included, called for Norway and Sweden to come to Denmark's aid and defeat the invaders.  The Danish forts at Dybbol fell, and the Swedes and Norwegians stayed home.  The  unification of ermany was inevitable, and instead of Scandinavian expansion into Europe the world saw the results of a united Germany in two world wars.  There was to be no revival of the Viking Past.

[DR2]  This generalization of the Arab world as shallow and soul-less had become stereotyped by 1915, less than fifty years after "Peer Gynt" was first published on November 14, 1867.

T.E.  Lawrence describes the Arabs in his classic work, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" as '...a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellects lay fallow in incurious resignation.  There imaginations were vivid, but not creative.'--"Seven
Pillars of Wisdom", P.38, Foundations of Revolt, T.E. Lawrence

[DR3] T. E. Lawrence writes, "In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes:  they destroyed it all for me.  At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin:  it was an affection only."--Seven Pillars of Wisdom, chapter 1, P. 31.  The English learned quite early on that "never the twine shall meet", a wisdom that has never been grasped by the Scandinavian Tourist/Soldiers.