Marry Me
Prologue
My name is Norway. Though… I suppose that if you're reading this now you must already know that. But if this diary has somehow gotten into the hands of somebody unfamiliar I also suppose that I should make the correct introductions.
As I said before, my name is Norway. Norge to family and Nor to friends but never Norbie or Norgey. Except to him. My family was a wealthy one of the highest regard, earning well beyond our needs through a lucky discovery of several oil spots back in our home country. We moved to Dorran when I was around six or seven to join family friends that had shared similar fortunes to our own and we never looked back.
Father never went back home other than for business ventures of the utmost importance that he couldn't bring himself to leave to the usual employees. Everything else was handled by his, for lack of a better word, minions and we were left to live the life of luxury that he and mother had always dreamed of.
My younger sister and I lived a happy and simple life free from labour and torment that other children our age seemed to have faced back in the old country. And for this reason I was, and still am, eternally grateful to our parents for giving us the chance to escape such hardships as working at a young age and being married off to a drunkard to raise a family of five on the barest of minimums. But at the same time… even to this day I feel as though I would have been better off in that carefree, though harsh, reality rather than this suffocating fantasy world of the rich and famous.
My sister, Iceland, is three years younger than I and was always all too quick to comply to the rules and regulations that father set down. If he said jump, she'd say "how high, father?" and then smile sweetly as she bounced on the spot for him. Which was cute in our childhood. Not so cute at the age of eighteen.
Anyway, as I said, my sister and I experienced a relatively normal and happy, though somewhat sheltered, childhood... That is if you discount the weekly disciplinary from mother because the one of the gardeners would find us running around the woods of our house in search of faeries. Which to this day I still believe lived there; I know what I saw with my own eyes regardless of my young age.
Iceland was, like myself, stubborn to the point of rage. While she was all too quick to comply with mother and father's rules anybody else had a large problem in a short package on their hands should they attempt to control her. Iceland was many times described as a volcano waiting to erupt, which I experienced firsthand many times. She would start out the day as a perfect woman; demure, shy and restrained. But come evening she would be in some form of a rage or sulk, flying off the handle at any little thing.
But my sister was not just my sister, she was also my oldest, dearest and closest friend. And for the lies she told and the secrets she kept I will always love her.
I was schooled at the old church. Mother and father were deeply Christian, and at the time so was I but now… I often wonder if I have any sort of faith at all, and we too were raised by their values and ideals. My education was one of the finest that money could buy. Girls only, there was no interaction with any boys my own age until I was around eleven. I'm sure I used to have male friends in the old country but my memories of that place are long faded and irrelevant.
Other than Sweden of course. Our parents were great friends with his and in turn many of our days in childhood were spent dragging the tall, bespectacled boy around the garden in search of troll holes and other folke. Sweden was like a brother to me and I loved him as one. I considered him a member of my family, the brother we'd never had.
Sweden was two years older than myself and into our adulthood he towered a good foot and several inches over my own frame. Many described him as a gentle giant… and that's how I used to see him too. Many times today I still do. When I see the man smile calmly and return a frog to the garden pond amidst the children's cries I find it hard to believe…
Anyway, suffice to say that Sweden was the only male peer contact that Iceland and I had for a very long time in our new lives.
Little happened during our teenage years besides the regular schooling and still running around the garden, something that mother heavily chastised us for the older we got. For as long as I live I'll never forget the looks on her face when I would return home at sunset in a crisp white gown covered in mud and moss. One would think she would have just simply learned to stop buying me white after the fourteenth incident in two months.
Somewhere around the time between my sixteenth birthday and my mother and father's twentieth wedding anniversary I was betrothed to Sweden.
And at our engagement party I met Denmark.
My world was never the same.