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This is used in Norway as well (and I suspect many other places). The term uses the same structure "sjokklufting", which like the German means shock ventilatio
by vidarh 3y ago
This is used in Norway as well (and I suspect many other places).
The term uses the same structure "sjokklufting", which like the German means shock ventilation.
A quick search in the Norwegian National Library dates the Norwegian use of this specific term pretty firmly to ~1974 or so.
Interestingly all the uses of the term in writing in Norwegian media in 1970's seem to either be or echo the text in an ad from Jøtul, one of the largest manufacturers of cast-iron fireplaces as a negative (making it too cold), while many later mentions are positive, though also with a tinge of "we're only doing this as a fallback because our ventilation isn't good enough" in quite a few articles.
A somewhat more common Norwegian variant describing much the same is utlufting ("out-ventilation") or storutlufting ("big out-ventilation"), which is found in print at least back to the 1850's, and which tends to imply much the same, though perhaps with a less negative slant.
At some point around the 1980's, the viewpoint seems to have changed from promoting this as a good thing to describing the need for it as evidence of poor ventilation systems.
My mum would often do this, and I do it myself too, - open several windows at least a couple of times a day during winter to rapidly clear out stale air. The benefit vs. less ventilation all the time being that while you're cooling the air, it's short enough that you don't lose much heat, and neither does the building mass. It's overall much more pleasant when it's really cold outside than having a window open a crack on an ongoing basis.
- sirobg 3y agoThanks for sharing this Norwegian perspective! I'm french and I don't think there is a specific word to describe this. We commonly use the verb "aérer" which translates to "to ventilate". But when someone uses this term, I think it designates implicitly a short ventilation as described by this German word or your Norwegian one. At least that's what I noticed around me. I don't know of anybody keeping a window open all day long to ventilate when it's cold outside.
- lwn 3y agoIn the Netherlands it's called "luchten". It's similar to "aérer". Both translate to "To air out" in English.
- vidarh 3y agoInterestingly, Norwegian has both "luft" (air)/"lufte" (to air) and "lukt"/"lukte" (smell, to smell), and it turns out they share the same proto-Germanic origin as Dutch "luchten" as well as the equivalent German terms, and English "to lift" and Norwegian "å løfte", all centering around air with different angles.
- _pvxk 3y agoAnd in Bergen you can use "lukt" to mean both, "høyt opp i lukten", maybe the Hanseatic influence? (My kid uses "luft" to mean both, "lufte ekkelt".)
- yetihehe 3y agoIn Poland it's called "przewietrzyć", meaning "let the wind go through".
- vidarh 3y agoGermanic languages are very well suited to these kinds of compound words because you can pretty much keep adding words - hence the many jokes about ridiculously long German ones - where in many other languages if you want to add precision you use a phrase instead, or rely on context... You can do that in Norwegian too, but we tend to be a bit more shy about it than the Germans...
- snowpid 3y agoI like to find language nerds on HN :)
- vidarh 3y agoIt's a subject well suited for obsessive pedants ;)
- spinningarrow 3y agoA lot of newer (last 15 years or so) apartments in Oslo have a mixture of ‘natural’ ventilation through vents that let in cold air and mechanical ventilation in wet rooms, and even newer builds are starting to use ‘balanced’ ventilation that heats up cold outside air using heat from air that is being blown out https://www.byggmakker.no/rad-og-guider/kjokken-og-bad/vet-du-forskjellene-pa-de-tre-ulike-typene-ventilasjon https://www.byggmakker.no/rad-og-guider/kjokken-og-bad/vet-d...
- vidarh 3y agoYeah, it's obviously a lot more energy-efficient to have proper ventilation. (Then again, having recently flown back from Norway to the UK one of the things that strikes me every winter is how floodlit Norway looks from the air at night compared to the UK despite far lower population density - Norway is still riding high on the past low energy prices...)
- zh3 3y agoYes, heated pavements outside the shops, wind turbines on the hills, hydro, gravel roads and the sovereign wealth fund saving the money from oil for the future (check out https://www.nbim.no/ https://www.nbim.no/, it's about 10Nok to the dollar).
- bosse 3y agoThis might be due to road standards where major roads and highways usually have road lights when it’s dark. Most of Oslo’s internal roads are lit up too, as it makes them safer in terms of traffic safety and crime suppression. But this does have a cost which became even more obvious with the wartime energy price spikes.