Before this year, Norway was one of many nations with a moderate number of blog views but that did not draw my attention. At some point this year, though, for reasons I do not understand, I started averaging about three views a day from a country where I have no friends or acquaintances and which I do not write about often at all [1]. I am not sure what led to this spike in views from a country, since I cannot seem to find that these articles are being translated into Norwegian, which suggests that the person reading them is able to understand my blog’s fairly demanding level of English, especially to return so often for hundreds of views over the past few months, to the point where Norway as a whole may even reach 1,000 total views by the end of this year, a level of popularity that I find astounding in the general context of my blog [2]. In thinking about the amount of attention that Norway’s popularity has drawn, I was struck by the factors that lead me to take interest of something insofar as it relates to my writing, and I thought it worthy of commenting on, as Norway ends up being in a “sweet spot” that leads to a great deal of notice from me at the moment, and these same tendencies tend to draw my attention in general.

Part of Norway’s drastically increased attention comes from the fact that it has gotten a lot more views than it used to. Every day, probably dozens of times a day, I look to see what posts are being viewed and what countries are viewing the blog entry. Those nations that are far more popular than their overall level of popularity tend to receive a great deal of interest. Just about every day the United States ends up with the most views, and so this does not tend to draw notice, but the fact that Norway is getting about three a day pretty consistently is worthy of notice, since it is often the only or one of only a few nations under 1,000 views that attracts that level of views. Perhaps this increased attention will only last until Norway reaches 1,000 views, or perhaps the fact that I am paying attention to it in particular now, from the time it was relatively small, will continue until it gets larger. That is one of the risks, I suppose, of trying to catch my attention, as it is not always wanted for the sustained and long period I tend to ponder and reflect upon things. There is not really any other nation that has the same dramatic shift in popularity and that has managed to sustain a few views a day of the small size and relative absence of focus within my blog as Norway. The fact that Norway’s sudden relative popularity is a mystery makes me ponder it more, and that inevitably leads me to write about it. Let this be a lesson to all that seek to be mysterious to me and that seek to draw my attention. The fact that no one, at least to my knowledge, has commented on my blog despite the hundreds of views so far this year from there is also a bit mysterious.

So, how are my blog’s viewers from Norway able to make themselves less mysterious and be a subject of less frequent puzzling and musing? The obvious solution would be to communicate, so that I may know what it is that led to someone in Norway wanting to read my blog (or several people, if it is so), and what sort of material my reader(s) there would wish to see in the future. This blog, as diverse as my interests and as unusual the nature of its contents is, is designed to be a part of a greater conversation. Some of these conversations are intended to supplement or encourage face-to-face conversations, and still others are to reach out across the internet and provide encouragement and instruction and pleasure to others afar off, and nearby as well. What applies to my readers in Norway specifically also applies to my readers in general: although I write from my own particular perspective, I am interested in what those who read my blog want to see, and also what they do not like seeing, if they are looking at my blog for something to be outraged about. But without communication, this blog (like so many others) is only a voice crying out in the wilderness without response, and with unknown effect, and that is only half of the pleasure of conversations, to talk without a response in return.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/somaliland-update-norway-aids-somaliland-anti-piracy-efforts/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/arctic-fire/

[2] To put this into perspective, only one nation has more than 100,000 views: the United States, and as of the writing of this entry, only two more countries have 10,000 views or more: the United Kingdom and Canada, although Australia is over 9,000 views since February 2012, when WordPress started keeping track of the national origin of blog visitors. Beyond that, only about a dozen or so nations, in addition to the European Union (which is counted separately than its member states for some reason), have more than 1,000 views, most of which are far larger nations than Norway.