I would have put this question in General Questions but it has to do with the holidays and it’s not really important.
It is some sort of Christmas, end of year meeting at the local Sons of Norway hall. My wife is 2nd generation Norwegian and it is sort of an extended family get together. You know, lots of red haired Vikings; pillage, plunder, drink, and eat.
They have it every year but we haven’t gone for a couple. Anyone else have this?
Google fails me, comes up with a lot of foreign language stuff, probably Norwegian. My wife doesn’t speak the lingo.
The words “vass,” “bygd,” and “laget,” individually, mean “water,” “built,” and “made” (or “laid” or “layer”; maybe). Google translator gives the definition "water-in team,"which means nothing to me. On the other hand, Vassbygd is a town in Norway whose name gets translated as “Water Village” (or there may be a region called “Vassbygd” in many towns; it’s kinda hard to tell).
So, I guess it’s the remnants of a traditional “let’s go launch the boats” thing. Or not.
The word “bygd” can also refer to a rural area(or something similar, I’m having a hard time coming up with a good translation) and in the context here “laget” means “the team” or “the group”, so “The Water Village team/group” would probably be a fairly accurate translation.
“Laget” in this context is probably “lauget” meaning festival or fair or “get-together”, as you said. Vassbygd is certainly the name of a town or village.
In this context, “bygd” means village and “laget” just means “the party”, although “lag” has many alternative definitions. “Vass” is a common way of spelling water (normally “vann”) in some dialects when used as a prefix.
In sweden a “byalag” bya- lag (village team if anyone is interested Ill go into the etymology but this is close enough) means a voluntary association for the preservation of local interests, culture or heritage.
Im assuming this is the same thing.
Usually they preserve some sort of meeting hall and maybe other relevanty structures and have a few gathering around holidays.
or it could just be the “laget” from the vassbyggd.
We have the same thing in Norway, but it’s called a “bygdelag”, the e being significant. Instead of “Vassbygdlaget”, you would probably have “Vassbygd Bygdelag”.