During the graduation ceremony for one of this year’s graduating classes in Oslo, there was a rather tense atmosphere when three boys with a Muslim background refused to shake the female principal’s hand. But it wasn’t long ago that we all tried to avoid shaking hands. We must not forget what we learned during the covid-19 pandemic. We were then taught to “sprite” our hands, and that we should avoid shaking hands as much as possible. Because shaking hands is a very effective way of transmitting infection between people. With our hands we touch different places on our own body. In a clammy palm, the microbes will survive for quite a long time, and the microbes are transferred to the person you are greeting through the handshake. This applies to a large number of infectious diseases, but in particular it applies to infectious diseases affecting the gastrointestinal system. During the covid-19 epidemic, where we were careful about hand hygiene and tried to avoid shaking hands, it was observed that the occurrence of many other infectious diseases also decreased significantly. After the covid-19 pandemic, many went back to old habits of hugging and shaking hands. But not all. People who work in the healthcare system learned lessons. While the doctor or dentist used to shake your hand when you entered offices, today you are usually greeted with a “Hello”. We should all follow the example of the healthcare system here. By moving away from handshakes, especially in such ceremonial contexts, we will make our society more resilient to future pandemics. Because according to the WHO, there is a high probability that new pandemics will occur in the coming years, as a result of population growth, migration and climate change. It is also warned that there may be pandemics that are much worse than covid-19; for example, diseases that cause high mortality among children and young people. The Spanish flu is an example of a pandemic that claimed countless children’s lives. It is important that we take this danger seriously, and not through panic when we suddenly find ourselves in the situation, but rather through small changes in behavior and hygiene measures that do not require much from us, but which can have a very large effect. As habits take time to incorporate, it will therefore be a great advantage to have greeting rituals in place early on that do not involve physical contact. Because the ways we greet each other vary a lot between different cultures. Some of these greetings involve close physical contact – such as kissing on the cheeks, rubbing noses against each other, or what is common in our Western culture – the handshake. Other ways of greeting avoid physical contact, such as the “Heart greeting”, where the hand is placed against the heart while bowing respectfully to each other. Variations of this greeting method are widely used in countries such as Japan and India. In my opinion, we should therefore introduce some form of “Hjertehilsen” at ceremonies such as awarding grades and the like. This is a nice way of greeting that is gender neutral and should be acceptable to the vast majority, despite different cultural or religious backgrounds. This will make it much easier for those young people who are in a transitional phase between different cultures, where they will either feel that they are doing wrong to their fathers’ culture by shaking hands with the opposite sex, or are doing wrong to the society they now live in by not shaking hands. But these young people will probably discover later in life that cultural or religious resistance to touching the opposite sex can be conflict-creating in other areas than shaking hands. Such resistance to touch will, generally speaking, be perceived as gender discriminatory. The shopping pattern will in many cases lead to limitations in working life. For example, it will be difficult to work as a surgeon in a hospital if you do not want to have physical contact with the opposite sex. Stopping handshakes will not resolve all cultural conflicts in relation to touching the opposite sex, but the type of conflict that occurred at the school in Oslo will be avoided. A big bonus will be that we can reduce the spread of infection in society, and thus make ourselves much more robust and prepared for the day we are threatened by new pandemics. Also read:
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A handshake is an expression – an expression
