(FORTUNE Magazine) – A MasterCard commercial famously said that taking a parent to explore your roots is priceless. I can tell you otherwise. It's expensive as hell.

But a few years back I had taken my mom to Hawaii, and the guilt burned. My dad had always wanted to go to Norway, the home of his ancestors, just as my mom has always wanted to look into her family's Irish past. Or so they said. (When my parents finally did make it to Europe, they went not to Norway or Ireland but to...Spain. And then to France. And then to Italy. When it comes to avoiding conflict, we are without peer.)

So Norway it was. We met up in Oslo, a daydream of a city--neither of us was prepared for its beauty. The sun was out, not an everyday occurrence, we later learned, and everybody was soaking it in. They were two perfect days: ferry rides to the museums across the bay, a long dockside lunch, dinner in the courtyard of one of the city's oldest buildings.

We weren't hoping to track down family members who'd stayed behind, or visit ancestral gravesites. It was more about figuring out what it means to be Norwegian--like many Americans, we have no ties to the country our people came from. My dad never spoke the language; we never ate the food. I wanted to know what a Norwegian was, and whether I felt like one.

That said, we did visit one gravesite. Whereas my grandmother's side was from the north of Norway, my grandfather's was from Austad, between Oslo and the fjord country. Apparently my great-great-great-great grandfather Tarkjell Aslakson was a composer of some renown, and it's obviously more important to visit the graves of your famous dead relatives. Indeed, a large obelisk marked the spot. If my dad felt more of a tingle than I did, it was probably because he's a generation closer. At a souvenir shop nearby, he bought a CD of folk music that included one of Tarkjell's songs; after a single minute we couldn't take it any longer. My dad said he'd pass it off onto Aunt Phyllis at Christmas.

They'll tell you Norway is beautiful, but the word doesn't come close: The scenery is nymphomaniacal in its urge to please. We went from Oslo--just outside the city, my dad said, "Can you believe they have Ikea here?"--to one of the most stunning valleys I've ever seen, with snowy peaks, green slopes, a lake surrounded by white houses. We hit a mountain pass where everything was stark black and white, snow and rock. It reminded me of the Dalmatian we had growing up, and my dad still won't explain why we named her Foxy Lady. ("It was the '70s" only goes so far.)

In fjord country the scenery became almost tediously beautiful--ten-story waterfalls, clouds clinging like burrs to the hillsides. Left speechless, we'd go hours without talking, then one of us would point and say, "Pretty," and the other would grunt back. Truth be told, we started out speechless. Not until this trip did I realize that in my family my mom does nearly all of the talking.

It was in Bergen, Norway's San Francisco (i.e., quaint and photogenic and trapped just a little bit in amber), that I gave up trying to get my dad to eat only three meals a day. We share a weakness for hot dogs, which may very well be an ancestral thing, considering how hot dogs seemed to be everywhere. People would wait in line at 7-Eleven to buy them. We ate salmon in the fish market, and gorged on ice cream, lots of ice cream. Back on the road, though we picked up little of the language, we did realize that the small yellow Eskimo-like boy on the signs meant ice cream was sold there. We learned to love that boy.

I won't soon forget the many wonderful times. (I can no longer vouch for my dad's memory.) We played a vicious game of Ping-Pong in the basement of one of the fusty old fjord hotels; he said he let me win--"like I always used to when we played tennis," only I never won. In Loftus we slept in a hotel room not much wider than my armspan, and ate what the chef/waiter/hotelier called a "Stone Age meal" of lamb, pork, and beef, minced together and boiled. I wouldn't have fed it to Foxy Lady, but Dad liked it. We spent a rainy afternoon sitting in a cafe in Bergen listening to Astrud Gilberto on the stereo. Once, waiting for yet another ferry, we passed a pack of old German tourists right as two seagulls started making noisy love. "Dad!" I yelled. "What are they doing up there?"

At the remarkable Kafe Krystall, in Bergen, I taught him what a viognier was; on the road, he taught me once again the importance of keeping both hands on the wheel.

I'm not sure I feel more Norwegian. We can pass--people consistently spoke to us in Norwegian--but anyone who's ever learned to fit in where he doesn't belong will tell you that passing for something is hardly the same as being it. Ultimately, the trip made us feel more American than anything else. I know what that means now: We're the type of people who pose for silly pictures, or accidentally drop M&M's on the seat of the car and sit on them, or ride the Bergen funicular twice in the naive hope the view will be clear this time. We go to Norway to find out who we are--pointing out people who look like our Uncle Frank or cousin Lisa, or getting excited when the toilet-paper dispenser is made by a company called Tork (maybe they're related!). We have been known to eat a hot dog we dropped on the ground.

Actually, not all Americans are likely to act that way. And so; I went to Norway to find out who I am. I am a Torkells first, my father's son. I am an American second. Third, and only third, I am half Norwegian. And yes, I submit. That knowledge is priceless.