Political ads allowed on TV

Not very long ago, I wrote a post about political advertising on TV in Norway. During the three weeks since then, things have surely happened.

Despite political ads on tv being prohibited, the small local tv station TV Vest ran three ads for the local branch of the Pensioners Party in 2003. As a result, they were fined 35.000 NOK (roughly €4.500). This they refused to pay on principal grounds and took the case to the Courts of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They claim that the ban is an offense against the rights of free speech. Yesterday, the Court decided in favour of the TV-station. So, the way things are looking, political advertising is in principle allowed...

Interestingly, the British TV station Channel S was fined £40.000 on Wednesday this week for having run a total of 44 political ads for the Liberal Democrats. Also somewhat curious is that this case and the verdict has received very scarce attention in international media.

Check out the blog Word From the North for an interesting post about the ban, the case and the verdict.

Nice things half forgotten

Living away from home, there are always some things that you seem to forget. The little things. Smells, little things you see in your everyday life. Things that are around, that adds flavor to your life, and that sometimes are more 'unconsciously' noticed.

Part of my everyday life right now is my half-an-hour drive to work, driving through an area that is not populated. The area I live in right now is pretty sparsely populated to say the least. Anyway, on my way to work, especially in the morning, I see all sorts of animals running about, flying or doing whatever they do. I see grouse, foxes, eagles, and I've seen otters and lynxes. Some times of the year there are reindeer grazing about.

The last couple of years, I've been living in quite urban areas. I can't say that I have consciously missed all this while I've been away from home. But every time I drive along and I see one of these animals on the side of the road, I keep thinking how nice it is to live this close to nature in this way. You might of course come across a fox or some other animal elsewhere, too, and I've even seen one in the UK. But it's nothing like this, where I seem to pass some wild animal every other day.

Even though I am a bit ambivalent about living up here in 'nowhere', in a small town far away from everything else, this is one of the very nice things about living here. It adds to my quality of life.

Shut up, dog! Congratulations, Blacksheeps!

Last night, the band Blacksheeps from Nesseby in Finnmark, Norway, won the Nordic MGP Jr contest with their great tune about the obese dog Kamilla. The song's title, "Oro jaska beana", is Sami for "shut up, dog!" Congratulations to Blacksheeps - well deserved! "Oro Jaska beana" can be heard and seen on Youtube.

Harr harr! - modern day pirates

Since I was a kid, I've been fascinated with pirates. I used to love reading about them. One of my favorite stories was about the famous pirate Edward Teach. Teach, better known as Blackbeard, fired up pieces of hemp in his beard to seem more fearful and demon-like to his enemies. Buccaneers, Swashbucklers and Privateers, hmmm, those must have been the days.. Since I've started blogging, I haven't really seen any natural opportunity to write anything about pirates. But now, with all the buzz in the media about pirates, I'm not going to relinquish on the chance to finally comment on piracy!

The last year or couple of years, the coast off Somalia and around the bay of Aden has become a real hot-bed for piracy, and a real hazard for ships passing through. The last year, pirate assaults off the east coast of Africa has increased by 75%. Just this week, on Thursday, a band of Somali pirates demanded a ransom of 25 million US dollars for the Aramco-owned oil tanker Sirius Star. And on Tuesday this week, a Greek cargo ship with a crew of 20-odd was also caught by Somali pirates.

The piracy in this area is a scourge for the shipping industry, and has forced several shipping companies to send tankers and cargo ships travelling between Asia and Europe around the Cape Good Hope instead of through the Suez Canal as they will have to pass through the bay of Aden the get there. One of those is the Norwegian company Odfjell, which weekly has got 2-3 ships passing through this area. For Odfjell this is a decision based on the crews safety, and will imply a large jump in costs due to the increased distance to be travelled.

The Norwegian Union of Ship-Owners (norsk rederiforbund) is frustrated that not enough is being done to rid this and other areas of piracy. The Union wants the Norwegian government to deploy military forces in the area to combat pirates. That might well be done, as the navy recently has been training on pirate-combating tactics. But even if Norway contributed to an international force, this would have to be huge, as the area in question is enormous - 6.6 million square kilometers. And also, of course the growth of piracy has its roots in the conditions in conflict-ridden Somalia itself. Without bettering the conditions in the country, solving the piracy-problem might be near impossible.

Political advertising..

Although political advertising is allowed in some media in Norway, it is not allowed in television. The ban on televised political ads has been a matter of some debate in Norway, and arguments both for and against lifting the ban has been put forward.

The strongest of the arguments is that to allow this would give the political parties with the most financial backing (i.e Labour and the Right Party) an unfair advantage in reaching more people with their message. The smaller parties like the Coastal Party (Kystpartiet) and even the Socialist Left Part (SV) would not be able to fund as much political advertising on TV. To lift the ban on televised political ads would be to subject the politics to the mechanisms of the capitalist market.

To a certain extent I do agree with this argument. Televised advertising is expensive, and only the largest and wealthiest parties would be able to afford to advertise enough for it to be effective. If it were to be allowed, it could be that this would lead to political parties being more driven to seek funding from private business. I do not believe that anyone gives away money for free. Funding comes with a price. So, if we could avoid that, it would be good.

All good arguments for upholding the ban aside, I still think it is a real democratic problem that the political parties are not allowed to present their political agendas and programmes in any unfiltered way on TV. Sure, we do have a good coverage of politics in the news, and politicians do partake on political TV-debates and other TV programs. But these are all filtered by journalists or debate-show hosts, often seeking to make their shows more interesting by focusing on the more sensational aspects and on conflict than necessarily on the parties' political programmes. And it is the journalists and show-hosts that decide exactly what is discussed.

It could be argued that the parties are allowed to present their message elsewhere, like e.g on their websites and in other media where they are allowed to advertise. But TV is still most people's main channel of information about politics, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.

Maybe in this matter we could get some ideas from the UK. Political advertising is not allowed in any laissez-faire fashion there either, but the parties are allowed a certain amount of free political TV advertising. This could be a way of solving this that we could contemplate as well. Each political party could be allotted a certain time for presenting their policies and their programmes on the state owned NRK (the same amount for each party or based on their number of seats in the Parliament). There could even be a minimum timeframe to avoid the parties presenting their policies in a too simplified way. Even "negative ads" could be allowed, by which I mean ads that point out weaknesses in the opposing parties' policies - this is a very effective way of unveiling inaccuracies etc. in such information.

Even if we take into account all the arguments for keeping a ban on political ads in TV, it is in my opinion very peculiar that we want to prevent our political parties and politicians from presenting their own policies. Instead of doing everything we can to educate the voters on the policies they are voting for or against, we are de facto limiting the range of information that voters are allowed. And in my mind, we are banning one of the most important sources of information.

About a road..

I have moved back to Norway. Back to my home town up in the cold, high north - the district of Finnmark. And that is the main reason that no posts have appeared the last couple of weeks. Even though I started this blog as a way to keep myself somehow informed and mentally occupied with things happening back home when I was living abroad, I will continue along the same lines from inside of Norway. In a way, it might be more a view from "the inside." But Finnmark is far far away from the more densely populated south, so it will be in some ways a view from afar still..

Since I have moved up here, it might be appropriate that I start out with a current issue from Finnmark - the controversies about a road being built to an even more remote and smaller village than the one that I am living in. The issue touches on an issue that I have brushed on before, the relationship between Samis and non-Samis.

The tiny village of Nervei has long been without any proper road connecting it to "the rest" of the world, but has relied on a ferry arriving from time to time. Not being quite happy with that, understandably, the people of Nervei has done a great job in collecting money and organizing the building of a road of about 20 km themselves, the work on which is going on now.

The problem with the road and the work arises partly from the fact that the road runs through land that is used as grazing lands for reindeer. So, Reindeer Grazing District Number 13 has taken this to court trying to get the roadworks stopped, or alternatively and much better to get some economic compensation. This issue really exemplifies that old joke that the two Norwegian terms that the Samis bother to learn are "our Sami rights" and "compensation." Many non-Samis see this whole story as a Sami knee-jerk reflex to get even more compensation.

The reindeer-herding Samis do rely on lands all over Finnmark for grazing, and some of their claims are legitimate. The lands are not very fertile, and are easily grazed down. Thus, herding the reindeer around is essential both to feed them and to avoid damaging the lands used for grazing. But in this particular situation, their claims ring terribly hollow. We are talking about an improvement of an already existing tractor trail, which means it is not a case of destroying any grazable areas. And it is also not a case of a heavily trafficked road that will disturb the reindeer.

Personally I think issues like this, where a small part of the Sami reindeer-farmers are trying to exert their influence to wring some more compensation out of the State coffers, are having a detrimental effect on the relationship between Samis and non-Samis in Finnmark. Non-Samis are being annoyed and aggravated over what they perceive as exerting their power just for the sake of it.

For more information about this road, take a look at this blog (in Norwegian: På vei til Nervei

Some thoughts on book prices..

Every month, I get an email from a book club that I joined some years ago, telling me which book is this month's title. The reason I joined the book club was pure and simple to get the "welcome present" of five free books, which I thought was a pretty good deal. The only drawback is that every month, I have to go through the hassle of canceling the book of the month. That I invariably do. Most often I don't find their monthly "recommendation" very recommendable, and besides I always have a sizable stack of books waiting to be read anyway.

But from time to time, there will be a title worth adding to my growing pile. That happened to be the case this month, with Geert Mak's In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century (hardcover) to the respectable price of NOK 375 (roughly 33 GBP or 42 Euros). But even though I find the title interesting, I would not consider for a second to buy it from the book club. Instead I head off to Amazon to find the same title for the much more appealing price of 6.54 GBP or NOK 74. (That is the paperback edition, but for the time being the title is not available in paperback in Norwegian.)

I do not think that I am alone doing this. A lot of people who, like me, are not too hindered by the (lack of) fluency in English, will opt for the English alternative even though they might have preferred to read it in Norwegian. That can not be good for our language, which some already perceive to be under pressure from English.

Another point is that it is not everyone who have a high enough competency in English to be able to go for the cheaper alternative. I would assume that for the "educated classes," the proportion of people having a high enough English skill is far higher than among the "less educated." To me, to keep the book prices in Norway so high does not seem to be good social policies. If we are so egalitarian as we claim to be, would it not be fair to make knowledge equally available to all?

The reason that book prices in Norway are so high is because there is a minimum price for books imposed. This is done to prevent online booksellers etc. from using their advantage to squeeze more provincial bookstores out of the market. If customers can get the same books cheaper from the online bookseller, they will not buy it dearer from their local bookstore. I do see the argument. But with international online booksellers available, this only serves to prevent Norwegian books from being sold at reasonable prices, one effect being that people buy English books instead. Isn't there a better way of promoting Norwegian books (both in original and translation) than pricing them so high that people can't afford to buy them?

Worries in the High North

In this week's issue, the Economist is featuring an article that highlights Russia's conduct in the Arctic areas. It describes this area, "cold, empty and rich in fish and minerals", as "a tempting prize for a big, confident country." Russian fighter jets have been frequently flying very close to Norwegian territory, something that while not illegal sends some worrying signals. The recent €4 billion emergency loan to Iceland is also a bit worrying - not in itself, but with regards to whatever Russia wants in return.

I have written some posts about this issue already; "The Bear and Us - Russia and Norway" and "The Bear and Us Revisited". My point in those articles was that although the Cold War is over, we should be very wary with regards to our Eastern neighbor.

As a tiny little country of only four and a half million people we are not in an ideal position if we should get into a conflict with Russia. But we still need to do everything in our power to stand our ground, and send clear signals of our own standpoint. Also, as I see it, we have no other choice than to keep both of our feet firmly grounded in NATO. It may be pointed out that "NATO presence is fitful" in the High North, as the Economist does. Still, it is a grave mistake to argue for us to distance ourselves from NATO and our Western allies, as some of our socialist parties do. We cannot afford to stand alone, and NATO is our best bet not to do so.

It has been sad to see that even our dear former Prime Minister, Haakon Lie, has been arguing against taking our share of responsibilities in NATO operations around the world. His rhetorical point is that Norway's borders are not running next to Afghanistan. That is of course true. But it is equally true that most NATO members do not have a border to Russia along the Pasvik River in Northern Norway.

Social levelling

If you follow the debate in Norwegian media about schools, you will frequently come across the term "sosial utjevning". The term, which can be roughly translated as "social levelling", digs straight into the strong egalitarian attitudes in Norway.

This term has got two sides to it. On the one side, we want to pull up the pupils and children that are struggling at school, and that have trouble learning important skills like reading, writing and arithmatics. This is of course right. To help struggling children to learn is an obligation we have as an inclusive society, and we need to try as hard as we can to help children that for some reason or other have problems learning. We need to do everything we can to help them acquire the skills needed to be successful in their lives. This goes for social skills, "hard skills" like reading, writing, calculus, and for instilling in them an understanding of what it entails to be part of a society.

But the term has also got an ugly back side, and it is this back side that I always react to whenever I come across this term. When you are levelling something out you are mending the dumps and holes, but you are also removing the bumps sticking up. Transferred onto the school system, this means that you pull up the struggling pupils, but you also pull some down, trying to make an average out of every pupil.

The idea behind this social levelling is to give every child the same opportunities to learn, indepentent of his or her parents' standing or financial resources. On the face of it, that is noble enough. But when this levelling is done by pulling some down, that is in my opinion inherently wrong. From my brief experience as a teacher, I know how many resources go to children with learning problems, and how much academically gifted children tend to be much more left on their own without much extra stimulus or extra challenges. As long as they master the curriculum, we are satisfied with that, and do not encourage them to reach further.

To be perfectly clear, I do not mean that we should stop making an effort to help children that struggle. But we also need to make an effort to help the children that display a gift for the traditional school curriculum to strive further. We should not try and level the children out and try to make them all equal by pulling some up and some down, but borrow the slogan of the American military and encourage every child to strive to be all that they can be.

The Kauhajoki massacre

The school massacre in Kauhajoki this week has left Finland and the rest of Scandinavia in a state of shock and disbelief. It is hard to fathom what lead 22 years old Matti Juhani Saari to gun down nine of his fellow students and one teacher before putting the gun to his own head.

There has been many explanations put forth for this tragic episode. As expected, the usual suspects, the internet and Finland's lax gun laws have been pointed to first. Saari was very active on the internet, where he showed a very keen interest in guns. And unlike from his normal contact with other people, he also showed his darker sides on the net. On example of this is the video clips he put out on YouTube shortly before the shootings. Partly due to Finland's hunting traditions, obtaining a gun is very easy in Finland.

Hege Ulstein of Dagsavisen has also pointed to Finland's school system as one of the culprits. Finland has received much praise for its high results in international surveys and tests, such as the PISA-tests. Her argument is that because Finland does not prioritize social skills training as much as Norway, Finland would be more prone to such tragedies. This is a highly speculative argument in my mind.

It is true that the Norwegian syllabus contains a very high emphasis on social skills, which is very good. Whether it succeeds to reach the goals could be discussed, but the emphasis is nevertheless important. To argue that because we put focus on social skills that we are immune to such tragedies is highly dubious. We only need to think back a couple of months to find an incident that could have turned really nasty, when a barrister fired a gun into a reception center for asylum seekers and seriously injured a 16 years old Somalian. Fortunately, we have been spared of tragedies of the scope of the Kauhajoki massacre (knock on wood). But to hold that we for various reasons are somehow immune to that would be to fool ourselves.

The thoughts of a third world child…….LONGEVITY!

A guest post by Sevika Stensby

I remember, when I moved to Norway several years ago, feeling in total awe of my new home and how much regard they had for their nation. The social welfare here is probably second to none.

Within a very short period of time my Norwegian husband and I invested in our first apartment together. It was a completely unambitious bid on a very basic, old apartment...pretty much like most people here start out, 72sqm (one fourth of a house containing 4 apartments of equal size) of our very own space…we had great ambitions to renovate it completely ourselves. Needless to say, the extreme DIY culture here was also nothing short of amazement for me.

Within an incredibly short space of time it became apparent that all 3 neighbours in the house had lived in the house since it was built in 1954. They were by this time all pensioners and well into the years of the senior citizen.

We were a young strong couple that had just moved in, they saw the obvious advantages of this. The grass, that you can pretty much sit and watch physically grow here in the summer season due to everything being so accelarated (the summers are 2 months long at best), needed to be clipped regularly. Our elderly neighbours had neither the strength nor the interest in their part of the obligation. This naturally fell on our shoulders. Our summers were consumed with lawnmowing and gardening of which I in all my life had not seen the like (ofcourse in South Africa we all have gardener or even two to take care of this, never having to spare a thought for how one acquires a pretty garden).

The families of these seniors living in the building never seemed to visit, or at least with no real regularity. They seemed thrilled that there was a child in the house and within the first month of moving in my 5 year old had 4 pairs of wool socks. They also were keen on inviting me over to coffee as frequently as possible. I often accepted and sat through hours of coffee drinking and cake eating (I gained 10kg in my first year here). My Norwegian lessons had also started in earnest.

The families of these seniors never seemed to visit. My daughter was regularly invited upstairs for traditional Norwegian dinners to the point that it became a normal programme.

The families of the seniors never seemed to visit. I would walk across the hall to Ruth with baked goods and listen for hours as she cried about her aches and pains and loneliness since the death of her husband several years before. My heart broke each and every time.

The families of these seniors never seemed to visit. Summer came again and my child was taken on her first trip to the nearby waterwonderland, not by me but by by the active 75 year old neighbour upstairs. She had grandchildren, they could not make it.

Norway has an admirable health policy regarding active seniors. Their desire is for the seniors to make use of the resources they have to live a more active life. They also want to encourage them to live at home for as long as they possibly can. There are several challenges for innovation brought on by the incredible longevity we witness here in Norway as opposed to Africa, where the population is increasingly younger. Challenges for the health care sector are the most predominant.
The resources provided seem extravagant to the third world child that I am. Home assistance as often as one requires it! The struggle for manpower in the health care sector, however, creates an even bigger challenge. Those working as home assistants to the aged have barely enough time to reach all those seniors they need to see in a day for the delivery of a meal or getting them into a shower, how are they possibly to spare the time for a chat.

Nursing homes, another great offer the health care sector provides the aged, are also understaffed to the degree that the assistants there have plenty to do just doling out medication and taking care of the visit to the toilet. They simply don't have the time or capacity for the social aspect of caring for the aged.

Where are the families of these people?

At home in South Africa, needless to say, there is no social welfare of any significance. Specifically within the Indian community, it is a very common and natural thing that when the grandparents get old they move in with either a daughter or a son or have medium term stays with all their children on a rotational basis. There is care from both sides. Grandparents are actively contributing to the home in various ways. They are involved with the children and there is a general feeling of having people around who care about your well-being.
In today's world, there needs to be a double-income to survive and educate your kids. Having grandma at home also helps working mom and dad.
As grandparents grow older and need more physical help their children and grandchildren are there to give them all the support they need. They live a full and purposeful life right until they take their last breath. They are loved and cared for and never have to feel lonely.
I lived a life like this with my grandma. I still have fond memories of the old stories she told me and all the culture and tradition she passed on to me. I would not choose to have it any other way.

My husband, by comparison, barely visited his grandparents on the maternal side. They were strangers that lived in an old age home. The first and last time I saw them was a month before they died and we then attended their funeral. What their everyday was like I will never know.

On the paternal side, I insisted that we visit every weekend as we lived in the same town. Grandma there was tired of living alone and desperate for it all to be over and done with even when I entered the picture. She felt that she was cursed with good health and didn't think that purely wishing herself dead would take the pain of loneliness away. She lived at home and enjoyed good health until she died at the age of 95, truly as desired by the health policy.

Many may argue that this is not the norm. I have, however, witnessed far too much of this in Norway to agree. It seems to me to be more the norm than an exception.

What is so wonderful about living such a long life then? Why is it such a proud fact that we have such longevity figures? Do we know what this means for the elderly on an everyday basis? Do families here forget that they have a social and familial responsibility that falls outside the health policy of the country?

Does having an excess of wealth and the ability to provide such resources to the nation also have a negative impact on the social responsibilities of the individual? Meaning, has it become such that because we belive that our elderly are economically provided for we don't have to worry about anything else at all?

To some degree I even understand euthanasia. I am not saying that I advocate it, just that I understand it!

Skills and aimless university students...

On my way to work today, listening to the radio in my car, I got to think of something that I have noticed while living here in the UK. Whenever there's talk of education and training, it is very much focused on acquiring skills. Using this word in the way it is used here, it seems that it is a strong emphasis on acquiring very palpable, tangible skills that can immediately be put into use in a work situation.

Maybe it is just me, coming from the more academic end of education in Norway, but it seems we do not have that strong an emphasis on actually getting palpable skills that we can use in a work situation. Going to the university in Norway, this aspect of education was very far back in the minds of myself and most of my study buddies. Hearing all the talk of skills here now, I kind of feel that I should have been much more aware of that during my study years. Wandering about in the corporate world, I do not feel that my skills are particularly marketable.

Norway's got some very good financing schemes for education, and anyone that wants to can have any education they want - given that they fulfill the enrollment criteria. This easy access to getting the education you want leads many students to take into account their own interests more than what would be sure to lead to a job later. According to some numbers I read a while ago, Norway's got more than 200.000 students in higher education at any time. That is a pretty high number for such a small country.

There is of course nothing wrong with going into an education that interests you. There is much to be said in defense of that. But there is a limit to how many historians, sociologists and creative artists we can use. I think that if more young students really thought through their choice of education, we would have seen a change in what they do study. A lot of them would have chosen another type of education than going to the university altogether. Many of the students hanging around at the universities are there either because their buddies are there or because they really don't know what which education they want to get. Instead of wandering aimlessly around the university in search of some interesting lectures, it might have been better for many of those to choose an education that would get them some hard skills that could be put into use in actual work.

For myself, it's not so much that I regret going to the university as such. On the whole, I think that was the right choice for me. But if I would have started over and done it again, I would have kept much more focus on making my degree more marketable by choosing more carefully the subjects of which it is made up.

Turning with the populist wind on immigration?

FrP (The Progress Party) has steadily gained on the opinion polls in the past years. According to some polls, it is now larger than Ap (The Labour Party). With the growth of FrP, the other parties will inevitably have to take it more seriously than what has been the case in the past. The rise of FrP has long been something that has kept many an Ap-politician awake at night.

There are two ways that the parties on the center-left stage can respond to the ascent of FrP. For one, they can try to capture voters by launching policies that resemble the most popular policies on the right. Alternatively, they can further emphasize their left-of-center position, and try to educate the public of the follies of many of FrP's suggestions.

Although e.g. the leader of SV (the Socialist Left Party), Kristin Halvorsen, has stuck her head far down in the ground and claims the opposite, it seems that the population is drifting right in their support for political parties. The opinion polls show this trend quite clearly.

If the growth of the parties on the right could pull the other parties slightly towards the right, that could in my mind be a positive thing. For example, if it could soften up the stiff resistance to anything that smacks of privatization, I would welcome that very much. That would not be the case if it happens in the more populistic areas, like immigration or spending of the oil fund money. And that is precisely my fear, and something we might have seen signs of recently with Ap toughening up it's stance on immigration.

Even though we need to shoulder our responsibility when it comes to accepting refugees from conflict-ridden areas, there also needs to be limits to immigration. We cannot simply open our borders up and accept anyone and everyone. A small society like Norway simply does not have the capacity to deal with too many immigrants and refugees. The last couple of years, Norway have received from 5.000 to 6.500 asylum seekers annually. Recent research suggests that asylum seekers, especially young ones, are being very well integrated and that they are not any unreasonable burden on the Norwegian society (i.e. welfare state). This confirms that Norway is perfectly capable of absorbing this number of refugees.

Our Prime Minister's tightening up of immigration rules was based on estimates that we could be faced with a more than doubling of the number of asylum seekers next year. It could be debated whether we would be able to responsibly absorb that many. But if this is a trend towards a more populistic line from Ap, that would be very, very sad. To abandon responsible policies is not good at all, and if Ap and the other serious political parties start doing so, that is not good for anyone. It should be left alone to FrP to try to score cheap political points by suggesting irresponsible and/or reckless policies.

The Islamic Council and Gays, continued

This post is a follow-up on two of my previous posts, The Norwegian Islamic Council and Gays, and The Christian People's Party and Gays.

The most recent developments on this issue is that the leader of the Norwegian Islamic Council, Senaid Kobilica, has called upon the Norwegian Imams and asked them to be open to talking with muslim homosexuals. According to an interview with Dagsavisen, "the Islamic Council do not want homosexuals, whether they be muslim or not, to be living in the closet. They are living in Norway, a democratic country, and are free to come out." Also, he has pointed out that the Norwegian Islamic Council are against capital punishment for homosexuality in Norway, but do not want to involve itself with legislation in other states.

Although Kobilica still holds the view that it is incompatible to be a practicing muslim and also to be a practicing homosexual, this is uplifting, and it is a step in the right direction. It is also an example that the Islamic community very much is capable of debate on defining issues. Let's just hope the debate and developments continue in the right direction.

We should also remind ourselves that a similar debate has been going on and is still going on in the Christian Church community in Norway. There is still a strong resistance towards letting homosexuals occupy religious positions in the Church. To me, there is no principal difference between the Church and the Islamic Council in this respect, at least when it comes to their stance on homosexuals in Norway.

Being an expat with a student loan

Norway is a rich country. We got it good. Compared to people from many other countries, most Norwegians are fairly well off. Some would even say loaded. We have a high living standard and the wages we earn must be among the highest in the world. Naturally, those high wages also drive the prices up, causing the costs of living to be among the highest in the world as well.

When I decided to leave my cozy, protected life in Norway just over a year ago, I guess I did it at least partly because I wanted to experience something different. One thing is for sure - I did not do it because I thought I was going to earn more money than I did. Having ventured into the ruthless world of cut-throat capitalism without any obviously marketable skills, I now feel the effects of that particular choice.

Every three months, I get a nasty message in my online banking site inbox; "Your quarterly payment is now due." An ugly lump of hard-earned money must leave my rapidly diminishing bank account. That really hurts. Living in Norway, I didn't really notice those payments to the degree I now do, as my salary was almost double my current one. And also, living up north, I had a sizable write-off that the Government gives as an incentive for people to settle up there. So the proportion of my salary I now pay is several times higher. Not good.

I guess we are very lucky in the sense that everyone in Norway has got the opportunity to get an education, no matter the economic situation of our parents. But considering the size of the student loan that we have to amass to get that education, in a sense it kind of limits our choices when it comes to work later on. We have to find a reasonably well paid job to be able to pay off the student loan.

The Christian People's Party and Gays

The politician Ole Henrik Grønn in the Sarpsborg Christian People's Party (KrF) resigned his position with the party last week. His resignation is due to the stark criticism he has been at the receiving end for because of his sexual orientation. According to the leader of the local party, Marit Sverresen, Grønn's position in the party is incompatible with living in a relationship with another man.

As I stated in my August 17 post, The Norwegian Islamic Council and Gays, reactionary attitudes are not at all reserved for Muslims or any other religious faith. It is a sliding scale, of course, and barring certain people for membership in a political party is not the same as punishing them with execution. The similarities are nevertheless obvious.

If we want to force the Norwegian Islamic Council to hold certain views and values that we find politically correct, why not also impose the same on our political parties? Anything else is in my opinion pure hypocrisy.

The Bear and Us Revisited

With Russia's invasion of Georgia, we are again reminded of our neighbor's aggressive streaks. And those who thought that Post-Putin Russia would be much different are proved wrong.

Since the end of the Cold War, the military bases in Northern Norway have been steadily built down, and the number of troop stationed has been reduced. Suddenly that build-down might not seem like such a good idea. After having downsized our military capabilities, it will take a lot longer to rebuild them than the downsizing took. It will also potentially run into greater political resistance than if we had maintained them, and the signals it will send to our neighbors (i.e mainly Russia) will be very strong.

But the recent developments should illustrate that we do need a military defense. We can not show goodwill by abandoning the few means we do have to protect ourselves, and naively hope that our neighbor will behave as good in the future that it has so far. The Soviet days are over, and so is the Cold War, thank God. But Russia is still Russia, and it has shown an ugly urge to make up for lost prestige by bullying and intimidating its neighbors. And what's worse is that these policies have broad support in the Russian population.

Although we should never give up our efforts to maintain and further improve the good relationship we have with Russia, we also need to keep firmly in mind that our defense should be closely tied to NATO and the West.

Of course, the danger that we might get into a conflict with Russia is not imminent, and the difference between Norway and Georgia in this respect is vast. But the remoteness of war has been misjudged before; at the 100-year anniversary for our constitution in 1914, the Prime Minister Gunnar Knudsen described the international political sky as as clear as it hadn't been in many, many years. A few months later the entire world was thrown into the worst conflict the human race had seen. So even though the prospects for conflict might be remote, the risks of ignoring them are potentially huge.

The Norwegian Islamic Council and Gays

The Norwegian minister of social equality, Anniken Huitfeldt, threatened to withdraw the goverment financial support for the Norwegian Islamic Council last week, after the council showed itself unwilling to mark its distance towards capital punishment for homosexuality. The council is awaiting advice from the European Fatwa Council before they will take a stand on the issue of capital punishment for homosexuality. The Norwegian Islamic Council receives around half a million Norwegian Crowns (appr. 62.500€) annually in government support.

One might discuss the issue of whether the State should give any financial support at all religious institutions at all, even the State Church. Especially if the Norwegian state purports to be a secular state, that would be a relevant topic to discuss. And since we do subsidize the State Church, why not support other faiths, especially the ones that a large part of the Norwegian population belongs to? Personally, I am a bit skeptical to the idea that we should spend public money on religious organizations, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or anything else, even when it comes to such small amounts as 500.000 NOK.

But since we do in fact subsidize religious institutions with government money, that leads to the question of to what extent it should be expected that the recipients of financial support aligns itself to what is acceptable viewpoints. You could argue that the Islamic Council is free to express whatever viewpoints it choose, as long as it respects Norwegian legislation. On the other hand, its viewpoints might influence the attitudes of its members, and that as long as they receive government support, they need to adhere to some basic values that we base our society on. In either case, to abolish any kind of financial support for such institutions would eliminate that problem altogether.

The issue of the Islamic Council's stance on homosexuality has raised a hefty amount of debate. Reading through the comments on some of the articles in various online newspapers, I must say that I am slightly taken aback by a large part of those comments. Judging from the comments, the level of antagonism towards the Islamic Council itself and towards Muslims in general seems to be quite high. Now, it's probably mostly those that are emotionally involved that bother to post their comments, so its fair to argue that those do not give a representative overview of the Norwegian people's general opinion. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is a great deal of animosity towards the Muslim population because of this issue.

I find it truly tasteless to express the view that homosexuality should be punished by death - just as much as it is tasteless to express the views that Jews should be annihilated, that women's rightful place is in the kitchen, or that people of different skin colors are of lesser intellect than whites. Still, not all, even most, of Norwegian Muslims hold the view that homosexuals should be stoned to death. And we also need to be aware that many Christians hold fundamentalist views on many issues, such as homosexuality. Religious texts are after all interpreted in the context of our society. If you read the Bible to it's literal meaning (or what you believe it's literal meaning to be), you could find many a place where it will be incompatible with our modern society. The same goes for the Quran.

That homosexuality is to be punished by death, or that women should be wrapped up in burkas, or that a sister who does something the brother does not approve of needs to be killed in order that the family not lose their honor is just abhorrent. But you could argue - and I do that - that such viewpoints are more the expressions and norms of a culture than the religion as such. It is perfectly possible to be a liberal and progressive Muslim, just as much as it is possible to be a liberal and progressive Christian. Still, there is no doubt that some in the muslim community hold views that are unmodern and barbaric.

The Western culture have some values that we should be very proud of, such as equality, freedom of speech, and tolerance for others that are different from ourselves. Those are values that we should stand up for and fight for. And we should try our best to spread and foster those values in our society. We can punish people who break the law, but to have the "wrong" values is not a punishable offense in itself - we cannot force people to hold the "right" values. That is actually one of our values - that people can believe what they will. We can - and should - try to convince others that our set of values on the whole are right and good, but that needs be done with reason, debate and open discussion, not by trying to deny others the right to hold values that we ourselves believe are wrong.

Rollo the Viking

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about Scandinavian Vikings and their influence on the British Isles. In that post, I mentioned the great viking Rollo or Gange-Rolf, without going into any detail about him. I'll pick up on that here. Given that Rollo is the ancestor of among others the present-day British royal family, he is arguably one of the most influential Scandinavians of all time. He was also one of the Norsemen causing the most trouble on the European continent.

The exact origin of Rollo is a matter of dispute, and has been subject to heated debate between Norwegian and Danish historians. According to some Danish historians as well as the Norman historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Rollo was a Danish viking, son of a certain King Erik. According to the Icelandic historian Snorre Sturlason, he was son of the Earl of Møre in Western Norway, Ragnvald Øysteinsson. As the good Norwegian I am, I will go with Snorre's account, although I acknowledge that it is probably impossible to settle the matter of his origin.

As many others of his contemporaries, Rolf was only a young boy when he participated on his first viking raids. Only 13 years old he would take part in raids on the areas eastwards, around the Baltic Sea. The young Rolf kept participating in these raids for several years, until in his early 20s his group did a raid in the Viken-area, i.e. the area around the Oslo-fjord. King Harald Fairhair had explicitly prohibited the Norse from raiding inland, and this raid led to Rolf being exiled from Norway. The fact that Rolf was the son of the Earl of Møre, Ragnvald Øysteinsson, one of King Harald Fairhair's closest friends and allies, did nothing to stop Harald from exiling him. Neither did the pleading of Rolf's mother to the King.

After being exiled from Norway, Rolf traveled to the Orkneys and the Hebrides. In 885 Rolf joined the attacks on the area around Paris under the Danish viking leader Sigfred. Sigfred and his company must have posed a grave danger for the settlements in this area, for they were being bought off and paid tribute several times to cease the raiding. However, the raids lasted for several years, and Rolf slowly made himself chieftain of these vikings.

Only in 911 were Rolf's forces defeated by Charles the Simple at the Battle of Chartres. Instead of turning Rolf away, Charles decided to make Rolf his ally. With the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rolf pledged allegiance to the King, who gave him the areas that became known as Normandy. Rollo, as he was known from now on, would be Charles' first bulwark against any other vikings launching attacks on the Frankish areas.

Contrary to his pledges to Charles, Rollo did not stop his raids. From their base in Rouen, Rollo and his chieftains launched several raids on the surrounding area, constantly expanding their territory. In time they came to control a large area of what is now western France, their territory reaching as far west as the the river Vire. A few years before his death, Rollo passed on his fiefdom to his son William Longsword in 829.

Rollo must have been an imposing figure - according to Snorre, he was so large that no horse could carry him. Although Snorre no doubt was exaggerating this quite a bit, Rolf's physical size earned him the nickname of Gangerolf or Rolf the Walker. He also seems to have been a very proud person. According to legend, when he was to kiss King Charles' foot as part of the Treaty of of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rolf flat out refused to do this. When Charles extended his foot to him, Rolf ordered one of his men to kiss it in his place. Rolf's warrior then lifted Charles foot up to his mouth, causing the king to fall over backwards.

Some reflections on Norwegian farming

The other day, I read an article in Dagsavisen about the different views of the Norwegian political parties with respect to the Norwegian agriculture. The Right wants to stop most subsidies to Norwegian farmers and thus force them to compete with agricultural products from abroad. The Left, on the other side, wants to keep the extensive subsidies and protect the farmers from foreign competition.

I tend to hold the view that the Norwegian farming is not competitive, and that we should not artificially keep it alive with high levels of subsidies and high tariff-barriers. A near arctic environment can hardly be said to be ideal for farming. Why should the taxpayers pay the salaries for a few individuals who want to cling on to something that's not at all able to compete with agriculture in other more suitable areas?

Also, it would be much fairer towards developing countries, e.g. in Africa, if we would truly open ourselves to real free-trade instead of building tariff-barriers to keep those countries from selling their produce to us. That could enable many poor farmers in developing countries to build better lives for themselves. It is inherently unfair the way that we are shutting these farmers out of our markets, and insisting that they need to open up for us to sell our products to them.

In addition to that, the world would be better off if we were to concentrate on areas where we are able to compete, and let countries with suitable climates concentrate on agriculture. That is what is called comparative advantage - we should all do what we do or can do best, and then trade fairly with one another. That will lead to products of better quality, made faster, and in greater amounts.

But - and this is a very weighty but - there are two other factors in the equation. Firstly, there is a food shortage coming. With growing populations, some have estimated that global food production needs to be doubled or tripled in the next 40-50 years. That taken into account, it might not be so desirable to pull the plug on the Norwegian agriculture and let it die. Maybe, in the long run, it would be wise to keep it alive for a while.

The other thing is that if the global warming continues, which in all probability it will, this would lead to the Norwegian climate becoming more suitable for farming than it is now. And thus, in a few years, the Norwegian farming might become a lot more competitive than what is now the case.

I guess the bottom line is that, as with many other issues, this is a difficult one, and it's not easy to say what's the right thing to do. As one of the richest countries in the world, such mercantilistic policies are in any case simply unethical. And the subsidies and tariff-barriers need to be lowered, even though that means that some farmers will be forced out of business. Farms being shut down is not an irreversible process. When or if the Norwegian climate will become more favorable, agriculture will inevitably grow even though it temporarily shrinks.

Some thoughts on alcohol..

It can be no doubt that the Norwegian alcohol laws are quite strict. Alcohol is generally very expensive, it is only sold at certain times, and stronger alcohols such as spirits and even wine are sold only through special alcohol outlets (Vinmonopolet). Also, in traffic, there is a zero-tolerance towards alcohol.

This stands out in stark contrast to the country where I currently live, the UK. Here alcohol is sold any time, at low prices, and even heavily discounted. Very often, the person behind the counter in the corner shop will inform you that there is a 8 cans of beer for 6 pounds offer if you pick a less cheap alternative from the shelf. And what's more; you will often see people getting behind the steering wheel after a drink or two.

A couple of years ago, I spent a year in Germany as an exchange student. During that time, I got into the habit of drinking wine with my dinner at night. Coming back to Norway, I got a little annoyed when I "re-discovered" that wine is not sold in regular grocery-shops. To get yourself a bottle of wine for dinner, you'll have to go to the alcohol-outlet. I do still think that is a little over the top; why making getting a bottle of wine such a hassle? But having seen all the problems with alcohol here in the UK, I think the Norwegian alcohol legislation is mainly a good thing. There is a clear correlation between price and availability, and consumption - making alcohol less readily available reduces consumption. Alcohol (and stronger alcohols in particular) should be rather expensive and not too easy to get hold of.

Of course, alcohol abuse is a complex problem, both on an individual level and sociologically. As the drunkard Jeppe said in Ludvig Holbergs play Jeppe on the Hill, "Everyone says that Jeppe drinks, but no one asks why". To be sure, even with very strict alcohol legislation, a lot of Norwegians get pissed out of their brains too. But compared to the Brits, that's Sunday school. And it certainly would not help to reduce alcohol consumption to make it cheaper and more available.

Another aspect of it is that the legislation is helping to shape the norms and attitudes towards alcohol. For me, it would be almost unthinkable to get behind the wheel and drive after even only one beer. I think that goes for most Norwegians. Drinking and driving does not go together, full stop. That attitude is greatly helped by the strict non-tolerance laws when it comes to alcohol and driving.

I do not mean to present Norwegians as particularly good drinkers - we certainly are not. Many Norwegians drink too much and too often. The steep prices on alcohol (particularly in bars and discos) makes us drink more before we hit the town, so that we won't have to drink so much after going out. This of course just makes us drunker earlier in the evening. But having seen the attitudes towards alcohol here in the UK have made me a little more wary towards the problems associated with alcohol, and I would not want Norway to resemble the UK any more than we already do in this respect.

Scandinavian Gentlemen?

In this post, I would like to pick up the lead from one of my May posts, "Norwegian "politeness"", and continue on that. The other day, I had a little discussion with some of my colleagues at work about gentlemen. It might be said that we Scandinavians are not truly behaving like gentlemen, at least not in the classical sense - e.g. like a Frenchman. We often don't help the women put on their coats, hold their chairs, open the doors for them, etc. - all the things that would be expected from the classical gentleman.

Personally, I think the 1970s did a great deal of harm to the concept of being a gentleman in Norway. That probably holds true in some other countries as well. The 70s were of course a time of great liberation for women, and we (both women and men) should be very thankful of that. Still, the gentleman in the classical sense was largely sacrificed on the altar of equality at that time.

In the biological sense, the reason women need men at all after the act of conceiving their child is protection. Men are stronger than women, and particularly when the woman is pregnant, they are better equipped to gather food for her and care for her and her offspring. And when the family was faced with danger, the man is of course better equipped to ward off those dangers. To me, the classical gentleman embodies a lot of that strength and that ability to take care of his woman, albeit in a slightly more sophisticated form than the neanderthal club-wielding brute.

In the 70s, with the women's liberation, women seemed to not need men to take care of them any more. They could get jobs of their own, earn their own money, and take care of themselves. When men were trying to take care of them, that was seen as reactionary and as if they wanted to turn the clock back to the time when women were chained to the kitchen - which was not necessarily true.

It seems to me that the Norwegians (especially women) see equality as being the same. Instead of cherishing the difference between the sexes, we want men and women to be the same, and to be doing the same things. We want the same number of female truck drivers as male, the equal number of construction workers, electricians, computer technicians etc., and we want the same number of female and male nurses and kindergarden teachers.

Thanks to the developments from the 1970s, the Norwegian society is one of a very large degree of equality between the sexes, but at the same time one that does not seem to appreciate the virtue of gentlemanliness. Although I do appreciate the fact that men and women do have equal opportunities, I think it is a little sad that being a gentleman is not really something that is valued in our culture. Personally, I think we should celebrate the fact that men and women are different. Of equal value and with equal opportunities, but still different.

There is nothing wrong with men taking care of their women and children. Still, I think it is true for a lot of men that our culture have not instilled in us a sense that this is an important value (living with a French woman, this is something I get pointed out all the time). Our women are capable of taking care of themselves, so what do they need us to do that for? What do they need us to hold the door for them, or hold their coat, or bring them flowers? Of course they don't need us to, but how nice is it not when we do?

Tom Waits rejected by us?!?

This summer, Tom Waits is doing a European tour, which doesn't happen all too often. And Oslo was originally planned as one of his stops. But alas! he was rejected! How about that?! Isn't that just grand? One of the worlds most famous, and - in my opinion - greatest artists was rejected when he finally had us on his program. I want to cry.. The last time he held a concert in Norway was 23 years ago, in 1985.

Tom Waits is a bit particular about which venues he plays at. At his planned concert in Oslo, he wanted to play at the new opera building in Bjørvika, which he found suitable. But as the Opera needed to do some maintenance in preparation for Porgy and Bess, which will be on stage from August 9, and thus could not find any time for Waits to play.

The building of the opera has been criticized as a cultural elite-project which would only benefit a few. To its defense, the opera has as one of its objectives to focus on rock, jazz, and world music, particularly in the summer. In accordance with this objective it would have been appropriate to do everything possible for mr Waits to hold his concert at the opera. Waits is hugely popular in Norway, and him playing in Norway (after 23 years) would have been appreciated by many.

As a curiosity, I'd like to mention the "Tom Waits race". Every spring, hundreds of women aged 12 and up gather in the Frogner Park in Oslo to take part in the Grete Waitz-race, instigated by the Norwegian runner Grete Waitz. As a male alternative to this very healthy and wholesome race, the Tom Waits race was established. This race is mainly a pub-to-pub crawl in Oslo, taking part at the same time as the Grete Waitz race. During the race, the bars and pubs on the route will of course play mainly Tom Waits tunes.

The Bear and Us - Russia and Norway

This week, the Norwegian foreign minister, mr Jonas Gahr Støre, held a speech on Russo-Norwegian relations at the Norwegian Insitute for Foreign Policy (NUPI). The main points in his speech was that the relationship between Norway and Russia has never been as good as now, but that it could and should get even better. Russia is on the right track, but the authoritarian tendencies are worrying. We do have a close dialogue with Russia, but we need to stay critical in our talks with our neighbor. But even though our relationship with Russia is improving, we are firmly rooted in the West and this will not change.

Mr Støre has proved himself as a great ambassador for Norway in capacity as foreign minister, and he deserves all the praise he gets for his job. He shows nuanced and well informed views, and he is not afraid of standing up for the Norwegian interests.

As he says, we need to have a good relationship with our eastern Neighbor, and we certainly do, at least on the "popular" level. This is especially true for the areas of Norway closest to the Russian border, such as Kirkenes, where even street signs are written both in Norwegian and Russian. But it also hold true for other parts. We do have a large Russian immigrant population, which is very well integrated. In some areas in Finnmark (northern Norway), Women with Russian background (mostly first-generation immigrants), make up almost 6% of the total female population in working age (Sør-Varanger 5.7% and Båtsfjord 5.8% in 2007). The male immigrant population is somewhat lower; on average it is 51% of the female one.

On the state-level (foreign policy), the relationship is good as well. We do have a good dialogue, and commercial and cultural exchange. But we do need to show some caution. The Russian state certainly is thumping its chest and showing some muscles, trying to build its reputation and self-esteem after the fall of the Soviet state. In is speech, Støre said that he has understanding for this. To a certain extent, I agree, but we should not accept the more worrying examples of this, such as the treatment Russia gave Ukraine and Georgia in 2007-2008, when it stopped exports of gas in the middle of the winter.

In the arctic area, we do have huge areas of sea where the border lines are not clearly drawn. With the recent findings of large oil and particularly gas fields here, this is an area of potential conflict with Russia. Little Norway do not want to get into a muscle-flexing contest with the Russian Bear here. So, as Støre pointed out, we need both to improve the already good relationship we have with Russia, as well as keep ourselves rooted in the West. A good relationship will minimize the risk of getting into some sort of conflict here, and being firmly rooted in the West (including NATO) will provide a deterrent as well as help if, in the future, we should need it - God forbid.

***

By the way, this is my 50th blog post, so I will allow myself a little congratulation. I started this blog last August, while I was living in Prague. Since then, I have more or less regularly been posting on various Norway-related subjects. I have certainly enjoyed it, and I will keep it going as long as I still do, which hopefully will be a long time. So, thanks for all the comments so far, and hopefully you will pop by as regularly as I post.

The kicksled!

The other day, me and my girlfriend visited some friends of ours who had just come back from a little holiday in Norway (they even brought us some nice goat's cheese and bamsemums.) They are planning on moving to Norway not too far into the future, and while visiting, I had a brief look in a book they had lying around - Living in Norway: A Practical Guide. This seemed like an excellent reference for anyone planning on going to Norway, almost like the Huey, Dewey and Louie's Junior Woodchucks' Manual - it seemed to have an entry for anything you'd want to know, from car registration to dress codes to marriage rules.

One of the entry's I noticed was about the kicksled (spark or sparkstøtting in Norwegian). The kicksled is basically a sled made of a light wooden frame with metal runners (see picture). You ride it standing on the metal runners, holding the handle bars on top of the wooden frame or chair, pushing/kicking with one leg to move forward. On the right surface, you can easily get to speeds of 15-20 km without too much effort. And you can even place your kid, friend or groceries on top of the "chair".

Although it's not very common in larger cities (mostly due to the fact that the surface rarely is suitable), it is very common in more rural areas. Where I come from, almost every family has got one of these sleds. Everybody uses them, from old grandmas to little kids. It's very handy for grandma to go around with in the winter (she can place her shopping bag on the front and support herself on it so she won't fall on slippery winter surfaces), and loads of fun for kids to race downhill in the streets with. And it gets you around a lot faster than walking with not much more effort.

The history of the kicksled is a bit blurry, but it's got a recorded history of some 140 years - it was first mentioned in a Swedish newspaper around 1870. At that time the runners were wooden. The first metal runners, which made the sled a lot more flexible, came in the 1900s. From the 1890s on, the sled has been used for races, which it is very suitable for. In the 1990s kicksled racing was revived in Finland, with races up to 100 km and racers averaging 30 km/h.

A die-hard myth - the paper clip..

Since I recently did a blogpost recently on the cheese slicer, I wanted to write something about another wonderful Norwegian invention, namely the paper clip. According to our childhood learning, this is one of many Norwegian inventions that we can be proud of. But, alas, as I did some quick research, I soon discovered - to my great shock - that the paper clip is not a Norwegian invention, at least not in the sense we long have claimed.

According to the myth, the paper clip was invented by Johan Vaaler at the end of the 19th century, was patented in 1899, and soon spread to the rest of the world. This has been a very strongly held belief in Norway, and as late as 2005 the Norwegian lexicon Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian biographical lexicon) presented Johan Vaaler as the inventor of the paper clip. And in 1989 the business school BI in Sandvika, Oslo erected a monument of the paper clip in honour of mr Vaaler. In fact the myth has not only been believed in Norway, but has held some ground all over the world, most strongly it seems, in the USA.

Actually, the first patented paper clip, was by an American by the name of Samuel B. Fay in 1867. The next one, which is very similar to the most common current one (as seen in the top picture), was by Erlman J. Wright in 1877.

The one invented by Johan Vaaler was significantly less practical than the one we use today, as can be seen in the illustration on the right. It did not have the extra bend that makes the paper clip so easy to use. Because of the lack of that extra bend on the wire, it was harder to actually put on the pieces of paper to be held together and at the same time did not hold them together as strongly as Wright's design. Still, he got his invention patented. For obvious reasons, it never became any commercial success - or any other kind for that matter.

For more on the paper clip and the Norwegian paper clip myth, check out the Norwegian or the English version of Wikipedia.

Renewable fuels

In a new report, the Norwegian Energy Council recommends that Norway build three to five new offshore windmill parks in the next 10-15 years. The EU has stated it's goal that 20% of energy consumption in Europe should be from renewable sources within 2020, which opens a huge market. The Energy Council recommends that Norway capture around 20% of this market.

Personally, I think this a splendid idea. In a long-term perspective, we have no other choice than going over from carbon-based fuels to renewable ones. It is a choice of doing that or perish.

Norway has got both the money and the talent to be able to get ahead in this sector. In December 1969 we were blessed with finding oil in the North Sea. Prudent oil-policies has left us with a sovereign wealth fund worth from 2.000 to 2.800 billion NOK (roughly 200-280 billion british pounds). And due to the budgetary rule, this is a fund that will not be eaten away any time soon. It is a fund that will secure a relatively bright future for Norway in all foreseeable future. Oil has also left us with know-how that can be transferred to off-shore wind-power. We have after all been working off-shore for around 40 years with oil.

Being a nation that can thank our wealth to a large extent to oil, it would also be the ethical thing to do. After having amassed huge amounts of money on a type of energy that is having a detrimental effect on the globe, it would be the most ethically correct thing to use some of that on research and development of types of energy that is more environmentally friendly.

Sweet brothers? Norwegian-Swedish relations...

Commenting on my blogpost on meatballs, Renny jokingly said that he hates when people mix up the Norwegian meatballs with the "Swedish substitute." In that comment lies a little trace of a peculiar neighbourhood-relation with our "Sweet brother." I'm sure it's not unique for Norway and Sweden, but the relationship between us is quite fascinating.

In any Norwegian joke where Swedes are present, they are portrayed as the dumb ones, coming up with one stupidity after another. There is one joke where two Swedes are on holiday with a Norwegian guy who for some reason went missing. In the police office the two Swedes are asked to describe the Norwegian. The two Swedes think long and hard, then one of them says, "yeah I know - he's got two holes in his bum!" The policeman, who thinks that was a somewhat unusual description ask "and how do you know that then?!" "Because everytime we go somewhere, people are saying: There's that Norwegian with the two assholes!"

So, that's generally the Swedish stereotype. The Danes are not portrayed as dumb, but still not quite up to the Norwegian intellectual level. Finns are not either dumb nor smart, but are portrayed as hard drinkers with a insatiable sexual appetite. Icelanders are generally absent from Norwegian jokes.

It's not only in jokes that the Swedes are the dumb ones. One needs only think of the song "Jag är inta sjuk, jag är bare svensk" (I'm not ill, just Swedish). And there is something comic about how sports journalists seek up Swedish sportsmen for interviewing every time the Norwegians place first, just to rub it in that we won and not they.

Historically, it is at first glance a little strange that the Swedes, and not the Danes are the ones we want to make out to be the stupid ones. Norway has been under both Swedish and Danish yoke, but definitely the longest under Danish. And I dare say that the Danish period was the worst for Norway. Some has even dubbed the period of Danish rule "The night of four hundred years." So, from that perspective, the Danes are the ones that really should have been at the receiving end of our jokes.

Still, the period when Norway was in union with Sweden from 1814 to 1905 was a period of national awakening in Norway - the period when Norwegian-ness took hold in the people's mind. So - although I do not have empirical evidence for this assumption, I do think that the seed of the current-day relationship with Swedes stem from that era. It might also be that we have a eeny-weeny little bit of inferiority complex to Swedes - the Swedes being twice the size of Norway, it was a regional superpower in the Vasa-era (ca. 1521-1654), and more successful in their industry (IKEA, Volvo, Saab, etc.) than us..

Still, at the end of the day, even though we make all kinds of joke about Swedes, on a deeper level, there is no bad feeling between our two countries. The relationship is harmonious and friendly, greatly helped by cultural and linguistic similarities. But as with all relationships between brothers, there is bound to be some competition, and brotherly love is after all.. well, brotherly love..

The wonderful cheese slicer..

I don't think there is a single Norwegian kitchen where you cannot find a cheese slicer. It's such an integral part of our Norwegian food-culture, that we sometimes cannot understand how people can live without one, let alone live without missing one.

Whenever I have lived outside of Norway, I have had great trouble finding a cheese slicer, which at first came as a great surprise. How is it possible that this great piece of kitchen equipment is so hard to find? It is possible, but you have to search really hard and long. I remember that I did manage to locate one in Germany once. I haven't been able yet to find one in Liverpool, but I have great hope that I might find it at IKEA. The Swedes are also aware of the existence of the wonderful cheese slicer.

The cheese slicer is in fact a Norwegian invention, and of quite recent date. It was invented in 1925 by a carpenter by the name of Thor Bjørklund from Lillehammer. Since then it has become a much-used utensil in every Norwegian kitchen, but surprisingly not achieved much recognition abroad. With all due modesty - it is a great invention.

The virtues of the cheese slicer are many, but the most important ones are that it cuts the slices to perfect thickness, and it's ability to bring out the flavour and aroma of the cheese. You can of course get cheese pre-cut into slices from the shop, but that does not compare at all to the taste and flavour you get when it is freshly sliced. The cheese slicer works best with a slightly hard cheese, like a good and nice gouda. Obviously it doesn't work at all with soft cheeses like camembert or brie.

Mom's meatballs

In Norwegian colloquial language, "mom's meatballs" is a term for everything that is good about home. When you come home to your parents, you'll get everything you're used to from you were a kid, and of course, nobody makes meatballs like your own mom. As you may know, the term "Swedish meatballs" can mean something else as well, but I won't discuss that right now.

Anyway, since I came to Liverpool, I've tried a couple of times to make meatballs myself. And although they maybe didn't come up to mom's standards, I thought the were quite good.

Next to "Fårikål", a dish basically made out of cabbage, mutton and pepper, meatballs is top contender for the title of Norwegian national dish. They have a top position in Sweden as well, and maybe the Swedish ones are more famous abroad than the Norwegian ones.

The meatballs are traditionally served with boiled potatoes, pea-stew, cowberries and brown sauce, but they will go well with a whole host of other side dishes. I have added a recipe for brown sauce below, but try them out with a red sauce and pasta as well. The recipes will serve 4 portions.

Here are the recipes:

Meatballs recipe

600g minced beef
2 eggs
2 tbs of flour
1/2 dl milk
1 finely chopped onion
3 chopped cloves of garlic
1 ts (teaspoon) salt
1 ts pepper
1/2 ts cumin
1/2 ts basil
1 ts oregano
2 ts rosemary

Mix all the ingredients except flour and milk in a large bowl. Add milk and flour alternatively, a little at a time. Roll small golfball-sized balls. Fry in olive oil on medium heat until well done.

Brown sauce recipe

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1/2 l beef stock
1/2 ts soy sauce
salt
pepper

Melt and fry butter in a frying pan (preferrably an iron pan) until well browned. Add the stock, a little at a time, and stir in between. Let simmer for about 10 minutes. Add soy sauce for colour, and salt and pepper according to taste.

Enjoy!