Norway’s generally polite political system was up in arms this week, after the mayor of the small and historic mountain town of Lom literally declared war on officials at the higher county level. At issue are Innlandet county’s proposed and highly controversial closures of six high schools that he and other critics claim will “kill off” entire communities.
“This is full war,” declared Lom Mayor Kristian Frisvold of the small, locally oriented Bygdelista (BL) party at a local town council meeting Monday evening. “That means we don’t need to be impartial any longer, it means we can go after people (county politicians), it means that anything goes.”
Frisvold told other town council members at the public meeting that he already “had contacted journalists and asked them to dig around members of Fylkestinget (the county council) from the Labour, Conservative and Greens parties,” and to “go after dirt.” Frisvold then vowed that he would use any “dirt” they came up with against the county leaders personally. Lom’s mayor also asked his fellow local council members that if they had any “dirt” that could be used to discredit those resorting to the high school closures, he would appreciate them sharing it.
His remarks came just days after Norway’s justice minister from the rural-oriented Center Party had also spoken out against the proposed closures of six high schools spread around the large Innlandet County, in Lom, Dombås, Dokka, Flisa, Skarnes and Sønsterud. Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl objects strongly to the school closures, and claimed that the Labour Party politician who sided with the Conservatives and the Greens to form a majority county government in Innlandet had “prostituted himself.”
Mehl, whose Center Party shares government power with Labour at the state level, had no regrets for her own harsh words early Tuesday morning. “I can’t see that anything else has happened,” Mehl said live on NRK’s national radio and TV. She noted that Labour in Innlandet had campaigned on a promise of “a decentralized school structure” and to work hard to maintain schools, also in districts with few pupils. Instead, she claimed, Labour opted to cooperate with the Conservatives (who often promote centralization) in order to become the county’s top politician.
That didn’t sit well with Labour Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Mehl’s boss in government, who confirmed to state broadcaster NRK that he’d rebuked her in a private session. Støre stressed that Mehl “had a right and a duty” to engage in local affairs, but he didn’t like her choice of words.
“To characterize another politician’s decision as prostitution is not right,” Støre told NRK. He stressed how the counties in Norway are responsible for high schools while local municipalities (like Lom) are responsible for elementary- and intermediate schools. Some of them (in this case, Dombås, Lom, Flisa and Sønsterud) also offer high school programs that can be affected by the cuts due to be handled at an Innlandet county council meeting on Wednesday.
Mehl attended the school in Flisa herself, prompting others to criticize her for meddling in local affairs and even having a conflict of interest. Her Center Party also champions local decision-making, raising further criticism that she wasn’t respecting county rights. Newspaper Aftenposten editorialized on Tuesday that Mehl should apologize, claiming that “school policy is not prostitution.”
“In a demanding political situation in Innlandet, she blames the county mayor from her government’s own partner for political prostitution,” wrote Labour veteran and former Oslo Mayor Raymond Johansen on social media Tuesday. “At the same time she doesn’t object to a mayor who declares war.” Instead of trying to calm the situation, Johansen added, “the country’s justice minister prefers to throw oil on the fire.”
In an ironic twist, the state police intelligence agency PST (for which Mehl as justice minister is responsible) was alerted to security concerns around the school closure dispute and public demonstrations. The local bank in Lom also announced Tuesday that one of its board members was resigning because of all the protests: She also represents Labour at the county level and the bank had received threats of funds withdrawals tied to her position.
Others went so far as to demand Mehl’s resignation, while Lom Mayor Frisvold had no regrets either, apart from insisting that he had not encouraged fellow critics to do anything illegal. Mehl agreed with Frisvold that it’s frustrating when county politicians didn’t listen to either her or Frisvold. She also claimed that she would have let her own voters down if she hadn’t objected to the school closures.
Some of her own party fellows in Center, though, distanced themselves from Frisvold’s remarks, as did some of members of Frisvold’s own party BL. “We were all completely unprepared for what came from the mayor,” wrote Trond Volden of BL in a press statement.
Others, including Innlandet politicians Joakim Ekseth and Hanne Alstrup Velure of the Conservatives, claimed Mehl “legitimized an exchange of words that we don’t want in Norway, and which we see in the USA.” NRK’s usually calm political commentator Lars Nehru Sand was also clearly troubled by Frisvold’s call for “war,” claiming it fell far outside of Norwegian political norms.
Meanwhile, residents of Lom called a strike of sorts on Tuesday by closing shops, bakeries and others businesses and making the two-and-a-half hour drive south to Hamar to demontrate outside the county government’s offices. School pupils were joining in, with the leader of the student council at Nord-Gudbrandsdal School in Lom claiming that its closure “will kill off the entire local community.” Eivind Maurstad Husom, age 17, and other high school students like him face having to commute for several hours every day to attend another high school, or move away from home and into a student apartment.
Husom claims Lom’s very existence is at stake, since few families will settle in an area that lacks schools or high schools. “It’s better with some empty desks than empty buildings,” he told newspaper Aftenposten.
Lom is far from alone among small towns and even bigger cities threatened by school closures. Residents of Dokka recently held a torchlight parade to protest pending closure of its high school. Lillehammer has already closed high school programs, forcing some students to commute 90 minutes daily by bus to Gjøvik. The former industrial town of Tyssedal in Ullensvang also faces losing its large school in a building from 1919 that now only has 40 students. County officials there also need to balance budgets and consolidate school programs.
Parents have also been protesting in Drammen, outside Oslo, and in Oslo’s affluent suburb of Bærum. Its leaders decry a massive new cut in state funding on top of the tax funds Bærum already must send to less-affluent areas around Norway. They now face closing an elementary school in suburban Lommedalen that would also force its young pupils to commute to other schools farther away.
The state government has already been blamed for failing to provide counties and municipalities with adequate funding for many other programs as well. State budget negotiations are underway in Parliament, as major demonstrations for more high school and university funding carry on outside.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
