A 17-year-old refugee from the Northern Caucasus went on trial in Oslo Monday, charged with possession of dangerous explosives after he set off a major bomb scare in Oslo’s Grønland district last spring. The teenager has, however, avoided being hit with terrorism charges.
“He is incredibly glad that he’s not under terror indictment,” his defense attorney, Javeed Shah, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) as his trial began. Shah’s client denies any malicious intent regarding the bomb he was found carrying on the night of April 8. It forced the evacuation of a large area, while a bomb squad carried out a controlled detonation. Norway’s police intelligence unit PST quickly took over the investigation and the teenager has been held in custody since.
Shah noted, however, that his young client who had moved to Oslo from Northern Norway had no “good explanation” as to why he was transporting the explosive device through downtown Oslo on a Saturday night. The incident occurred also just a day after a terrorist from Uzbekistan drove a truck down a busy street in Stockholm, killing five and injuring 15 people.
“He’s very unclear in his statements (regardig his motives),” Shah said. “He’s a 17-year-old boy who has been curious about this and that. Asked what his intention was, it’s difficult for him to answer. I don’t understand myself how he has landed in this situation.”
Shah said his client, who arrived in Norway with his refugee family in 2010, was “stressed and nervous” before the trial began but was looking forward to try to testify “and then put this case behind him.” He was initially charged as a terror suspect, but that was dropped from his indictment, with prosecutor Marit Bakkevig telling newspaper Aftenposten on Monday that he and his actions “weren’t so dangerous as a terror indictment would have required.”
Bakkevig claimed “it’s still a serious indictment,” with prosecutors maintaining they have evidence that can prove he wanted to detonate the bomb, “in a manner capable of presenting danger for others.” Newspaper Aftenposten reported that he faces up to 10 years in prison. The case is due to run until October 13.
Norway’s Sami Parliament (Sametinget) is in the midst of high-level political turmoil. The Labour Party politician who took over as president just before Christmas wound up at the center of a major power struggle within her own party, and is now clinging to her post by leaving Labour and firing Labour’s vice-president who was due to succeed her.
Vibeke Larsen, shown here delivering the annual New Year’s address as president of the Sami Parliament, is now hanging on to her position amidst great political turmoil. PHOTO: NRK screen grab
It was a turbulent weekend for the parliament located in Karasjok, where the legislative body is meant to promote the interests of Norway’s indigenous Sami population. The political storm inside the building and within its delegation from Labour seems as fierce as the weather outside has been this winter.
The latest drama erupted on Saturday, after Sametinget’s president, Vibeke Larsen, faced losing her post after less than two months in office. She had taken over the presidency after an earlier power struggle unseated Aili Keskitalo from the rival party Norske Samers Riksforbund (NSR) in a lack of confidence vote over the parliament’s budget.
It was Larsen’s Labour Party at the time that had called for a vote of confidence in the budget, and a majority voted against Keskitalo. It didn’t take long before Larsen, though, also ran into major criticism, not least over her inability to speak samisk, the Sami language, and her decision to hold the Sami Parliament’s annual televised New Year’s address in Norwegian.
Larsen humiliated at Labour meeting Saturday
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) now reports that serious dissension within Larsen’s own Labour Party faction at Sametinget continued as well. It culminated on Saturday at a dramatic nomination meeting over who should be the party’s new presidential candidate in the upcoming September election. Larsen, from Narvik in Northern Norway, ended up being voted out in favour of her party colleague Ronny Wilhelmsen, who also had been serving as Larsen’s vice-president. NRK reported that Wilhelmsen, who lives in Alta, won 21 votes at Labour’s extraordinary political meeting held in Lakselv on Saturday, compared to Larsen’s 17.
The next election for the Sami Parliament will be held in line with Norway’s own national parliamentary elections, and preparations for it had also revealed the dissension within Labour’s Sami faction late last year. Helga Pedersen, who has held national posts with the Norwegian Labour Party and served as a government minister in Jens Stoltenberg’s government, had floated her candidacy for Sametinget president in 2017. Pedersen withdrew, however, after advising against Labour’s controversial local power grab in December and not being heard.
Larsen, humiliated by the lack of support this past weekend from her own party after just six weeks as president, initially said she would thus resign in March. “I must note that I have received a quite large vote of lack of confidence against me,” Larsen told NRK Sápmi, NRK’s Sami radio channel. “That applies to both my engagement as president but also as first candidate from the Vesthavet voter precinct. I will report to the Sami Parliament in March that I will resign.”
Fighting back
On Sunday, though, Larsen changed her mind. She told local newspaper Ságat and NRK that she had fired Wilhelmsen: “He went along with the lack of confidence vote against me. There must be confidence between a vice-president and a president.”
She went on to say that she also resigned her membership in the Labour Party right after Saturday’s extrardinary meeting in Lakselv. “I won’t accept being treated in that manner,” she said. “You can put up with a lot, but not that.”
That leaves her an independent politician with no ties to any of the parties represented in the Sami Parliament. She’s hanging on as president, though, which means she’ll likely hold the role when the Sami celebrate the 100th anniversary of their first national gathering on their national day, February 6. King Harald V is due to attend the celebrations in Trondheim, now amid lots of political turmoil.
Asked where she’ll stand politically at Sametinget, Larsen said she hadn’t thought that far, but that it wouldn’t be on Labour’s side. She accused Labour of “using and discarding” people, “especially women.” It remained unclear who would serve as Larsen’s new vice-president after she fired Wilhelmsen, who remains Labour’s candidate to ultimately take over Larsen’s job at the September election.
UPDATED: Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale launched a road show of sorts this week as he held the first of six open meetings around the country. He’ll be promoting and defending the conservative government’s latest plan to reform Norway’s heavily regulated, subsidized and protected farming industry, but faces the proverbial tough row to hoe.
Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale enthusiastically promoted Norwegian food at the opening of the huge Grüne Woche exposition in Berlin last week. Now he needs enthusiasm for reform from Norwegian farmers, but is unlikely to get it. PHOTO: Landbruks- og matdepartementet/Vidar Alfarnes
The plan was predictably blasted by the farmers’ lobby even before it was formally presented to Parliament last month. On Tuesday they turned out in force and Dale faced a hostile crowd in Jølster in teh county of Sogn og Fjordane. Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported how one farmer even stood up and demonstratively crumbled a paper version of the agricultural reform plan in front of the crowd.
Dale, who’s from a farm in Romsdal himself, thus faces tough opposition as farmers and not least their backers in Parliament dig in their heels once again to preserve farmers’ protection and privileges that they claim are necessary to maintain a farming industry in a county with little arable land.
Dale claims the reform plans will make farm production more “future-oriented,” efficient and competitive. He presented them on Tuesday in the mountains of Jølster before moving on to Hå in Rogaland on January 30, Bodø in Nordland February 7 and Ullensaker in Akershus on Februry 9. On March 9 he’ll meet farmers in Nord-Trøndelag and in Ørsta in Møre og Romsdal on Friday April 21.
“The Norwegian farmer does an impressive job, every day, and Norwegian agriculture has shown an ability to meet challenges,” Dale stated in conciliatory opening remarks when he first presented his plan to Parliament. Dale added that “we have to hang on to that, if we’re going to take care of the important values that lie within Norwegian agriculture. We have all reason to succeed if we make the right choices, step by step. That’s what the government is proposing in this report to Parliament.”
Farmers feel threatened
Dale comes from the conservative Progress Party, though, and its goals for boosting efficiency and competition are viewed as a threat to farmers, especially small farmers who mostly resist any attempts at consolidation and centralization. That’s what they accuse Dale’s plan of being full of: “Not surprisingly, he’s continuing a liberalization of agriculture and proposes several measures that contribute to more centralization,” complained Lars Petter Bartnes, leader of the national farmers’ organization Norges Bondelag. “He’ll weaken the core of agricultural policy that has succeeded at allowing farmers (to operate) all over the country.”
Another major complaint debated on Tuesday was Dale’s proposal to replace state funding that allows farmers to hire in substitutes when they go on holiday with additional direct funding for farmers with livestock. Critics including politicians from the farmer-friendly Center Party claim that can increase “social dumping” if the farmers themselves become de facto employers. Dale fired back that then the Center Party has very little regard for the integrity of Norwegian farmers: “They’re suggesting the farmers will behave like criminals when they get control over their own money,” Dale declared. He argued instead that farmers “will be free to dispense the money themselves. In difficult years they can choose to take less time off and keep the money, or take more holiday later when they can. Norwegian farmers are sole-proprietors who will pay those working for them in line with tariffs.”
Dale also actively promoted Norwegian lamb and many other products in Berlin, from Norwegian cheeses and seafood to wild game, sausages and locally brewed beer. Nearly 80 Norwegian food producers exhibited their goods from the regions selected for promotion this year: Fjord Norge, Sørlandet and the Oslo region. PHOTO: Landbruks- og matdepartementet/Vidar Alfarnes
Dale wants to reduce the number of milk-producing regions around Norway, which would eliminate the need for tank trucks to expensively pick up milk from small farms with small production in remote areas. He also wants to phase out market regulation of eggs, grain, apples and potatoes. They were set up years ago to allegedly “balance” the market to avoid surplus production and are steered by dairy cooperative Tine, meat and poultry coop Nortura (which is behind the brands Gilde and Prior) and grain and produce coop Felleskjøpet. Another result of such market regulation has been to keep prices artificially high, contend critics like Tine’s small arch rival Synnøve Finden, which broke Tine’s monopoly around 20 years ago. Synnøve Finden’s leaders claim it has yet, however, to see real competition on equal footing.
They claimed in newspaper Dagens Næringliv (DN) last month that Dale now has “an historic opportunity” to really “set the farmers free,” boost competition and lower food prices. Other more dominant farm interests want none of that, despite other small farmers’ calls to be set free themselves.
Ole-Jacob Christensen, who owns a small farm in Oppland County, claimed in another commentary in DN that Norwegian agriculture remains a closed, rigid business “where any attempt at change is viewed as a threat.” He related how one farmer taking over a property in a mountain community was flatly told by a large local farmer that “you can’t think you can come here and start anything new.” The new farmer intended to start raising bees for honey, while established farmers believed that “those who have raised grain should continue with grain, and those who produce milk and potatoes should continue with milk and potatoes.” Christensen believes Norwegian farmers have a “golden opportunty” to raise new products and spur growth. While agriculture has diversified in recent years and locally raised farm products are more popular than ever, resistance remains.
Christensen and his political party, the Greens, isn’t happy with Dale’s plans either, though, contending that centralization encourages investments in large operations at the expense of small, and perpetuates “monoculture” within agriculture. Other Greens members have criticized the plan for removing a goal that 15 percent of Norwegian farm production should be ecologic by 2020. “That’s incredible,” Une Aina Bastholm of the Greens told newspaper Dagsavisen. She wanted to see a higher portion of ecologic production, not less.
Norwegian cured meats, speciality jams and jellies and the infamous aquavit were on display in Berlin as Dale helped promote Norwegian specialities abroad. PHOTO: Landbruks- og mat departementet/Vidar Alfarnes
Norway’s small but powerful Center Party, which has long supported traditional farming interests, was ripping Dale’s plans into shreds before he presented it and afterwards as well. Geir Pollestad, a Member of Parliament for the Center Party, even “declared war” to emphasize his opposition to Dale’s proposals for improving efficiency. “Production will be moved to central areas of the country and the (outlying) districts will lose,” Pollestad declared. “We see a plan here that in area after area liberalizes farming and weakens programs that have been important for agricultural policy.” He claimed it will mean that Norway will no longer have farming all over the country.
Dale is braced for the fight ahead. He insisted production will rise and that farms will still be widely spread geographically: “It’s important for me to stress that.” He thinks Norwegian agriculture will have to be restructured in order to boost production to meet the demands of a growing population. He also promises “less government meddling” in the farming business, increased competition and more production oriented towards the market and consumer demand, not the regulators. He points to increased production of chicken and turkeys, which has raised volume and lowered prices at the grocery store.
Dale hopes to win parliamentary approval for his proposals this spring and says he’s prepared for “tough” opposition from farmers who want to keep things as they are. “I wish I could say I looked forward to negotiations with the farmers (both on the proposed reform and how much subsidy and tariff protection they’ll once again receive) this spring,” he told Dagsavisen, “but I can’t ignore the fact that this will be demanding.”
UPDATED: A combination of cold, still winter weather and poor air quality prompted Oslo city officials to enforce a ban on diesel-driven vehicles in the Norwegian capital for the first time ever. Those caught driving a diesel vehicle on city-owned streets face a fine of NOK 1,500 (USD 176).
The diesel ban was initially put into effect from 6am until 10pm on Tuesday and was likely to be extended, probably through Thursday. Police and city officials set up control posts in various areas around Oslo on Tuesday morning and stopped several motorists driving diesel cars. Most seemed to be escaping fines, though, with a warning that they wouldn’t be so “lucky” on Wednesday.
Among them was Wilhelm Simonsen, who was stopped outside the main gate of the Frogner Park on Kirkeveien Tuesday morning. He was spared the NOK 1,500 fine but told to park his car at the next opportunity. Simonsen told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that he would probably walk to work on Wednesday.
‘Find alternative modes of travel’
“I hope the ban won’t last long and will encourage people to find alternative modes of travel,” Lan Marie Berg, the top city politician from the Greens Party in charge of environmental and transport issues, told newspaper Aftenposten. Those alternatives, she suggested, include using public transportation, bicyling, car-pooling with those who don’t drive diesel cars or working from home, if possible.
Since the ban only applies to city streets and thoroughfares, it won’t apply to traffic on the state-owned and operated highways such as the E6, the E18, RV4 Trondheimsveien, RV163 Østre Aker vei or RV190 Strømsveien. It will also be allowed to drive diesel vehicles to and from the Oslo Central Station (OsloS), and the ferry terminals at Vippetangen for DFDS and Stena Line and at Hjortneskaia for Color Line.
Diesel-driven vehicles, claimed to pollute more than those fueled by unleaded gasoline, won’t be allowed elsewhere, however, and police are expected to enforce the ban. Reaction was mixed.
Some public understanding
“I can understand the ban,” Lise Marte Wolf, age 30, told Aftenposten. She was questioned while filling her car with diesel at a petrol station at Aleksander Kiellands Plass in Oslo on Sunday, but said she can use public transport. Even Simonsen, the young man stopped Tuesday morning, told NRK that “it’s good for the environment, but not good for those of us who have diesel cars.”
Others were not so understanding: “It will be very difficult for me to be without my car,” said Robert Jensen, also age 30. He drives back and forth to work and lacks efficient public transport from his home at Torshov in Oslo to Sessmovollen. He said his commute time would probably double, from 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half.
City authorities were also urging commuters to allow plenty of time to get back and forth to work on Tuesday, because trains, trams, the metro and buses were likely to be packed. Ruter, which runs the public transport system, hoped many commuters would try to travel outside peak rush periods, or also try to work from home.
The same group of hackers that intelligence officials believe swung the US election in favour of Donald Trump has also attacked Norwegian targets within the military and foreign service. Called “Fancy Bear,” computer security experts believe Russia is behind the hacking that’s aimed at political manipulation and destablization of western democracies.
Norway’s foreign ministry has been among the targets of hackers, also abroad. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
Tom Finney of Secureworks, a computer security organization owned by Dell Corporation, told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) over the weekend that Norwegian military attachés stationed in Eastern Europe and a Norwegian diplomatic mission in Central Asia are among targets that have been hacked. Cyber defense has been enhanced as Norway heads into national elections of its own later this year.
Norway’s own cyber defense unit (Cyberforsvaret) confirmed Secureworks’ information and said it had responded. It wouldn’t comment on who was behind the attacks, but DN reported that the attacks have “clear” ties to Russian interests: Secureworks, which has thousands of clients in 58 countries, has no doubt that the same group that attacked the Democratic Party in the US has also targeted Norwegian interests along with many others.
“That’s right, it’s the cyber group popularly known as ‘Fancy Bear,'” Tom Finney of Secureworks told DN. Its so-called “signature” has also been tied to attacks on other European countries gearing up for elections, including Germany and France.
Long list of targets DN reported that the list of targets is long, including embassies and ministries in more than 40 countries, several NATO and EU institutions, political and military leaders, well-known journalists, activists and academics. Most haven’t been aware they were attacked when they clicked on links in email that seemed to come from people they knew. The attacks enabled the hackers to steal confidential information by penetrating email accounts and internal systems. The attacks in Norway only make up 2 percent of attacks on military and political institutions, DN reported, but local authorities are on high alert for more.
The US’ FBI, CIA and NSA have all described the attacks as the largest Russian attempt to gain influence in the US ever. Russian authorities from President Vladimir Putin’s office on down have vigorously denied they’re behind the hacking. Intelligence agencies all over Europe nonetheless fear Russia will try to sway elections in other countries as well, not least by attempting to discredit democratic leaders.
Norwegian authorities are reluctant to point the finger at Russia, with which the country shares a border. “What we can say is that there are attempts at penetrating our defense data systems, some veldig amateurish, others more advanced,” Knut Helge Grandhagen, communications chief for Cyberforsvaret, told DN. The attacks, Grandhagen said, “are of such a type that it’s reasonable to assume a national state is behind them, because of their complexity and the amount of resources used to mount them. We won’t mention specific nations. That’s up to political leaders and PST (Norway police intelligence unit) to comment on.”
Martin Bernsen, senior adviser at PST, confirmed that PST has seen Russian activity directed at political organizations and the military, both “classic targets,” he said, and PST has previously identified Russia as posing a threat again Norway. What’s new, he added, is the vast scale of the activity.
Political parties attacked, too
In addition to the attacks on foreign ministry and military interests, email accounts at Norway’s Greens Party (Miljøpartiet De Grønne, MDG) were hacked last June and the attacker gained access to the party’s membership register. A few weeks later, Norway’s Socialist Left party (SV) was also attacked, with the hackers gaining access to SV’s membership register as well. A false profile was established ono the party’s internal debate forum. Both attacks remain under investigation, according to the Oslo Police District.
“It can seem that security is not good enough,” Grandhagen told DN, but it’s demanding and expensive for such organizations to fend off the hackers. Norwegian political parties aren’t required by law to test their data systems for possible penetration.
“Information that should not or must never come out should never be sent via Hotmail or email that’s not classified,” Bernsen said.
Russia is not at all happy that the Norwegian government is studying how it can contribute to NATO’s controversial missile defense system. Newspaper Klassekampen reported Thursday that the Russian Embassy in Oslo has reacted “sharply” and says it will be forced to mount a military response.
The Russians have already expressed concerns about Norwegian and NATO military exercises in Northern Norway. Now they’re unhappy about Norway’s pending participation in NATO’s controversial missile defense system. PHOTO: Forsvaret
Klassekampen reported last weekend that Norway was on its way to becoming part of NATO’s missile defense system. An “expert group” of researchers from both the Norwegian and US defense departments was appointed to evaluate various means of participation, and is expected to deliver its conclusions by the end of the year, confirmed Norway’s foreign ministry to Klassekampen.
It’s an ironic situation because various Norwegian political parties have actively opposed the NATO missile system over the years, not least because of how it provokes Russia. Norway has long prided itself on a “special relationship” with its neighbouring Russia and prefers to avoid provocation. The Norwegian Labour Party, when its former leader Jens Stoltenberg was Norway’s new prime minister, even committed itself in 2005 to work towards scrapping plans for the missile defense system that NATO wanted to set up in Europe. Labour’s government coalition partner SV (the Socialist Left party) was also firmly opposed, fearing it would threaten disarmament or even start a new arms race.
Norway then came under strong pressure from the US, however, not to damage NATO solidarity, and by 2008 the Norwegians themselves reportedly suggested that a NATO agreement securing missile protection for all member countries could clear the way for Norway’s support. That happened in 2010, Stoltenberg is now head of NATO himself, and other Norwegian resistance to the missile defense plan declined after Russia annexed Crimea and intervened in Ukraine.
Norway’s current Conservatives-led government, concerned about Norway’s defense and keen to be a good US ally and NATO member, is now far more likely to make a “contribution” to the missile defense, hence the formation of the expert group that’s due to make recommendations. Klassekampen reported that recommended contributions are expected to come in the form of radar on Norwegian frigates and at the also-controversial major radar station at Vardø in Northern Norway.
Large and highly sophisticated radar systems already loom over Norway’s northern city of Vardø, raising some civilian and Russian concern. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
“The analysis that’s being carried out in cooperation with the US will be part of clarifying what Norway can be capable of contributing to NATO’s ballistic missile defense in the future,” Marita Hundershagen, senior adviser at the defense ministry, wrote in an email to Klassekampen. She confirmed the analysis is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.
By that time, the Labour Party may even be back in government power after the upcoming parliamentary election in September. Its prime minister candidate, Jonas Gahr Støre, served as foreign minister under Stoltenberg and would be unlikely to object to a contribution from Norway for missile defense. Norway’s defense ministry describes the missile defense system as purely part of defense capability.
Undermines ‘strategic stability’
On Thursday the Russian Embassy in Oslo responded sharply to Norway’s prospective participation in NATO’s missile defense. If any missile defense system is placed within Norwegian territory, the Russians would be “forced to respond to defend our security,” wrote Maxim Gurov, press attaché at the embassy, in a statement sent to Klassekampen. Gurov did not clarify what kind of “response” that might be.
The Russians claim NATO’s missile defense threatens their ability to scare off others from attack. Gurov wrote that implementing the missile defense plan, strengthening anti-missile systems, increasing the numbers of systems and stationing troops closer to Russia’s borders all lead towards undermining “strategic stability” and “forcing us” to “strengthen the capacity of our nuclear weapons, to guarantee superiority against existing and future missile defense systems.”
The “specific parameters” of Russia’s response will be decided, according to the embassy statement, based on how Norway participates in the missile defense.
Norway’s defense ministry noted that Norway tied itself to NATO’s missile defense during the Stoltenberg administration in 2010, and stressed that the missiles are not pointed at any country and merely are part of NATO’s “collective defense.” Another spokesperson at the ministry, Ann Kristin Salbuvik, said the Norwegian government has “ongoing dialogue with the Russia Embassy” and that this was something “we eventually will discuss with them and not in the press.”
Norway’s rural-oriented Center Party (Senterpartiet, Sp) presented two key portions of its election platform on Friday that opponents claim will “punish” foreigners who have residence permission in Norway but don’t hold Norwegian citizenship. The party itself also stands to gain more power on at least one of the proposals, but claims it’s only trying to make citizenship more important.
Ola Borten Moe has left government service and gone into the oil business, after holding the post of Norway’s oil minister in the former left-center government led by the Labour Party. He remains active, however, in the rural-oriented Center Party and leads its program committee. PHOTO: Senterpartiet
“We believe that if you’re going to live in Norway over time, folks should also seek Norwegian citizenship and it should make a difference to be a citizen,” Ola Borten Moe, a former oil minister who leads the Center Party’s program committee, said on Norwegian Broadcasting’s popular political talk show Politisk Kvarter on Friday.
Foreign residents who lack Norwegian citizenship are already not allowed to vote in national elections. Now Moe and his Center Party don’t even want them to be included in the population counts that determine how many representatives each geographic area of Norway has in Parliament.
Since the vast majority of permanent foreign residents in Norway live in Norwegian cities, especially in Oslo, their exclusion would potentially leave the Center Party with more Members of Parliament itself. That’s because the small, protectionist party’s consituency mostly comes from farmers and others living in the outlying districts that the party champions. Fewer representatives from the cities and more from the districts would likely give the Center Party, which only won 5.5 percent of the vote in the last national election in 2013, more seats in Parliament.
Immediate resistance
Moe insisted the proposed change would only mean that the distribution of parliamentary seats (mandater, or mandates) would be based on the actual numbers of Norwegians who have the right to vote for them. Moe said he thinks it’s “strange” that people who currently don’t have the right to vote in parliamentary elections are now included in the counts used to determine parliamentary representation.
The proposal, sure to be viewed as highly offensive by those who already are subject to taxation without representation in Norway except in local elections (where resident non-citizens can vote), met immediate resistance from the Christian Democrats party, which otherwise often sides with the Center Party on tariff and subsidy protection for farmers.
“I am a Member of Parliament for those who have voting rights and those who don’t have voting rights,” said an indignant Olaug Bollestad of the Christian Democrats. “We can’t bury our heads in the sand and think that those who don’t have citizenship shouldn’t have any form of representation. They must be counted.”
Also ‘punishing’ religious organizations
Bollestad also bashed Moe’s party’s other proposal, which would change how the Norwegian state currently grants financial support to religious organizations based on membership numbers. The Center Party only wants to allow religious organizations to secure state support based on the number of members of their congregations who are citizens. Church, synagogue or mosque members who are permanent residents but do not hold citizenship would no longer count.
Moe claimed that Norway “probably has the most generous program” in the world regarding state financial support for all faiths. It means that not only the former state church (now known as the Norwegian Church) can receive state support but all religious groups can. Exclusion of members who are not citizens would mean huge financial losses for the Catholic Church in Norway, for example, various mosques and other faiths that attract new immigrants be they from Poland, the Philippines, the Middle East or the US. The Catholic Church has been in trouble for padding its memberships lists with immigrants from Catholic countries. Moe wouldn’t say whether he was singling out the Catholics, only opting to acknowedge that “police charges have been filed.”
Moe argued once again that his party’s proposal would make Norwegian citizenship “more important” for foreign residents, and make citizenship more attractive. It would be “good for everyone” if more foreign-born residents became citizens and thus “more tied to Norway,” he said. Moe claimed it “should mean something” to live in Norway and choose Norwegian citizenship, and, apparently, less for those “who choose to hold on to their originaly citizenship whether it be German, Swedish or American.”
Making citizenship ‘more important than faith’
Bollestad of the Christian Democrats pounced again, bashing the Center Party’s proposal as making citizenship “more important than people’s faith, and faith can mean so much to people when they arrive in a new country.” Bollestad said that religious congregations provide many immigrants with a “sense of belonging” and a social network, and help immigrants integrate. She said that her party would not support “punishing” church organizations or immigrants themselves for a lack of Norwegian citizenship.
Bollestad also cited an example of a German friend who has lived in Norway for more than 30 years, “contributed to the Norwegian state, paid taxes, contributed to social work” and who is “a resource in our society,” but who has retained her German citizenship because it’s an important part of her identity. When the program leader commented that “perhaps it’s time for her to apply for Norwegian citizenship,” Bollestad responded that “it’s not like you can just turn a switch and become Norwegian.” For very many people, she said, the land where they were born and reared remains important throughout their lives.
One major problem with the Center Party’s proposals, the program leader pointed out, is that it currently takes at least seven years from date of arrival in Norway to qualify for Norwegian citizenship. Norway also remains one of the few countries in the world that does not allow dual citizenship, and that discourages many foreign residents from applying for Norwegian citizenship. While exceptions have been made, current law officially demands that anyone applying for Norwegian citizenship must relinquish their existing citizenship. That’s difficult for many to do. Support seemed to be growing to finally allow dual citizenship in Norway last year, but no progress was made during the autumn parliamentary session.
UPDATED: Vidar Helgesen, the Norwegian government minister who all but shot down a controversial wolf hunt just before Christmas, now finds himself under enormous pressure to allow the full extent of it after all. Hundreds of protesters who feel threatened by wolves were due to gather in Oslo on Wednesday, to demand that roughly two-thirds of Norway’s wolf population be eliminated. Helgesen’s boss, Prime Minister Erna Solberg, said Wednesday morning that her government would re-evaluate how much damage the wolves really can do.
Norway’s minister of the environment, Vidar Helgesen, was under enormous pressure this week to reverse his order that dramatically reduced a controversial wolf hunt. PHOTO: Klima- og Miljødepartementet
The brunt of the anti-wolf protesters are coming from rural Hedmark County in eastern Norway, where many of the wolves targeted now roam. Ketil Skogen, a senior researcher specializing in wildlife management, noted recently that they’re not only farmers and ranchers who want to protect their free-grazing sheep from predators. Skogen notes that there actually aren’t many sheep in the forested areas of Hedmark that are within zones already established to allow wolves.
He noted that others are now actively opposing wolves in their areas. “Wolves create trouble for moose hunters with dogs, and some residents of rural towns who think it’s uncomfortable to have wolves nearby,” Skogen wrote in newspaper Aftenposten. After studying Norway’s heated debate over wolves for years, Skogen also pointed to what he called an “historic new coalition between the rural working class and forest owners,” who have now pitted themselves against those they view as “urbane conservationists” who want to protect wolves. The “rural working class” doesn’t want wolves in their neighbourhood, and the forest owners earn large sums of money on Norway’s annual moose hunt, Skogen noted. They want hunters to kill the moose, not wolves who also can scare moose away.
Demonstrators to demand that 47 wolves be shot
Now the forest owners are among the farmers’ organizations, politicians and local residents due to demonstrate in Oslo and demand that all 47 wolves targeted in the original hunt be shot, not just the 15 that Minister Helgesen allowed when he decided upon what was supposed to be a final appeal of the wolf hunt cleared earlier by regional authorities. He based his decision, which radically pared back the original hunt, on legal advice from the Justice Ministry that the wolves wouldn’t do enough damage to livestock to justify the full hunt.
Critics have been howling ever since. Among the protesters are politicians from Helgesen’s own Conservative Party in Hedmark, including the president of the Norwegian Parliament, Olemic Thommessen. Also signalling their participation in Wednesday’s demonstration in Oslo were 118 local mayors and some members of the government’s own support parties. While environmentalists and many wildlife experts hailed Helegesen’s decision in December that saved 32 wolves from slaughter, he has also faced opposition from his fellow government minister in charge of agriculture from the Progress Party.
The pressure on Helgesen to reverse his order that curtails the wolf hunt is so great that Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who leads Norway’s Conservative Party, joined him in a meeting on Tuesday with officials from Hedmark’s Conservative Party chapters. The Hedmark delegation felt obliged to represent their areas’ strong local opposition to wolves, and warned that banning the full wolf hunt will seriously hurt the Conservatives in an election year.
No solution to the conflict was agreed upon at the meeting, while newspaper Dagsavisen reported Wednesday that the Conservative MP Gunnar Gundersen from Hedmark hinted that Helgesen should resign, Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale of the Progress Party said he can’t accept Helgesen’s decision and Thommessen wants a new evaluation of the hunt, claiming that the Conservatives “can’t live with” Helgesen’s decision. By mid-day Wednesday, Solberg was telling news bureau NTB that her government would re-evaluate the “damage potential” of the wolves. “There may not be a licensed hunt, but that doesn’t mean (more) wolves can’t be taken out this year. It depends on the damage potential of a rising wolf population.”
Holding firm, so far
Helgesen was so far holding firm in his evaluation, based on the legal advice of a justice ministry that’s headed by the Progess Party, that the wolves in Hedmark’s established wolf zone don’t post a great enough threat to livestock and therefore can’t be shot. If he allowed the hunt in Hedmark, he claimed, he’d put Norway in violation of international treaties aimed at preserving wildlife diversity. Regional authorities had approved the licenses to kill 47 wolves, 24 of which were within established wolf zones including Hedmark. Helgesen ended up approving licenses to kill “only” the 15 wolves, all roaming outside Norway’s wolf zones.
While the demonstrators take to the streets of Oslo, Helgesen planned to meet Wednesday afternoon with representatives of the four parties in Parliament that initially compromised on the management of Norway’s wolf population: his own Conservatives, the Conservatives’ government partner the Progress Party, their support party the Christian Democrats and the opposition Labour Party. The meeting was called on December 22, long before the critics announced their demonstration, with Helgesen saying it was “natural” to meet after so much opposition has already arisen. “We face a demanding situation regarding our management of wolves,” Helgesen said. He acknowledged that the wolf population (estimated at 65-68) is currently higher than the parliament’s goals, but that he lacked legal authority to approve shooting up to 32 wolves in established zones in Hedmark, plus the 15 he did approve. Now it appears Solberg want to find such legal authority.
Knut Storberget of Labour, a former justice minister himself from Hedmark, was already demanding that a new compromise be worked out. He claimed Helgesen’s interpretation of Norway’s international obligations to protect wolves was too narrow. “We believe there is a foundation (for the hunt) since the wolf population in Norway is no longer threatened with extinction and because we have damage potential among hunters, fishermen, grazing livestock and folks’ sense of security,” Storberget told Dagsavisen. Among them was a Hedmark resident interviewed by state broadcaster NRK on Tuesday, who claimed she’d seen seven wolves just outside her front door. She didn’t want her elk hound, or children, to be “guinea pigs” for testing actual damage potential.
The small Center Party, which represents rural interest and has always supported wolf hunts, opted against taking part in any compromise on wolves and was once again pitting the countryside against the city. Center Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, a farmer from Hedmark, suggested that those wanting to protect wolves “forget that not all of Norway lives within Ring 3 (the highway around central Oslo).” That’s already proven to be untrue. The vast majority of Oslo residents has supported the reappearance of wolves in the city’s eastern forest (Østmarka) and one Oslo resident even suffered the loss of his dog to a wolf in an urban area on the city’s east side. That didn’t prompt him to demand a wolf hunt in Østmarka.
Last-minute shoppers wandered along Oslo’s main boulevard, Karl Johans gate, on the dark and stormy night leading into the Christmas holiday weekend. It’s the latest with no snow or ice in the Norwegian capital, but plenty of rain fell during the night before Christmas Eve, known as julaften.
Oslo-area residents were in for a treat, though, when the sun suddenly reappeared after finally rising just after 9:30am Saturday morning. When it sets around 3pm on Christmas Eve, most all stores will be closed, church bells would be ready to ring and the streets go quiet.
Many Norwegians head for local churchyards and cemeteries at sundown, to place lanterns on the graves of family members that will burn through the night and Christmas Day. Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) runs an annual program at 5pm featuring the boys’ choir Sølvguttene singing Christmas hymns, and then holiday meals and celebrations begin indoors. Gatherings of family and friends extend well into next week.
On that note, we’d like to wish our readers from Oslo to Ottawa, Oakland and Osaka, a happy holiday season.
A massive police investigation was underway on Tuesday after two people, a 48-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy with no known connection between them, were found stabbed near a school in Kristiansand late Monday afternoon. The victims, who died a few hours later at a local hospital, were not identified until Tuesday morning.
They are Tone Ilebekk, age 48, and Jakob Abdullahi Hassan, age 14. “We have worked hard (on whether there was a connection between Ilebekk and Hassan) but we have not found any relation,” Terje Kaddeberg Skaar of the Agder Police District said at a press conference in Kristiansand late Tuesday morning.
Newspaper VG reported that Ilebekk, married and the mother of two children, worked as an assistant at a children’s day care center located close to where the stabbings occurred, on the Lund side of the southern coastal city. Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) quoted one of her colleagues as saying that she had worked an early shift at the day care center on Monday. Ilebekk lived in the Lund area and her colleague had been told that she was out walking her dog after work when she was killed.
Hassan both lived and went to school on the other side of Kristiansand, at Fiskå near Vågsbygd. The murders themselves are believed to have taken place outside the Wilds Minne Elementary School at Lund.
Police have no eyewitnesses to the murders, believed to have occurred around 4pm on Monday. The stabbed bodies of both Ilebekk and Hassan were found together at the school.
Details of the double homicide, which rarely occur in Norway, remained sketchy. Police worked through the night, assisted by “all available officers” and backed by investigators from the state police unit Kripos, but no arrests had been made by midday on Tuesday and the killer or killers remained at large.
“We don’t know who the assailant or assailants are, nor do we know of any motive (for the stabbings),” Skaar said. “For the police, it’s an open question what the risk is to the public.”
Skaar repeated calls for any tips or information from the public that could aid the murder investigation. “We want information from everyone who knew the two murder victims,” Skaar said. “We want to chart their movements as much as we possibly can.”
VG reported that police have already questioned at least 10 people during the night and the course of the morning. “We have also received many tips that we worked with during the night and we have conducted questioning at the scene of the crime,” Skaar noted, repeating another call that anyone who was in the vicinity of the Wilds Minne school contact police as well. “It’s important for us to chart all movements in the area,” he said.
The younger victim, Hassan, was in the ninth grade at the Fiskå junior high school in Kristiansand, which assembled students for a memorial Tuesday morning. The boy’s family situation remained unclear, but the school issued a statement announcing the “tragic incident” and mentioned that Hassan’s family had “lost a son and a brother.” Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported Tuesday that five friends of the 14-year-old were among those questioned by police during the night.
Police wouldn’t reveal whether any weapon had been found. The Wilds Minne school has 380 students, around 100 of whom also attend its after-school program that functions as a form of day care for older children. The program was still underway at the time of the murders yet neither the children nor employees at the school witnessed the murders. Both the day care center where Ilebekk worked and the Wilds Minne school were closed on Tuesday. Crisis teams were set up to assist day care center workers and the families involved.
Knut Arild Hareide, leader of the small Christian Democrats party, found himself holding an enormous amount of power over the fate of Norway’s minority government coalition Wednesday morning. He retreated into a meeting with his party faithful, to decide whether they’ll support the government’s proposed state budget and thus prevent the government from falling.
Knut Arild Hareide of the Christian Democrats, at a party leader debate in Arendal last summer. His small party, with around 4 percent of the vote, has suddenly found itself in what one politician called “a dream situation,” since it can determine the fate of the government. PHOTO: NRK screen grab/newsinenglish.no
“This is a serious decision for our group and a serious decision for the country,” Hareide’s deputy Dagrunn Eriksen told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) as they headed into the meeting. After the Liberal Party broke off budget negotiations on Tuesday and withdrew its support for the government, only the Christian Democrats appear able or willing to give Prime Minister Erna Solberg of the Conservatives and Finance Minister Siv Jensen of the Progress Party the majority they need to get the budget through Parliament.
It’s all left the Christian Democrats in both an enviable yet awkward situation, though, torn between loyalty to its government support partner (the Liberals, who hoped the Christian Democrats would follow their lead and reject the government’s budget as not being “green” enough) and the government itself. Both non-socialist parties could be held responsible for toppling a decidedly non-socialist government, paving the way for Labour to take over.
Labour reportedly doesn’t really want to assume power at this point, preferring to win by running a successful election campaign next year. Its leader, Jonas Gahr Støre, however, declared Tuesday that Labour won’t support the government’s budget. Nor will Labour’s most likely government partner, the Center Party. It ironically agrees with the conservative government’s thorniest portion of the budget, a package of proposed taxes on driving that the Liberals have rejected, but Marit Arnstad of the Center Party told newspaper Aftenposten on Wednesday that “we can’t support an entire budget just based on a small portion of it.”
At least one county leader of the Christian Democrats was on national radio Wednesday, though, saying that he didn’t think the squabble over minor increases in fuel taxes was enough to topple the government either. If the Christian Democrats go along with the budget, they’re also likely to win much more favour from the sitting government in the run-up to next autumn’s national election.
As Norway’s budget drama spiked, Solberg and Jensen had another crisis meeting of their own Tuesday night at the prime minister’s residence. Along with their budget delegates, they reportedly were determined to keep working towards a solution and continue governing together. They weren’t necessarily keen on simply finding a “one-sided solution with the Christian Democrats,” a state secretary for the Conservatives insisted to NRK. “The Conservatives and teh Progress Party are continuing to work towards good solutions so the country can get a good budget,” he said. In which case, the Liberals may return to the table as well.
Even the most jaded investigators, and not least the families and colleagues of men who’ve been arrested, have reacted with shock and disbelief after police in Bergen exposed massive pedophile networks that promoted and facilitated sexual assaults against children. More than 50 Norwegian men “from all levels of society” have been charged, with two convicted so far.
They include at least one lawyer, engineers, a police officer and his son, two politicians, a pre-school teacher and students, among others. Several of those arrested in recent months are highly educated with high levels of competence within information technology. They wrongly thought, however, that they were operating anonymously in the darkest areas of the Internet.
Intense investigation
After more than a year of intense investigation, with a team of 25 experts working full-time since January, police cracked what they describe as not just one pedophile network in Norway but several. They called it “Operation Dark Room,” based on a large operation carried out in the US by the FBI against the website known as “Playpen.”
Gunnar Fløystad, leader of a police prosecution team in Bergen, called it Norway’s largest case ever involving sexual assault on children. He stressed the investigation is far from over.
All the defendants charged so far are men, with 20 of them living in the state police’s Bergen-based western district arrested and 16 held in custody. Another 31 men have been identified in other police districts nationwide. “In at least one of these cases, the defendant has admitted assaulting his own children,” Police Lt Hilde Reikerås said at a press conference in Bergen late Sunday afternoon.
Another man charged in the case was living with a woman who was pregnant. Police said they have reason to believe the network in which he was involved planned assaults on a child who hadn’t been born.
Record seizures, kidnapping plans
Police have seized record amounts of computer files in the form of photos, videos and online conversations. “The material shows assaults on children of all ages, also babies,” Reikerås said. In some cases, children were bound and raped, children were photographed having sex with animals and with other children.
On Monday came more details from the police, including examples of how two men, aged 20 and 26, planned to randomly kidnap a child aged around 10 who would be raped repeatedly. The men preferred a girl, but one wrote that he “wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a boy either.” Another chatting on the network said he was most interested in a child aged six to eight, but concluded that if it was possible to carry out the kidnapping, “she should be around 10 to 12” years old. One of the men planning the kidnapping noted that he was involved in a relationship with a woman, “so I don’t have the opportunity to dedicate myself to this 100 percent … it would have to be on the evenings I’m alone.”
They planned to drag a child at random into a car, drive to a deserted area and carry out the rapes. In order to make sure the child wouldn’t tell anyone about the assault afterwards, they discussed whether they should drug her or threaten her into silence. “What do you think about filming” the assaults, asked one of the men. “I really want to,” responded the other. “Me too,” replied his partner in crime, “but that’s a bit scary.” Then they discussed what to do with the child when the rapes were over: “Dump her where we found her? And then burn everything that was in the car?”
Thousands involved, more arrests pending
The men, like the others communicating on the various networks exposed, are among an estimated 5,000 with user accounts on various encrypted chatting channels. Several of the men arrested so far have admitted their participation when confronted with the seized material.
“We have been shocked and surpised over how many people have been involved with these networks,” said Janne Heltne of the Vest Police District. She said nearly all the victims are believed to be children in Norway, apart from one case that involved streaming of assaults on children in the Philippines.
The case is so massive that police have had to “make tough decisions” on who to charge and prosecute first, based on the most serious assaults and those who have children themselves or work with children who could be in danger. Several fathers who’ve been charged have already lost custody of their children. On Monday, a police officer in Bergen faced a custody hearing for his alleged involvement in the networks. His son was reportedly already in custody.
UPDATED: After making more threats they they’d expand their strike this week, locomotive engineers working for Norway’s state railway NSB were gearing for a new meeting at the national mediator’s office on Tuesday. They announced Monday morning that they were having some “new thoughts” and were preparing a proposal for a possible settlement.
The news came after another difficult morning for an estimated 20,000 commuters in the Oslo area, who have faced major problems getting back and forth to work. Buses are packed and highways clogged, as many commuters had to resort to the expensive option of driving into the city.
With the strike deadlocked, the labour organization representing the engineers (Norsk Lokomotivemannsforbund) had threatened as late as Friday to expand their strike once again this week. The move would pull more engineers off the Sørlandsbanen line that runs from Oslo to Kristiansand and Stavanger.
Union leader Rolf Ringdal told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK), though, that he and his fellow engineers were “thinking in new ways” and would likely put forth a proposed solution to management at NSB sometime Monday evening. “It will be both new and different,” Ringdal told NRK. “At the same time, we are being very clear that our demands for competence must be addressed.” The strike has centered on a conflict over whether a national standard for locomotive engineers’ training should be inserted into their labour contracts.
The engineers’ new proposal for a settlement was ultimately delivered late Monday. After some “written communication” between the locomotive engineers and Spekter, which is the employers’ organization representing NSB, the two sides agreed to a meeting at midday Tuesday at the office of the national mediator (Riksmegleren). Ringdal noted that then “things can go fast, when you first have a basis for a meeting to discuss things.”
Motivation was strong on both sides to end the strike that has affected so many train passengers, not least at a time when government officials at all levels are trying to get people out of their cars and on board public transportation to cut carbon emissions.
NSB, meanwhile, has been clear that it won’t commit to anything new that would leave it with higher labour costs at a time of railroad and railway reform that involves tougher competition. NSB will need to bid to operate train lines against other operators, also from abroad, and needs to be able to compete against foreign competition.
It was extremely difficult for Oslo-area commuters who rely on local train service to get to work Monday morning. As a strike by locomotive engineers spurred more train cancellations, many passengers left stranded were also unable to get bus seats and had few other transport options.
There were plenty of idled trains at NSB’s “parking lot” at Filipstad Monday morning. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
The sheer expense and congestion of trying to drive into Oslo was believed to prompt many to try working from home. Fleming Pedersen, who commutes into Oslo from Askim, was among those who met long lines at the local bus station as early as 6am. He didn’t get a seat on the first departure and opted to wait until the next, while joking to state broadcaster NRK that “we should all just go home and have a cup of coffee.”
The bus lines can’t boost their capacity to help transport stranded passengers, because that would be seen as a strike-busting effort. The Nettbuss line, moreover, is also owned by state railway NSB, whose locomotive engineers have walked off the job. It’s thus being especially careful about not doing anything to challenge what’s considered a legal labour conflict.
165 cancellations on one line alone
NSB was catching some criticism for deciding to cancel all its local train service on the heavily used Østfoldbanen line. The union representing the striking engineers claimed it wasn’t necessary, since not all engineers are called out on strike and can legally work as usual. NSB officials, however, responded that the strike had left many of its trains out of position. With so many engineers off the job in the Oslo area (109 based in Oslo, Lillestrøm, Moss and Ski), NSB argued it was not possible to run any reliable schedules for its passengers.
The strike is also affecting service in Trondheim, Kristiansand and Bergen, where more than half of the trains running between Voss and Arna have been cancelled. There are also fewer trains than normal on the popular line between Oslo and Bergen called Bergensbanen.
With no end in the sight to the strike, tens of thousands of commuters in the Oslo are were facing a rough week ahead. Traffic on the highways leading into Oslo was heavy from before dawn, especially on the E6 where tunnel rehabilitation was already causing delays and congestion.
Risky strike over principles
Newspaper editorials were urging an end to the strike, which is mainly over the union’s demand for a national training standard for all locomotive engineers and not because of conflicts over pay or benefits. At issue is job security for Norwegian locomotive engineers, if they suddenly find themselves facing competition from foreign engineers trained abroad.
Newspaper Dagsavisen noted that it’s “hardly coincidental” that the strike has been called now, just before railway reform in Norway is due to force NSB to compete against other train operators, also from abroad, for the right to run lines in the country. If NSB loses out, its locomotive engineers potentially would need to compete against the foreign operators’ personnel. Having a “national standard” in Norway would make it more difficult for locomotive engineers trained abroad to be able to work in Norway.
“It’s not surprising that resistance to (the prospect of foreign operators in Norway) is greatest from the powerful unions at an old company like NSB that has had a monopoly,” Dagsavisen wrote. While Norwegians often have sympathy for strikers, the locomotive engineers are now risking a loss of support when so many “innocent third parties” (commuters) are affected by their strike over principles that seem rooted in protectionism.
No teenagers in Europe smoke less than young Norwegians, according to a new survey, and the number of Norwegian youth who’ve even tried smoking has taken a dive over the past 20 years. Researchers link the decline to everything from strict anti-smoking regulations to high tobacco prices, health and fitness concerns and a new form of youthful rebellion.
“They see that their own parents and even grandparents may still smoke or drink, so they won’t,” one Norwegian researcher told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Tuesday morning. He suggested it’s just the opposite of how teens in earlier generations smoked and drank in part to irritate parents who didn’t.
No longer ‘cool’
One thing is clear: “It’s not cool to smoke any longer,” Elin Kristin Bye, a researcher at Norway’s public health institute (Folkehelseinstitutt) told NRK. “Youth today also have a much greater focus on their physical fitness, health and presentation at school. That can be part of the reason.”
Results of the survey from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) showed that nearly 70 percent of 15- and 16-year-olds questioned in 2015 claimed they had never even tried smoking. That compares to just 30 percent in 1995.
While the use of chewing tobacco has risen since Norway banned smoking in restaurants, offices, on board public transport and in other indoor public places, Bye noted that it’s also now on the decline.
‘Ugly and stinky’
The survey showed that the portion of 15- and 16-year-old Norwegians who smoke daily was the lowest of all other European countries, at just 2 percent. Bye attributes the low numbers to the overall decline in smoking among Norwegians and the waves of anti-smoking campaigns and restrictions since the late 1990s.
Runar Døving, a professor of marketing at Kristiania College in Oslo, agreed that smoking is no longer cool among Norwegian youth, but he offered other reasons. In addition to the new form of youthful rebellion against smoking the success of anti-smoking regulations in Norway, he said the days of the old tobacco company marketing campaigns that glorified smoking are long gone.
“Now smoking has become ugly and stinky, and those of us who continue to smoke are viewed as losers,” Døving told NRK. He also said that the sight of smokers huddled outside bars or restaurants, especially in the winter cold, is “riduculous” to many young Norwegians.
Pricey, too
The fact that a pack of cigarettes can now cost more than NOK 100 (USD 12) in Norway, because of punitive taxes, also acts as a deterrent, Døving said. Tobacco products have also been hidden away in nearly all retail establishments, customers must specifically ask for them and packaging is plain except for the health hazards emblazoned on them.
“All research shows that accessibility and price are central means of hindering consumption,” Døving said, “and when you also limit the areas where smoking is allowed, there’s a physical hindrance.”
Mia Granly, a 17-year-old student at Hartvig Nissens high school in Oslo, told NRK that she and her friends simply find cigarette smoke irritating. “I think very many young Norwegians don’t smoke because we know how damaging it actually is for your body,” Granly added.
There are still those who smoke at parties, she said, and two 18-year-old fellow students admitted they like to smoke as a means of relaxing. “But there aren’t many who smoke all the time,” Granly told NRK. The survey’s statistics suggest it’s simply not fashionable.
UPDATED: Police and transportation officials were urging motorists not to drive on Saturday after torrential rains over wide areas of southeastern Norway led to flooding and closed roads. Both the E6 and E18 highways south and west of Oslo respectively were closed around 1pm. Train travel was also disrupted in the Oslo area, which was among the regions hit hard by the downpour that also caused problems in Buskerud, Østfold and Akershus counties.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that several underpasses in Asker og Bærum were closed including Sandviksveien under the main E18 motorway at Kadettangen in Sandvika. The underpass at Hvalstad station was also closed, along with several roads in Heggedal and Lier. The E18 closed for around an hour at Maritim/Framnes, just west of downtown. The E6 closed south of Oslo and police were leading stranded motorists back to the Lambertseter area.
The suburban area of Bekkestua in Bærum was also flooded in some areas and emergency crews with pumps were called out to deal with flooded cellars in Akershus and Buskerud.
The unusually heavy rains were accompanied by thunder and lightning. Police in Buskerud reported that highway RV285 at Sylling in Lier was obstructed by masses of water, mud and rocks.
The road emergency division was so busy fielding calls for help that NRK reported dispatchers had no time to talk. “All I can say is that there are huge amounts of water many places,” duty officer told NRK, adding only that it was “worst in Sylling and Røyken in Buskerud.”
Train service was also disrupted after lightning caused the signal system to malfunction between Sandvika and Asker. Trains on the Spikkestad line that runs between Oslo and Asker were also halted because of flooding at Gullhella. Trains to Drammen were also disrupted, with the lines between Sandvika and Asker closed.
Negotiations between Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and its Norwegian short-haul pilots had extended 14 hours into overtime by mid-afternoon on Thursday, after the two sides failed to reach a settlement by a midnight deadline on Wednesday. If no agreement is reached, more than 400 pilots will be called off the job, severely disrupting SAS flights in Norway.
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) won’t be flying much over Norway if 435 of its short-haul pilots go on strike. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
SAS officials seemed optimistic Wednesday evening, with spokesman Knut Morten Johansen claiming that both sides were keen to come to terms. “We have faith that we will reach an agreement,” Johansen told news bureau NTB just before midnight. Flights would continue to run as scheduled as long as the talks continued.
Johansen said Thursday morning, after talks had gone on all night long, that not much had changed. He urged passengers holding tickets on SAS flights to check the company’s own website(external link) for specific flight information.
Officials at Avinor, the state agency that runs most Norwegian airports, were preparing for a strike at OSL Gardermoen Thursday morning. “A strike would be dramatic for SAS and its passengers,” Kristian Løksa, communications chief for Avinor, told state broadcaster NRK, “but we’ll manage to handle it.”
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) has reported that the thorniest issue is over SAS’ need to have more pilots on the job during the busy summer holiday period. SAS pilots also want to take summer holiday, and aren’t willing to relinquish built-up rights to take holiday on their terms, not the airline’s. As a result, SAS has often had to park aircraft because of a lack of pilots to fly them.
At least they agreed to keep talking as the midnight deadline passed. with Johansen claiming that SAS was “determined to reach an agreement.” Only SAS’ “short-haul” pilots would be affected, meaning that SAS’s daily flight from Oslo to New York and other long-haul flights from Stockholm and Copenhagen would run as scheduled.
SAS’ Swedish pilots were also facing a strike deadline this week, on Friday, which also could lead to disruption. SAS’ Danish pilots are not involved in contract negotiations this year.
Another strike could close OSL Gardermoen on Friday
As efforts continued to avert strikes at SAS, another loomed at Oslo’s main airport at Gardermoen. More than 500 security guards at the airport may be called off the job on Friday, if their union fails to come to terms with employers’ organization NHO Service.
A new round of mediation began on Thursday between the security guards’ union, Parat, and NHO Service. The two sides failed to agree on a new revised contract after NHO reportedly refused to give guards compensation tied to their responsibility, competence and the risks they take.
Officials at OSL Gardermoen said they will need to close the airport for all departing passengers if Parat calls around 500 security guards off the job from 6am Friday. The guards work at security checkpoints, in the baggage area and in other areas of the airport.
“With such a large reduction in capacity, the departure hall will fill quickly and present major security challenges,” said OSL spokesman Joachim Westher Andersen. “We don’t want a situation where we risk life and health for travelers, so if there’s a strike, we will close the airport for departing passengers.
Those arriving with Oslo as their final destination will only be affected if they have connecting flights from OSL Gardermoen.
As Norway’s nationwide hotel strike drags on, frustration is running high not only among stranded travelers but also hotel owners unhappy with their own employers’ bargaining organization NHO Reiseliv. One has already checked out of the group, claiming it lacks willingness to negotiate with the unions, and a new attempt at mediation was set for early next week.
Only a striker’s yellow vest was left on a chair outside the entrance of the Thon Hotel Kirkenes this week. It was among the many hotels all over the country that had to close shortly after the strike began, leaving stranded guests with few options. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
“Something is very wrong when there’s a strike this year,” Per Carlenius, chief executive of the foundation running the Anker Hotel and student housing chain, told newspaper Klassekampen on Friday. “We have good relations with our workers. We don’t have time nor can we afford to be caught in a conflict this long.”
The hotel industry in general had also been doing very well and logging record results until the strike began. Nearly 8,000 hotel and restaurant workers have since been called off the job, and Carlenius said the strike is now costing Anker Hotels NOK 200,000 per day.
“We’re really bleeding from this, and the people paying for it are the students,” he told Klassekampen. Since Anker was a member of NHO Reiseliv, and its employees members of the union representing hotel and restaurant workers, Fellesforbundet, Anker’s hotels in the Oslo area that help finance student housing were among those targeted in the strike that began in late April.
Digging in their heels
Other hotel managers and owners have also voiced frustration with their organization, claiming they have no conflicts with their own employees and that they just want to get back to work. NHO Reiseliv was remaining firm, however, that it won’t give in to union demands for higher wages for the hotels’ lowest-paid workers and for local negotiating rights at individual hotels. Their stand comes even though NHO itself, Norway’s largest employers’ organization, usually advocates local negotiations over centralized collective bargain in other industries.
“We see that there have been differences of opinion between the big hotel chains and other independent operators,” Clas Delp of Fellesforbundet told Klassekampen. “That’s a challenge that NHO has internally, to unite the large and the small, those operating in the cities and those in small towns.” NHO Reiseliv seems to have favoured the large chains that want to set wages centrally, over smaller local operators who don’t object to local negotiations.
Mediation effort looms
Meanwhile, the strike was hurting many areas where hotel accommodation is limited. It also has left stranded visitors with lasting memories of spoiled holidays or business trips, not least in areas where alternative lodging was hard to find.
As the deadlocked strike headed into its fourth week, a state mediator summoned officials from NHO Reiseliv and Fellesforbundet to a meeting on Tuesday, to see whether there was any opening for a settlement. At this point, lots of prestige is at stake, with neither NHO Reiseliv nor Fellesforbundet willing to admit defeat. The prospective loss of members and internal strife will increase pressure on NHO Reiseliv officials, however, and may boost prospects for mediation.
Fellesforbundet, meanwhile, could boast a surge in membership late this week, and already has claimed it has a strike fund large enough to sustain striking members all year if necessary. All new members who work at hotels affected by the strike were also expected to be called out on strike.
Norway’s economic party of the past decade is over, declares a government-appointed commission charged with finding ways to boost productivity. Without a more efficient public sector and economic reorganization, warns the leader of the commission itself, tax rates may need to be boosted to 65 percent of income, to preserve the country’s social welfare state.
Jørn Rattsø, the economics professor who heads the commission, has been leading the work to “make Norway’s economy smarter” for the past two years. He was appointed by the then-new finance minister, Siv Jensen from the conservative Progress Party, at a time when oil prices were still high and the economy still strong.
Since then, oil prices have taken a dive, Norway has seen major cutbacks in its important oil and offshore industry, the country’s currency has weakened and unemployment has risen. At the same time, record numbers of Norwegians are reaching retirement age and the country is dealing with a refugee influx that’s also putting demands on state and local budgets.
New report handed over
The commission delivered its first report with tax reform proposals last year and not all of them were well-received. Rattsø, who was presenting his commission’s second report on Thursday, wrote in newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) that unless productivity rises, Norway will face stagnation and national debt. He clearly hopes his commission’s recommendations will be taken more seriously this time around.
Growth rates of less than 1 percent since 2005, he wrote, were mostly masked by high oil prices that fueled affluence and public services. With the revenue contribution from oil dramatically lower, “the consequences will become visible, even though we have money stashed away (in Norway’s huge sovereign wealth fund known as the oil fund),” Rattsø wrote.
His commission, he noted, “has looked at scenarios” for development with the currently low rate of productivity growth, low employment growth and rising needs for health and welfare services. “The results show a dramatic shift from the income growth and abundance of money we’ve been accustomed to,” Rattsø wrote. That in turn means taxes would need to increase dramatically to offset the lack of money flowing into state coffers from oil and rising incomes.
How to avoid sky-high tax rates
Since someone must pay for health and welfare services, newspaper Aftenposten reported Thursday that Rattsø’s expert group warns of households needing to carry a much greater share of the tax burden unless steps are taken to avoid it. The commission’s fine print reveals that household tax burdens may rise from today’s level of around 37 percent of income to around 65 percent by 2060 if productivity doesn’t improve in the meantime.
He warns against such high tax rates, saying they would ultimately damage the economy. To avoid long-term development with little if any income growth and sky-high tax burdens, productivity growth must rise, Rattsø argues. The best way to achieve that, the commission believes, is through education and knowledge to restructure the economy.
“We shouldn’t base our economy on new gifts from the nature,” he contends. Instead of relying on more oil or minerals or other natural resources, smarter delivery of services and reorganization is critical: “Only through more knowledge, adaptability and better organization of the public sector can we boost productivity and, as a result, income growth rates,” told Aftenposten.
Opposition looms, to protect ‘old ways’
Discarding “old” systems and ways of doing things will be “demanding,” he conceded, but necessary to start fresh. Pushing them through won’t be easy. Finance Minister Jensen has already experienced defeat in some initial attempts: Her proposal last year to transfer all tax collection from the local level to 33 offices within the state was aimed at cutting 430 local public sector jobs and saving NOK 360 million, but it was blocked by powerful local government lobbying efforts. The rural-oriented Center Party was among Jensen’s major opponents, as it champions employment in outlying districts around Norway, instead of favouring the economies of scale that come with consolidation in urban areas.
“The interests that defend the ‘old’ way of doing things are strong everywhere,” Rattsø told Aftenposten. “The politicians will have to cut through them, to secure long-term benefits and renewal.” As he argues in favour of fewer and stronger regions and stronger regional cities, he’s sure to face more opposition from outlying areas that have come to depend on the public sector, at great cost.
Yet another extreme weather system, this one called ‘Tor,’ was moving in on Norway just before the weekend, with the worst weather expected to crash into the west coast from Bergen north towards Trondheim. Waves as high as 20 meters (more than 60 feet) were feared to roll in from Friday evening.
“People must absolutely not go anywhere near the shore on Friday, absolutely not!” meteorologist Arnstein Tjøstheim of the weather service Værvarsling på Vestlandet told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). “This is seldom and quite extreme weather, with such high waves heading into land.”
‘Listen to the warnings’
The top county official for Hordaland, Fylkesmannen Lars Sponheim, asked residents to follow all advice being sent out by the police, the weather service and local townships.
“It is of critical importance that folks listen to the warnings,” stated Sponheim. “We strongly urge residents to remain indoors, because the winds can send even large objects flying through the air. It can be dangerous to venture outdoors.”
Tjøstheim told NRK Thursday night that the low pressure system was expected to hit hardest further north than expected, probably somewhere along the coast of Sogn og Fjordane (just north of Hordaland County). That means the area north of Bergen and through the county of Møre og Romsdal will bear the brunt of the storm, along with wide portions of the Trøndelag coast.
“It looks like Hordaland will get off a bit easier than first thought,” Tjøstheim said.
‘Cancel travel plans’
Håvard Stensvand, preparedness chief for the county of Sogn og Fjordane, suggested that anyone planning to travel along the west coast on Friday and Saturday should cancel and remain where they are. “Folks really should re-evaluate any plans,” Stensvand said. “Experience shows that the strong winds will cause the worst problems for both communications and transport, so staying put is our best advice.”
A recent sudden rise in temperatures has also increased the danger of avalanches in steep areas, and the winds from Tor only raise that threat. The storm was also expected to hit wide areas of southern Norway as well.
Stensvand said all electricity providers had been warned, and were in a high state of preparedness, but power outages were expected. He urged residents to be prepared for a loss of electricity for possibly lengthy periods, if the storm tears down power lines and crews can’t get out to repair them.
Residents were also advised to take in all outdoor furniture and other loose items and move their hourse trailers and camping vans into protected areas.
A diplomat at South Africa’s embassy in Oslo has been called home after he crashed an embassy car while, according to police, he was driving under the influence of alcohol. He had been suspected of drunk driving on an earlier occasion as well.
“We can confirm that we now have received a response (from the South African Embassy) that South African authorities will call home the diplomat suspected of drunk driving,” Astrid Sehl of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry told newspaper VG Tuesday night. “It’s not yet clear when the diplomat will return to South Africa, but Norwegian authorities want a speedy departure.”
Faces disciplinary action
VG also reported that judicial advisers to the South African government recommend that disciplinary action be taken against the diplomat, who held a high-ranking position of first secretary at the embassy in Oslo. The recommendation reportedly was made in a confidential report from the judicial division of the South African foreign ministry, to which VG obtained access.
Police had alerted Norway’s foreign ministry in September that he’d been stopped on suspicion of drunk driving but refused to submit to testing, claiming diplomatic immunity. He made the same immunity claim late on the night of January 2, after he’d collided with a car driven by a health care worker responding to a patient’s call for help. The health care worker, a young woman in her 20s, was injured in the crash and both vehicles were badly damaged.
The South African ministry also confirmed that the diplomat was being recalled. The recall comes after Norway’s ministry summoned South African Ambassador Queen Anne Zondo to a meeting shortly after the car crash, and presented her with a request that his immunity be revoked. Then he would have to face charges in Norway.
Revocation refused
“Since this was a serious traffic accident involving personal injuries and suspicions of drunk driving, we would have preferred that the diplomat be questioned by police and eventually charged in Norway,” Sehl told VG. “It is not acceptable that foreign diplomats break Norwegian law.”
South African authorities refused to revoke his immunity but did agree to bring him home, with the report on the matter noting that would “probably be in the (South African) department’s best interests.”
VG reported that the diplomat also wound up in the hospital with injuries to a leg after he crashed the embassy car. Opposition politicians in South Africa called the diplomat’s behaviour “a national shame.”
Yet another massive case of sexual assaults against children began unfolding in a courtroom Gjøvik this week. It’s the latest in a string of shocking violence against young victims, carried out by middle-aged Norwegian men.
This time it’s a 49-year-old former music teacher and band leader who’s charged with 225 counts of criminal assaults on both children and animals. The 28-page indictment is one of the biggest cases ever to be heard in a Norwegian court, and it involves 110 youngsters from all over the country.
Confessed to most charges
Newspaper Aftenposten noted on Tuesday how the defendant, who has admitted guilt on nearly all the charges against him, might well have continued his sexual violence had it not been for one mother who entered her 12-year-old daughter’s room one day in October 2014 and found her naked in front of her computer. She immediately called police and the 49-year-old man was arrested just four days later.
Police found large quantities of computer equipment in his home in Oppland County and were able to uncover evidence of one online assault after another. They found no less than 840,000 records of chats with his young victims and then had to carry out the grim task of tracking down and informing all the targets of his attention and their parents, and explain how he used them to have sex with minors.
“I don’t remember,” he testified when asked about one physical assault on one of several girls under age 16, “but if she says I did what she says, it must have happened. I have created enough problems for people.”
Posed as a peer
Around half his victims are now over 16 years and will testify in the Gjøvik courtroom. Others will testify via video links from courtrooms around Norway. The man was active in exploiting his pupils, band members and others since 2003, often tricking them into thinking he was another young girl, and thus getting them to unclothe and engage in various illegal acts on camera. He physically assaulted three of the children, including one 15-year-old he met at a music festival.
“I wanted to help her buy a better instrument,” he testified. “And then we met and had contact.”
Investigators have seized 39,000 photos from his computer and mobile telephone, including evidence of him having sex with a girl 25 years younger than himself. The court in Gjøvik has set aside 10 weeks for his trial. The case is beginning just days after another Norwegian man was sentenced to 12 years in custody in another case involving sexual assaults on children and animals. He has appealed his prison term.
It’s been a rather blue year in Norway, with the refugee crisis and an economic slowdown sparking concern from north to south. And there wasn’t even much if any snow during this year’s Christmas and New Year holiday season. There was some good news though …
… and prospects for 2016 aren’t all that bad. More on that later. For now, with this photo from an unusually unfrozen lake in the hills above Oslo, we’d like to wish all our readers et riktig godt nyttår – a very Happy New Year!
State meteorologists were once again sending out warnings on Saturday for “full storm” during the night, with the southern coasts of Rogaland and the Agder counties told to brace for the worst. The latest batch of bad weather comes just as Norwegians were poised to wrap up the long Christmas holiday weekend, and the storm may finally bring some snow at lower elevations.
The storm warnings were posted first for both the west coast counties of Rogaland and Hordaland. Officials later expanded the warnings to also include the Agder counties, Telemark and Buskerud, areas still recovering from floods and severe storms throughout the autumn.
State Meteorologist Ida Marie Solbrekke said the weather would be worst of all in Rogaland, with Stavanger residents told to especially batten down the hatches. “The wind is coming from the east (over the mountains), and will hit the hardest in areas susceptible to the strong austavind,” Solbrekke told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).
She told residents to expect strong gusts and urged that any loose items around homes and buildings be secured, especially children’s trampolines that may still be out in gardens following the unusually mild autumn. Officials warn that “full storm” often results in trees crashing down on power- and telephone lines, and small buildings can be torn from their foundations.
Winds howling over the mountains were due to contain snow as well, and Stavanger was likely to see blizzard-like weather, too late for Christmas and absolutely not in its most decorative form.
Driving conditions were also expected to be difficult on Sunday, because of the combination of strong winds and snow, Solbrekke told NRK. Temperatures were also due to dip in many areas of southern Norway, after one of the warmest holiday periods on record.
Police in Oslo were mounting a massive response Wednesday morning after two people were reported stabbed at separate locations within a half-hour. Both victims, one a man and the other a woman, died of their wounds.
The first report came in at 7:38am, that a woman had been stabbed outside the garage area of a housing complex at Manglerud in eastern Oslo. She was declared dead at the scene by ambulance personnel.
Police received another report shortly after 8am, that a man had been stabbed on Breigata, a street in Oslo’s Grønland district downtown. He was rushed to hospital but declared dead on arrival.
The two stabblings prompted police to call out “all available resources” in their emergency response. Streets were cordoned off, numerous patrol cars were dispatched and the Oslo police quickly received assistance from the Follo Police District just south of Oslo to check cars driving out of the city. A screening station set up on the main E6 highway, but it was dismantled later in the morning.
Police also claimed they were too busy to respond to inquiries from media outlets, but promised to hold a press conference sometime later in the day.
The sought tips from the public via social media, though, and asked possible witnesses to call the police at 22-66-96-00.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that police were investigating possible connections between the two fatal attacks. There were no arrests as of 10:25am on Wednesday.
Norwegian meteorlogists were once again warning of storms and possible flooding caused by a combination of the bad weather and unusually high tides. The seas may literally sweep over some coastal areas, with water levels as much as three-and-a-half meters higher than normal.
Northern Norway was told to brace for the worst of the high tides, from Andenes and northward on Friday. High astronomical tides and strong winds from the southwest were raising alarms, especially in Harstad and Tromsø.
Nearing record levels
Meteorologist Trond Robertsen of the weather service Vervarslinga for Nord-Norge told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Thursday afternoon that the waters around the island of Tromsø could reach levels only 30 centimeters lower than the record set during the extreme weather system known as Berit in 2011. Interestingly, that storm system swept in exactly four years ago, also on November 26.
A combination of the winds and a major low-pressure system coincides with the full moon, pressing the seas towards the coast. No extreme weather warnings have been issued for the counties of Troms and Finnmark, but they have for high tides and flooding, all the way from Harstad to Grense-Jacobselv on the Russian border.
Warmer temperatures were also bringing more rain, up to elevations as high as 1,500 meters, when the calendar would otherwise call for snow. Full storm warnings were posted for the coasts of Møre og Romsdal, Trøndelag and Nordland counties both Thursday night and Friday. Temperatures may rise to as high as 10C in low-lying areas, very warm for this time of year.
Traffic warnings as well
The abrupt changes in the temperature have also caused major traffic problems, as rain can quickly turn to ice when it hits the ground. After commuter chaos in the Oslo area on Tuesday, Western Norway was getting its fill on Thursday, with driving extremely hazardous.
Driving was also due to be difficult over the mountains of southern Norway, where the weather was posing challenges for what’s supposed to be the opening weekend of the ski season at several moutain resorts.
The tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving in Norway create not only huge challenges for officials scrambling to house them but also for those trying to maintain order, security and, eventually, help integrate new arrivals into Norwegian society. Most asylum seekers now face long delays in getting their asylum applications processed as well, raising concerns about boredom, frustration and unrest at asylum centers around the county that can be prevented.
Immigration officials have scrambled to set up emergency shelters for arriving refugees, like this one at Råde in Østfold County, but the asylum centers are already packed and can quickly breed frustration and unrest. New calls are going out to make asylum seekers’ waiting time there as productive as possible, and then to also make integration into Norwegian society easier. PHOTO: Utenriksdepartementet
Immigration officials struggling to meet the sudden demands posed by the arrival of nearly 30,000 refugees this year have said their first priority is to provide “a roof over their heads, and food.” The most recent predictions that as many as 100,000 more beds for refugees will be needed by the end of next year have prompted the boss of immigration agency UDI, Frode Forfang, to call for construction of more barracks-like emergency shelters, the equivalent of refugee camps within Norway.
Strained resources
Fears are rising that such facilities will breed boredom and discontent. Forfang confirmed a report on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Thursday that asylum seekers now face lengthy delays, possibly up to two years, in getting their applications processed. That’s because UDI (Utlendingsdirektoratet) is putting a priority on weeding out applications from those who don’t qualify for asylum, and sending them out of the country. Newspaper Aftenposten reported on Friday that early 7,000 migrants, mostly from Russia and Afghanistan, have been deported so far this year, with 930 of them leaving voluntarily. That process also demands time and resources, but Forfang said it was most “efficient” because it opens up accommodation space in Norway for those with a legitimate need for protection.
It also means, however, that those with legitimate claims for asylum must wait a long time to receive formal asylum approval and start new lives in Norway. The goal, not least among politicians, is to quickly turn successful asylum seekers into productive members of Norwegian society but again, the challenges are daunting. It’s never been easy for foreigners to break into the Norwegian labour force and now the government, faced with the huge costs of the refugee influx, intends to cut back on language training and other integration measures until asylum is actually secured. Right now, asylum seekers can receive 250 hours of Norwegian language classes while their applications are being processed. That’s likely to be cut to 175 hours, with priority for language training (seen as the best means for integrating into Norwegian society and getting a job) given to those who already have been granted asylum.
Youthful initiative
While critics rage against the proposed cuts, one young man in Oslo has taken matters into his own hands, voluntarily offering informal Norwegian language training to newly arrived asylum seekers. Newspaper Dagsavisen reported this week that 21-year-old Fahad Abby, who grew up in Oslo’s Hovseter district and just completed his obligatory Norwegian military service, simply tapped his own fluency in Norwegian to help new arrivals at Tøyen in Oslo. One of his young students, a 14-year-old boy from Syria, managed to become conversational in just 20 days. Abby had, for example, guided him around the Norwegian capital and insisted that all communication had to be conducted in Norwegian.
Abby has since launched recruiting efforts for more voluntary Norwegian teachers via social media and received 163 responses in just a few days. “Lots of Norwegians claim that refugees don’t manage to integrate themselves, and I just wanted to test whether that was true,” Abby told Dagsavisen. It wasn’t, judging by the response and eagerness he experienced among refugees at Tøyen. “They (the asylum seekers) made incredible progress (in picking up the language) every day,” Abby said.
“We need to exploit the desire for learning they have while waiting for their applications to be processed,” Abby said. “We can’t let them sit in asylum centers for years, without learning anything about the Norwegian system, the culture, our values and traditions, and then expect them to contribute. They must be allowed to learn and be able to work as quickly as possible.”
Make integration easier
Calls are also going out for Norwegian bureaucrats to drop or at least ease tough regulations for getting foreign education and degrees approved in Norway, so that highly educated and skilled refugees can more easily get to work. One labour union, Norsk Tjenestemannslag (NTL), is also urging more companies to drop any insistence they may have that all new employees must have a command of Norwegian.
“In lots of companies (not least in the oil sector) with highly educated engineers, for example, the working language can be English or French, and that works fine,” John Leirvaag of NTL told Dagsavisen. “I can think of lots of other branches that could become more multi-lingual.” He also called the lengthy process for getting foreign education approved in Norway an “unnecessary clog” in a system that needs to get new immigrants off welfare and into the labour force. Given the problems often faced by Norwegians themselves in getting education abroad approved in Norway, that won’t be easy, but the refugee crisis may force a change in today’s rigid rules. NTL claims it must become easier to find jobs in Norway, also for those who can’t speak fluent Norwegian when they start work.
Abby’s 14-year-old star student, meanwhile, has since been transferred from Tøyen to the new asylum center set up at Stokke in Vestfold. “He’s bored, no one is teaching him Norwegian or challenging him in any way,” Abby said. “I’m going to head down there soon, with a computer, some books and what he might need to get a good start. He wants to be a doctor, and deserves to thrive in Norway.”
Students feel cheated, the state auditor general is upset, the Parliament has called a disciplinary hearing and Norway’s education minister, Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, is now fighting for his political life. Reaction has been swift after newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) broke the news last week that two brothers from one of Norway’s most prominent families had enriched themselves and some key advisers through ownership of private high schools.
The controversy has evolved from regulations that allow private schools in Norway to also qualify for state funding, and lots of it. Isaksen is now accused of failing to monitor the financial acrobatics of the owners of schools including Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology, the Treider and Bjørknes private high schools and colleges, and the online school NKI.
Noble family behind questionable transactions
The schools are owned by what once was a well-regarded trading and real estate firm, Anthon B Nilsen, best known for the headquarters building bearing its name on Oslo’s city hall plaza (Rådhusplassen). By revealing a series of what have been described as “fancy” and “illogical” internal business transactions, DN could report how top advisers to brothers Peder and Nicolai Løvenskiold avoided laws forbidding payment of dividends from operations of private schools. The top advisers include a former stock brokerage boss and the former head of a state commission who had proposed the law allowing state funding for private schools.
DN detailed how the Løvenskiold brothers, heirs to a family that represents the closest Norway can come to nobility, and their colleagues ended up taking around NOK 105 million out of the operations since gaining control over Anthon B Nilsen nearly 15 years ago. Their ailing private school venture called B+W Learning Systems (for Bjørknes + Westerdals) had been merged with Anthon B Nilsen, all the shares of which were owned by a charitable foundation called Reidar og Gunnar Holsts legat.
“It suited very well to double our balance statement by merging with Anthon B Nilsen,” Peder Løvenskiold told DN. Anthon B Nilsen was seen as being able to secure the private school operations’ future through its solid values and stable income from one of Oslo’s most prime real estate locations (the building at Rådhusgaten 27).
Tangled web of companies
What followed were years of school acquisitions and more questionable mergers, with the tuition fees paid by students or their parents, plus the state support, placed into Anthon B Nilsen’s bank account that in turn could serve as collateral to back new loans. In a lengthy story last weekend, and several follow-up stories, DN documented how the Anton B Nilsen concern evolved into a tangled web of companies characterized by internal transactions that made it difficult for state authorities to track how its funds were allocated. Peder Løvenskiold clarified himself that the various transactions “were a means of liberating capital we had earlier invested in the companies.” He and his advisers insist no laws were broken. The biggest question of all, though, was whether the funds provided by the state and those paying tuition were used for the benefit of the schools’ students or the schools’ owners.
When DN could document that tens of millions from the increasingly complicated ownership structure of the schools were paid out to the Løvenskiold brothers themselves, along with their advisers, the political reaction was enormous. Students had already been complaining about cramped facilities, large hikes in tuition fees, the loss of qualification for student loans and questionable school curricula and diplomas. Some teachers and the former rector of Westerdals had questioned why some of the school mergers were necessary, calling them illogical. Several began asking questions about how their tuition fees, which could amount to NOK 80,000 a year, were being spent. They didn’t get answers. “It was a parody,” one student, Benjamin Blatch, told DN.
Things got worse when Westerdals moved into a new building at Vulkan in Oslo that already had been quietly sold at a large gain even before it was even finished. DN reported that Anthon B Nilsen had committed the school to a long-term lease contract at rates much higher than those in the local market area. That made it the building attractive to investors. The gain was registered by a real estate firm in Anthon B Nilsen’s web of companies, not the school operations firm responsible for paying the rent.
More questions of political conflict of interest
In the fall of 2013, shortly after the current Conservatives-led government coalition assumed power, Norway’s state auditor general discovered the many internal transactions within Anthon B Nilsen and what DN reported had been “overwhelming profitability” of the Løvenskiold brothers’ private school empire. The auditor general’s office was concerned that the education ministry had lost control over how the state’s funds (NOK 123 million in the prior year alone) were used by Anthon B Nilsen. A critical letter was sent to the ministry, now led by Education Minister Thorbjørn Røe Isaksen, and the ministry responded that it would look into the matter.
Two years later, no action had been taken and Isaksen admitted to DN that “the ministry believed the concerns were addressed through the ordinary follow-up of private schools” Isaksen, meanwhile, had felt compelled to have his own impartiality in the case evaluated, because the Conservatives have received financial support for years from the Løvenskiold family (whose eldest brother Carl Otto inherited the vast landholdings in Nordmarka, timber operations and the Løvenskiold Vækero industrial and retail operations). Peder Løvenskiold has been actively involved in the party, and Nicolai Løvenskiold has donated money to the conservative magazine Minerva, which Isaksen edited for seven years until becoming education minister.
Isaksen insists he had no conflict of interest in the case, and that his impartiality had been confirmed by state lawyers.
Auditors, politicians, others ‘not satisfied’
The DN articles, which also have been followed up in other media, have unleashed a torrent of reaction from the state auditors, who are “not satisfied” with the response from the ministry over their concerns. The leaders of several political parties demanded an investigation and the Parliament’s disciplinary committee responded by calling a hearing where Isaksen will be grilled. The close ties between the Conservatives, the Løvenskiolds and Isaksen himself are also being questioned anew.
A professor at business school NHH has flatly stated that all the internal business transactions within Anthon B Nilsen were motivated purely by efforts to avoid the law against taking out dividends from private school operations, which are supposed to be run as non-profits, benefiting only their students, not their owners. “I can’t see any another reason to move all this money (among the new entities set up within Anthon B Nilsen),” NHH professor of finance Thore Johnsen told DN. “It was all quite fancy.”
Union leaders are also furious over the financial acrobatics conducted by the Løvenskiolds, and along with opposition politicians, they claim it shows the dangers of mixing public and private interests. “When taxpayers’ money earmarked for public service enriches private individuals, it’s wrong,” declared Mette Nord, the powerful leader of trade union federation Fagborbundet, which has more than 330,000 members in the public and private sector. “Commercial players are always creative enough to find ways of enriching themselves off welfare services.”
Angry students feel ‘cheated’
Students at Anthon B Nilsen’s schools packed meetings held by pressured school administrators last week, and were angry that neither of the Løvenskiold brothers showed up to answer questions. “That was cowardly, like an ostrich putting its head in the sand,” student Iver Syverud Thorsen told DN. Anthon B Nilsen’s communications director, who mostly has refused comment, responded that the company had set up a commission with representatives from the students and teachers where “all questions tied to the (internal) transactions would be answered.”
The students aren’t satisifed and the situation has united the various studentbodies involved to challenge their schools’ owners. “It feels like we’ve been cheated,” student Annika Sander told DN, not least in regards to how capital was withdrawn from three schools including Westerdals were merged in 2013. Its new rector after the merger, Bjørn Jarle Hanssen, has been on the defensive for days, and claimed repeatedly that the merger “has already given and will continue to give positive effects” in the form of new intercurricular programs, better access to “the best” lecturers, higher interest from business, more cooperation with international players and access to new facilities.”
Sudden reimbursement
As Education Minister Isaksen tried to defend himself on a nationwide NRK radio debate program Monday morning, and Prime Minister Erna Solberg claimed she was glad DN had raised criticial questions about how the state monitors the private schools it helps fund, Anthon B Nilsen made a surprise announcement. Its private school-owning entity Anthon B Nilsen Skoledrift has suddenly decided to refund money and excuse debt to the newly merged Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology in the amont of NOK 105 million. Company officials deny any dividends to the owners were illegal.
Instead, the owners of Anthon B Nilsen simply were said to be “deeply worried” over the “uneasiness” created around the company among students and employees of Westerdals Oslo ACT. The company already has criticized DN’s stories, calling them “biased” and “slanted” and akin to “tabloid journalism” that does “not reflect reality.”
The company has “therefore decided to erase any doubt … about Westerdal’s financial foundation … by eliminating the capital effect of the merger of three schools.” More internal transactions would mobilize refunds of NOK 20 million and elimination of NOK 85 million the debt the formerly profitably Westerdal’s was saddled with.
Rector Hanssen called it “a good solution.” It’s unclear whether the Parliament, the state auditor general, the students, academic professionals and a long list of upset top politicians will agree. Late last week, investigators at the Norwegian police white-collar crime unit Økokrim also summoned ministry personnel for a meeting. Isaksen insisted that he was renewing the ministry’s effort “to get all the facts on the table.”
It all started out well: Canadian teen-age idol Justin Bieber landed in Oslo for a promotional appearance and then proceeded to show up at a suburban skate park, thrill girls when he wandered into their classroom, and later tape a local TV talk show. But then things went very wrong.
At a relatively small, “exclusive” concert in a theater that’s part of the University of Oslo’s student union, Bieber spilled water on the stage after performing his first number. When he got a towel and bent down to dry it up, some of the overly eager fans who have made Bieber a sensation started grabbing at him. He asked them to stop. They didn’t listen. Bieber threatened to cut off the concert. The shrieking girls apparently didn’t believe him. But then Bieber quickly followed through on his threat. He stalked off the stage, throwing down the towel and claiming “I’m not doing the show.” And he didn’t return. On Friday morning, state broadcaster NRK felt it necessary to announce that Bieber had left the country.
Instant reaction
Reaction flew instantly around the world during the night, via social media, and many both inside and outside Norway were angry. Bieber fans blamed the Norwegian girls for offending their idol, deluging them with hate mail and, reportedly, even some death threats. Other fans who’d managed to be part of the audience were telling NRK Friday morning that they were shocked by Bieber’s behavior. As some so-called “Beliebers” defended their hero and digitally assaulted the Norwegian girls in many different languages, others made fun of Bieber, suggesting he was spoiled, had too short of a fuse, overreacted to the type of fans who have given him superstar status and that it was “just as well” that he cut off his concert.
Bieber himself later apologized, also using social media to blame his behaviour on some recently “long days” and a lack of sleep. He didn’t mean to be “mean,” he claimed, but chose to end the concert after just one number because the audience closest to the stage didn’t listen to him. He promised to make up for ending the concert.
While fans and promoters were left to wonder how that might happen, Norway’s national commercial television station TV2 was furious over Bieber’s behavior and called it a “clear violation” of the agreement they’d had with him. While his appearance on their TV talk show Senkveld (Late Evening) had gone well, NRK reported that it was TV2 who had “invited” Bieber to Norway and arranged the concert, which was supposed to be aired nationwide in mid-November.
‘Not the fans’ fault’
Now TV2 is left with a very short concert indeed. “This was not the deal,” TV2’s communications chief Jan-Petter Dahl told NRK on Friday. The talk show will air as planned, he said, “but we were supposed to broadcast a half-hour concert on TV2 on November 13, and we don’t have material for a half-hour. We’ll have to discuss what to do now.” Gjermund Moastuen of Universal Music Norge apologized for Bieber’s decision to walk off the stage but said it was” too early” to determine whether a contract violation had occurred.
Dahl refused to blame Bieber’s Norwegian fans for the cut-off concert Thursday night that ended in tears and disappointment. Many of them have since been harassed online and Dahl called on other fans to cease and desist. “These are young girls, they are true fans, they were standing in the first row and did what many others surely would have done,” Dahl said. “What happened wasn’t their fault.” He claimed TV2 was “taking care” of the girls, had already had long conversations with them to help mend their broken hearts and would have follow-up meetings as well.
One local music journalist who was covering the concert, Karen Brynildsen of Topgirl, told NRK she was stunned by the Bieber’s behavior. “I thought he was finished with the ‘jerk’ side he’s shown the past two years,” she told NRK. “This was really bad behavior towards his fans.” She claimed he acted like “a real diva.”
Dahl said it was too early to say exactly how TV2 would react to what they claim was indeed a contract violation on Bieber’s part. “If a star of his calibre decides to do something like this, there’s not much we can do,” Dahl told NRK. “This was completely out of our control.”
The latest extreme weather to roll over Norway was, as predicted, drenching most southern and eastern counties Thursday morning. Flooding from the powerfully wet weather system called “Petra” was worst in Telemark and Aust-Agder, with portions of the coastal city of Skien under water.
Rain was also pouring down in Oslo, but not as heavily as in counties farther to the south. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
Officials in Kongsberg were also struggling to deal with the enormous masses of water pouring down the Numedalslågen river, which runs through the center of the city. The main E134 highway, which crosses the river and runs along it, was facing closure once again.
Authorities were also monitoring all the small creeks around Kongsberg and myriad other towns and cities in Buskerud, Telemark and Aust-Agder counties. “We’re afraid of how all the water is working its way down to the sea, and that residential areas will be damaged,” Anette Finnerud, technical chief for Kongsberg, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). “We are in the highest degree of preparedness until the weather finally changes.”
That may occur on Friday, when Petra’s torrential rains were forecast to let up. In the meantime, the city of Skien was arguably in worse shape than Kongsberg, as the waters that also have flooded Notodden farther north roar south towards the sea and were too massive for normal waterways and drainage systems to handle. A new park that was due to open this weekend in Bø in Telemark was underwater, as were campgrounds, piers, waterside restaurants and central areas of Skien.
For a series of photos of the flooding from NRK, click here, and then on the photos themselves.
A crisis team in Buskerud was especially worried about stacks of timber at a forest products storage area in Flesberg, around 20 kilometers north of Kongsberg. The water was threatening to unleash the heavy logs, “and that can be very dangerous,” said the head of the country’s preparedness team, Knut Skrede. “But we have worked hard to secure the timber, so we hope things go well.” Another timber storage area run by Moelven Numedal was also securing its large piles of logs.
Flood warnings remained at their highest levels in nine counties in southern Norway. State meteorologist Kristian Gislefoss told NRK that another 50 millimeters of rain had fallen in Landvik and Kjevik in Aust-Agder just since Wednesday evening, and that came in addition to all the rain on Monday and Tuesday. One local electronics firm in Aust-Agder had to close and send 400 employees home because of flooding.
So much water is roaring through rivers in Telemark and Buskerud counties that authorities have posted red-alert warnings in scores of communities. Meanwhile, a new extreme weather system dubbed ‘Petra’ was bearing down on southeastern Norway and expected to dump even more rain on Thursday.
Another round of torrential rain is the last thing authorities need right now, as they already were closing roads, pumping out flooded cellars and issuing more evacuation orders after Tuesday’s heavy rain. The counties of Aust-Agder, Buskerud and Telemark counties are hardest hit already, but warnings were issued for Vest-Agder, Vestfold, Oppland, Oslo, Akershus and Østfold as well.
The situation was most critical Wednesday morning in Notodden and Kongsberg, where the Numedalslågen river was roaring at a rate of 700 cubic meters per second. There were some signs the water level was slowly starting to sink, but Norwegian Broadasting (NRK) reported that local authorities were evaluating the situation minute by minute.
For live video from NRK of the water rushing through the historic city of Kongsberg, click here, and then click on the red arrow (external link, in Norwegian).
The important E134 highway that runs through Kongsberg (seen in the background of NRK’s video, as it crosses the river on a bridge in the heart of town) reopened after being closed by flooding during the night. Officials warned it may close again at a moment’s notice, though, and the highway has also been blocked in other areas as it crosses from eastern to western Norway through Buskerud and Telemark. It remained closed between Notodden and Seljord Wednesday morning.
Several other roads were also closed by flooding including county highways FV88 at Bevergrenda, FV96 in Lurdalen, FV133 in Sigdal and FV64 at Bingen in Øver Eiker. Crisis teams at the state highway department (Statens vegvesen) were monitoring road conditions constantly.
In nearby Notodden, the airport remained closed on Wednesday and residents were reporting flooded gardens and cellars. Warnings were also posted downstream, in the coastal cities of Larvik and Drammen, where major thoroughfares were also closed on Tuesday afternoon. Several schools were closed and earthslide warnings were also posted in many local communities because of the enormous quantities of rain that fell on Tuesday.
With more forecast for Thursday, as the extreme weather system called “Petra” rolls in, authorities were bracing for the worst. Telemark newspaper Varden reported that the water level in the large lake called Tinnsjøen was the highest in more than 100 years. The red-alert warnings posted for the Nemedalslågen river came after its levels hit levels generally seen only once every 50 years.
After more than a week of brilliant, if late, summer weather, state meteorologists were warning residents of southern Norway to brace for a major downpour on Tuesday. Flood warnings were posted in nine counties.
Clear sunny skies were already clouding over on Monday and the weather was forecast to get much worse during the night. Strong winds were expected to bring with them rain from the south, as a low pressure system moved in.
The counties of Vest-Agder, Aust-Agder, Telemark, Vestfold, Østfold, Buskerud, Oslo, Akershus and Oppland were due to be hit the hardest. The state meteorological institute predicted as much as 60 millimeters of rain in some areas, and between 25 and 45 millimeters on average around southern Norway.
“The rain may start falling this afternoon or tonight (Monday),” meteorologist Børje Johansson told state broadcaster NRK. “But it’s first on Tuesday that we’ll get some really heavy rain, up to 50 to 60 millimeters.”
That amounts to downpours that can cause local flooding and minor mudslides. Small craft warnings were also posted at sea.
Temperatures, meanwhile, were due to decline from the warm mid-20s posted over the weekend. The forecasters were expecting highs around 17-18C over much of the country, with more rain on Thursday.
Norwegian police think a young inmate at Norway’s Bastøy Prison, located on an island off Horten south of Oslo, escaped during the night by paddling a surfboard with a spade over to the mainland.
The convict, a 23-year-old man serving time for rape and narcotics violations, was last seen Tuesday evening and was missing early Wednesday morning. When he wasn’t found anywhere on the small island, which is dominated by the prison, police were alerted nationwide.
“We have found a surfboard and a spade that can be linked to Bastøy in the area around a school in Horten,” Åshild Jahre of the police in Horten told state broadcaster NRK. “So that’s how we think he came over (the Oslo Fjord).”
The 23-year-old is not from the local county of Vestfold, and police districts where he got in trouble have been alerted to his prison break. They claimed he was not considered dangerous, despite the rape conviction, and he was not identified.
Bastøy is considered a low-security prison that also often houses those convicted of white-collar crimes. The prison consists of around 80 buildings, many dating back to the early 1900s, and it functions as its own local community with a store, library, health services, church, school and welfare office. The island also features a recreational area, a pier with ferry service to Horten and an old lighthouse that can be rented out for meetings and seminars.
Foreigners applying for jobs in Norway are often overlooked, no matter how qualified or highly educated they may be, if they can’t communicate in Norwegian. Recruiters report that many employers simply think it’s easier to hire a Norwegian, even when a foreign candidate is more experienced or has the special skills needed.
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported recently that analysis, public relations and media companies systematically eliminate candidates who can’t speak or understand Norwegian because hiring them “will create too much fuss,” according to a leading recruitment firm.
Outside the comfort zone
Mediabemanning, which helped client companies fill 150 positions last year, reported that only three of the jobs went to candidates who didn’t speak Norwegian, Swedish or Danish. Ole Janszo, a partner in the firm, claims the number should have been at least 10 times as high.
“We always ask at the beginning of the hiring process whether the clients will be willing to hire people with a foreign language background,” Janszo told DN. “At that point, around half of them are positive to that. But when we get to the end of the recruitment process, hardly anyone dares (to hire foreigners). Then the Norwegians will be hired instead.”
Janszo said the hiring decisions are not based on the candidates’ actual qualifications but rather on small details. “Often we can suspect that (the decisions) are based on things like concerns over whether hiring a foreign worker will adversely affect chatter around the lunch table, or a company’s desire to maintain Norwegian as the form of internal communication,” Janzso said, adding that decisions often seem to rest on “matters of convenience” or what’s most comfortable for management.
“Conducting a job interview in English can also appear to be a challenge,” he continued, “and it’s also more time-consuming to have to check the candidate’s credentials.”
Risk losing the best candidates
The danger for Norwegian companies needing skilled and creative workers is that they risk passing over better-qualified workers than those found among the ranks of the Norwegians. “When you reject foreign candidates so that the conversation in the company canteen can flow more easily, they’re at the very least not being evaluated on an objective basis,” Janzso said. “Neither we nor they can be certain that the best qualified candidate for the job was chosen.”
DN has earlier reported on the lack of advanced competence within information technology in Norway. A new report from consulting company Damvad, conducted for the government ministry in charge of municipal affairs and modernization, shows that around 10,500 positions will lack qualified workers to fill them by 2030. Companies will need to attract foreign specialists to fill the gap, at the same time that economic unrest in large parts of Europe makes Norway attractive.
‘Second-class citizens’
“We have marketing directors, middle managers and some very clever immigrants arriving in Norway from large, well-known companies abroad,” Janzso told DN. “But then they can find themselves in a second-class ranking in the job market, where they experience little recognition of their skills and experience.”
In the end, Janzso and other global talent experts have claimed, Norwegian companies lose out if they don’t recognize foreign talent. Ruben Søgaard, managing director of a media firm with 70 employees where only two aren’t Norwegian, admits it demands extra effort to include foreign speakers in a firm. Other companies with multi-national staffing view it as a strength. The digital division of appliance retailer Elkjøp, for example, has workers from Sweden, Russia, Serbia and Finland, for example.
“It’s absurd to disqualify someone because of their language or cultural background,” Filip Elverhøy, digital director at Elkjøp, told DN. “For us, it’s all about getting the best people.”
The Norwegian division of travel company Detur has cancelled all of its package tours to Tunisia following Friday’s deadly attack on tourists at a Tunisian beach resort. Dozens were killed in the attack against several hotels in the city of Sousse.
Around 159 Norwegians were among the tourists on holiday in Tunisia, which was forced to cope with its second terrorist attack in the past few months. Tourism is a major industry for Tunisia, which seems exactly what the anti-secular terrorists are trying to ruin. The country has been on terror alert, since armed Islamists attacked the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March.
114 Norwegians in the attack area
None of the Norwegian tourists was staying at the hotels that were attacked, Levet Cetin of Detur told news bureau NTB. “We are in the process of trying to contact everyone, but as far as we know, none of the Norwegians were injured,” Cetin told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). Detur was using its contacts in Tunisia as well as sending text messages to all of its clients, to make sure they were safe.
Norway’s foreign ministry reported it had no indications either that any Norwegians were subjected to the attacks. Of the 159 Norwegian tourists in Tunisia, 114 are staying in the Sousse area. All were due to be traveling back to Norway as planned on Monday.
“We don’t plan to send more tourists to the area,” Cetin told website Nettavisen. Those who have paid for their trips will receive refunds, he said.
Told to get away from the beach
Didrik Danielsen, among the Norwegians staying in Sousse, told NRK that personnel at the hotel where he and his partner are staying came down to the beach and asked all guests to return to the hotel area.
“They said we had to get away from the beach and back to the hotel,” Danielsen told NRK. “When we got to the lobby, there were many people gathered there and a representative from (travel firm) Thomas Cook said there had been a terrorist attack and that several people had been killed.”
Among the hotels attacked was one adjacent to where Danielsen was staying, “but we haven’t seen or heard anything, it’s more than 100 meters from our hotel to where the attacks took place.” He said all the guests were told not to leave the hotel area, “and if we did, it would be at our own risk.”
Two other Norwegian tourists reported helicopters flying overhead and police stationed outside the hotels.
Train passengers and cargo customers in Norway were being warned that the country’s entire railroad system would grind to a halt on Monday. Train employees were set to walk off the job for three hours in the middle of the day, to protest the government’s proposed railroad reform.
Neither the Airport Express Train (Flytoget) to Oslo’s main airport nor any other trains in Norway would be running in the middle of the day on Monday. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
State train operator NSB, the state-owned company in charge of the tracks and other rail infrastructure (Jernbaneverket) and the Airport Express Train (Flytoget) that serves Oslo’s main airport at Gardermoen were to all shut down from 10 am to 1pm, when employees went on what they call a “political strike.” It wasn’t clear how, or even whether, the strike disruption would drum up public support for the railroad workers, but it would certainly make their discontent known.
The government wants to reform Norway’s long-troubled train system through a major reorganization and by ushering in new competition. Reform plans would remove NSB’s monopoly on most train lines, and, the government claims, make the railroad system more efficient by reorganizing most of its operations and lines of responsibility.
The unions oppose further moves to split up railroad operations, claiming the effect will be the opposite of what the government intends. “Passengers will get worse service, and no one will take responsibility later,” Kjell Atle Brunborg, leader of the union Norske Jernbaneforbund, told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN). He also claimed the monopoly aspects of current operations won’t change, since the state will choose which new players may take over routes.
The reform plans are up for a vote in Parliament on Monday and were expected to win approval since the two parties supporting Norway’s minority government coalition have already said they’ll vote in favour of the measure.
“Gratulerer med dagen!” That’s the phrase millions of Norwegians would be greeting each other with on Sunday as they once again celebrate their national day on the 17th of May. The holiday is always enormously festive, but this year, Norwegians will also be celebrating 70 years of hard-won freedom after the country’s occupation during World War II.
Flags were flying over Oslo and the rest of Norway on the country’s national day, the 17th of May, on Sunday. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
Events begin early, with choirs singing outside selected churches from 7am, followed by formal flag-raising ceremonies and memorials at 8am. It was cold and raining in Oslo Sunday morning, but that wouldn’t stop wreath-layings at the National Monument at Akershus Fortress, at the graves and statues of distinguished Norwegians, or the huge parade featuring around 100,000 children and marching bands that begins at 10am.
We’ll be out on the streets as well and will come back with some coverage. In the meantime, we’d like to thank all of you for reading newsinenglish.no as we also mark the website’s own 6th anniversary on the 17th of May. You’re the ones who make this all worthwhile.
SPECIAL FEATURE: Norway is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its liberation after World War II this month. Among those remembering the day the war actually ended in Norway is Solveig Torvik, a Norwegian-American journalist whose family was living in the hamlet of Hatlehol at the time, near the west coast city of Ålesund.
Solveig Torvik
Torvik described that day, May 7, 1945, in her novel Nikolai’s Fortune, which chronicles four generations of women in Torvik’s family who were driven from Finland to Norway to Idaho in the United States, in search of a better life.
Germany invaded Norway on Torvik’s first birthday, and she was six years old on Liberation Day. Here is her childhood memory from the day peace came to Hatlehol:
I remember much milling about near our cottage that historic morning and much speculation about whether our neighbor Marit really ought to take the cows up to mountain pasture just then. I had begged permission to accompany her and her fiancé Jan as they took the milk cows on this annual spring pilgrimage into the forested foothills to forage above Hatlehol. Rumors that the war was about to end had been flying from house to house for days, though as long as I could remember, the adults had been chanting the familiar, hope-filled mantra: “When the war is over…” This day, though, they seemed even more distracted by the topic than usual.
But my mind was firmly fixed on the cows. I was six, and it was the first time I had been allowed to help with this grown-up task. I was mad with impatience at the delay.
The sun broke through about noon that day, according to the history books. All I remember is that the morning wore on, more nervous people came out of their houses to exchange the latest rumors. At some point, Marit must have decided it was now or never. After a messy start at the assembly point by the barn, the animals dutifully fell into plodding line behind the clanging bell of the lead cow. Marit and Jan walked ahead of the mooing entourage, and I scampered proudly alongside keeping order and well clear of hooves. Our presence was a formality, really; the cows knew the way up the narrow, meandering trail among ferns and blueberry bushes.
To this day, I don’t know where we were going. Nor do I know what happened to the cows.
When it began, we had been underway for some time, long enough that I could look down from a vantage point high up on the forested bench to see our cottage nestled like a minuscule red toy playhouse in a green meadow far below.
Suddenly, somewhere a long way off, a tiny, musical sound broke the stillness of that sun-dappled day. In the first few moments, the sound must not have registered. But shortly it dawned on us that the tinkling sound we were hearing was not the cowbell. Puzzled, Marit stopped the procession in a sunlit grove and paused to listen.
We could hear it clearly then: “Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!” – a wild, insistent symphony of chimes cascading from steeple to steeple across the countryside, each church bell ringing out nearer and more jubilantly than the last.
It was a sound I had never heard.
We stood transfixed on the path, I anxiously scanning their faces to see what it meant. Marit and Jan stared at one another in what must at first have been disbelief, then ecstatic comprehension.
“Church bells!” she cried. “The war is over!”
He shouted and lifted her off the ground, whirling her round and round in a giddy embrace while I gaped in astonishment. Never had I witnessed such behavior. I can see them still in that fern-rimmed grove, heads thrown back in joyous laughter, a shaft of sunlight falling through the trees to bless their jubilant dance of liberation.
Then they each grabbed one of my hands and we flew back down the path so fast my feet barely touched the ground. They were heedless of everything – bushes, brambles, the cows, my utter bewilderment – save the joyful clamor of bells. Never before had I been dragged pell-mell though the woods by supposedly sane adults.
When we reached Mother’s cottage, our usually self-possessed neighbors were gathered at her back door in noisy, animated conversation. Some were hugging one another, others were laughing and joking loudly, their voices bold and careless. A few of the women were crying openly. Even some of the men were weeping.
I was thunderstruck. So this is what they meant by the end of the war: grown-ups acting crazy and undependable.
I sank to the ground, crying quietly.
I don’t know how long I sat there sniveling in the grass before Mother noticed and came to bend over me. “Why on earth are you crying?” she asked in bewilderment. I could feel many curious eyes on me.
“I don’t want the war to end,” I sobbed.
She laughed uneasily and said something in a strained, apologetic voice about my being “just a child who doesn’t know any better.” Instantly I understood that I had shamed her, and my heart sank in mortification. So I allowed her to persuade me that this was a day to be glad, but I retained my private doubts about the wisdom of throwing the whole world into turmoil for the sake of this thing called “peace.”
Not until 10 days later would I make my own peace with peace. On May 17, Norway’s Constitution Day, the family gathered at Uncle Leif’s apartment in Aalesund to watch the celebratory parade.
I retain fleeting but vivid images of that rain-soaked, cement-gray day: a band piping a ragged march as I stretched on tiptoe to see over the windowsill. Row after row of people dressed in dark raincoats marched solemnly under a forest of dark umbrellas. “Hip, hip, hurrah!” they shouted over and over, and we answered with voices unaccustomed to shouting.
On cue from the band, everyone suddenly burst into an unfamiliar song – people in the windows, people on the sidewalks, people in the procession. I saw adults unashamedly wiping tears from their cheeks as they raised strong, long-stilled voices to sing, “Ja, vi elsker dette landet” – “Yes, we love this land.” I had no idea this was our national anthem, but I was thrilled by the fervent, swelling sound of their voices reverberating along the parade route.
The only color in this gray-on-gray scene was the brilliant, red, white and blue of an unfamiliar flag proudly carried by many marchers. With stubborn faith that this day would arrive, they had hidden this forbidden symbol of our nation for five long years. Having known only the swastika, it never occurred to me that there might be a Norwegian flag.
Awed by the spectacle, swept up by song, thrilled by the sight of all those flags, I finally concluded that peace must be a fine thing after all.
This excerpt from Torvik’s novel “Nikolai’s Fortune” is reprinted with the permission of the University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Torvik is also the author of “The World’s Best Place – Norway and the Norwegians,” a social commentary published online at Smashwords.com. Born in Oslo on April 9, 1939, she emigrated to the United States with her family in 1949.
Winter is not over yet in southeastern Norway, despite recent spring-like weather and sunny skies. It was snowing again in Oslo Wednesday morning and state meteorologists warned that as many as 30 centimeters of fresh snow may fall on Thursday.
“The snowy weather will be quite intense,” Espen Biseth Granan of the state meteorologic institute told NRK’s weather newssite yr.no. “This means considerable amounts of snow, given the time of year.”
Could be ‘rather chaotic’
Granan noted that recent mild temperatures, sunshine and little if any precipitation has made most Norwegians “ready for spring,” calling the pending “relapse” of winter “significant” and something for which residents should be prepared.
He warned that Thursday may become “rather chaotic” in parts of both Sørlandet and Østlandet, the southern and eastern parts of the country. The snow was expected to start falling heavily during the night and wasn’t due to let up until Thursday evening. For once, Western Norway (Vestlandet) wasn’t expected to get the brunt of the powerful low-pressure system that was moving in.
“This weather system is coming in the backdoor, from the south,” Granan told yr.no. “It will move over Østlandet and eventually disappear over Sweden.” Strong winds from the southeast could make for blizzard conditions.
Just in time for Easter skiing
Vestfold, Telemark and Aust-Agder were the counties due to be hit hardest, with up to 30 centimeters of snow. The Oslo area and Østfold were due to get as many as 10 to 20 centimeters, so commuters were warned to brace once again for difficult driving conditions and possible public transport delays.
The snow was arriving just in time for the start of Norway’s traditional and lengthy Easter holidays, which will begin for many this weekend. Many Norwegians still prefer to spend Easter on skis and now the trails and slopes were set to get a fresh supply of snow, following weeks of concern that Easter skiing wouldn’t be very good this year. Prospects were brighter for skiing both in the mountains and at higher elevations around city centers.
Norwegian consumers seem to be waking up to years of high prices and relatively poor selection at their local grocery stores. A story about how a small local candy maker was kept off the shelves of Norway’s powerful grocery chains has sparked public indignation, and would-be customers are now clamouring to buy his sweets.
“This is incredible,” said Rune Forsberg, who founded and runs the small Hval Sjokoladefabrikk in Fokserød, just outside the southwestern city of Sandefjord. Newspaper Aftenposten reported on Friday that orders for his chocolate and candy have poured in from all over the country, since consumers can’t find it at grocery stores like Meny or Kiwi. The welcome flood of direct orders has prompted Forsberg to hire in extra help to boost production.
Couldn’t afford shelf space
The sudden demand began after Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) ran an investigative program earlier this week detailing how Norway’s grocery store chains, which are owned by some of the country’s wealthiest families, drive hard bargains with suppliers and wholesalers that they already don’t control. The chains engage in what they prefer to call “joint marketing,” which forces suppliers to pay for in-store promotions, the stores’ own advertising and marketing efforts and, not least, choice placement on grocery store shelves.
The small Hval Sjokoladefabrikk was unable to compete against industrial food producer Orkla’s candy and chocolate maker, Nidar, which reportedly paid NOK 18 million to get its products into the large grocery store chains that are controlled by just a few families in Norway. The family-owned NorgesGruppen, for example, runs both retailing and wholesaling operations and controls such large chains as Meny, Ultra, Centra, Kiwi and Joker stores.
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) was the first to report several years ago how suppliers have to cut deals every year with these chains and others to get their products into the stores. The practice, critics claim, leads to fewer products, less competition and higher prices and is illegal in countries like Great Britain. Critics charge that most of the profits, also from extra price hikes imposed by the stores themselves, lands in the pockets of those controlling the grocery stores.
‘Siding with the little guy’
Complaints over high prices and poor selection in Norway have raged for years, in line with the growth of cross-border trade fueled by those driving to Sweden to shop. Only now, however, have consumers responded in such a way that one professor likened it to “revenge,” while the government minister in charge of agriculture and food, Sylvi Listhaug, is considering a ban on the grocery stores’ marketing practices.
“What we’re seeing now is that consumers are taking revenge, and siding with the little guy in the battle between (a retail version) of David and Goliath,” Professor Tor W Andreassen at business school NHH in Bergen told Aftenposten. He said that consumers clearly have sympathy for, in this case, Hval Sjokoladefabrikk, “and they’re staging an uproar against it being kept off the shelves of the big chains.” Hval’s products have also won many taste tests, and consumers “want a taste themselves,” Andreassen said. Consumers can also now use the power of social media to make their displeasure with the grocery chains known.
Hval’s owner said he’s also been contacted now by the grocery chain REMA 1000 and thinks the consumer uproar in his favour “may be a turning point for us.” Listhaug is taking up the fight, too, challenging also REMA 1000’s owners and taking steps to demand changes in purchasing practices. Other calls were going out for Norway’s competition authority, Konkurransetilsynet, to take a more active role in better regulating the few families in Norway who control the market.
Organizers of this year’s annual Holmenkollen Ski Festival were counting on sunny skies, appearances by victorious skiing celebrities and some new events to boost attendance this weekend. At least the weather forecast was good.
The Holmenkollen Ski Jump has had a rough time since it was rebuilt five years ago, with heavy losses and declining attendance at its annual ski festival. Things were looking up this year as events were getting underway on Friday. ILLUSTRATION: Oslo kommune
Ticket sales were also showing a solid increase over the past few years, when the public all but abandoned what used to be one of the biggest events of the year in Oslo. As many as 100,000 people used to head for the hills of Holmenkollen to watch cross-country ski races and ski jumping, but attendance started declining in the 1990s. Foggy weather, changing recreational habits and one year with a big and unpopular jump in ticket prices left the arena under the ski jump almost empty.
It was clear the event needed to lure back fans. Last year the owners of the Holmenkollen Ski Festival (Norway’s national skiing federation and the local skiing association Skiforeningen) hired a new managing director after heavy losses. “The first thing I did was to get control over costs and try to get some predictability on the revenue side,” Kristin Sæterøy told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) this week.
The festival snared Sparebank 1 as a main sponsor plus new sponsors for the athletes’ start numbers and arena advertising. The festival also get a new board, with members from various businesses, public relations and former national athletics chief Børge Stensbøl as chairman.
This year’s Ski Festival, a World Cup event that was to begin with women’s ski jumping on Friday evening and end with the men jumping on Sunday with ski racing in between, was also featuring a new World Cup race on Saturday evening. Ticket prices have been cut and as of Thursday, sales were running well ahead of last year, with 18,000 sold, up from 13,000 at the same time last year.
With many often showing up at the last minute, Sæterøy and her staff were feeling fairly confident that their goal of selling 30,000 tickets would be met. All told they hope as many as 90,000 to 100,000 will stream through Holmenkollen in the course of the weekend.
The festival is also bound to benefit from all the medals won by skiing stars like Marit Bjørgen, Petter Northug, Therese Johaug and jumpers like Rune Velta, who just won gold at the World Championships in Sweden. Jumper Anders Fannemel, who set a world record this season, will also be hurling himself off Holmenkollen.
Organizers also hope that many ski jumping fans from Poland who live and work in the Oslo area will also head for Holmenkollen during the weekend. Norwegian fans are known for camping out along the route of the men’s 50-kilometer race on Saturday and the women’s 30-kilometer race on Sunday. The World Cup competition wraps up this weekend, with Norwegian skiers Martin Johnsrud Sundby and Marit Bjørgen already named the winners of the overall World Cup for this year.
A pilots’ strike against Norwegian Air was set to escalate further, after the Nordic transport workers’ federations urged their 48 unions to in turn call their members out on sympathy strikes. A coordinated action in the other Nordic countries could ground Norwegian Air entirely.
It was the latest move in a bitter labour conflict that seemed more deadlocked than ever on Tuesday. Instead of meeting up for more negotiations with Norwegian Air’s management and employers’ organization NHO Luftfart, trade union federation YS/Parat called fellow union leaders from Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark to a meeting in Oslo.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that the sympathy strikes threatened on Tuesday could involve as many as 360,000 members of unions attached to the transport workers’ federations. That could prevent Norwegian Air from, for example, chartering the bus it did on Monday to transport stranded airline passengers from Bergen to Oslo.
“The unions can’t sit still and watch strike-busting without being able to act,” Parat leader Hans-Erik Skjæggerud stated in a press release.
It remained unclear how sympathetic passengers will be towards any sympathy strikers. Norwegian Air’s boss Bjørn Kjos has long been a popular executive in Norway and some passengers have expressed support for him even as they waited hours at Oslo’s airport after their flights were delayed or cancelled. Some members of the Norwegian Pilot Union themselves have criticized their own union’s demands as unreasonable, and want to get back to work.
The union leaders claim that’s what they want as well, but on terms they demand to preserve the “Nordic model” for working conditions. Peter Lövkvist of the Nordiska Transportarbeterfederationen told NRK that instead of escalating the strike, “we hope this can contribute towards a faster solution.” He conceded that Tuesday’s meeting was an attempt to portray solidarity among the trade union federations in the Nordic countries. “We want to protect the Nordic model, that employees have a permanent employer,” Lövkvist told NRK.
He refused to take any responsibility for the risk that the sympathy can force Norwegian into bankruptcy. “That responsibility does not lie with me,” he told news bureau NTB. “But it can be the consequence, yes.”
Norwegian Air officials have already said that the meeting alone made things worse instead of better, and that they will continue efforts to get their airline passengers to their destinations.
UPDATED: Pilots at Norwegian Air were handed a new offer late Monday night, aimed at ending their 10-day strike. The offer came after Norwegian Air characterized efforts to end the strike as deadlocked on Monday, and announced plans to file for voluntary arbitration. That would have put a settlement in the hands of an independent commission, but the pilots refused to go along.
Norwegian Air officials are trying to keep the airline from heading off into the sunset. They claim the future of the entire company is at stake. The union counters that it’s trying to preserve jobs. PHOTO: Norwegian Air
“The reason (for the move towards arbitration) is that the situation is deadlocked,” Anne-Sissel Skånvik, communications chief for Norwegian Air, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Monday afternoon. Arbitration would relieve both sides of their rights to end negotiations and let a third party resolve the conflict.
There was no resolution, meaning the strike was set to continue on Tuesday, disrupting travel for another 25,000 passengers and bringing the total number of passengers affected to more than 200,000 since the strike began February 28. New hopes for a settlement emerged late Monday night, though, after lawyers for both Norwegian and the pilots’ union drafted a new offer, details of which weren’t revealed, that was sent to the union. “We absolutely hope to find a solution, we must,” Skånvik told NRK. “This strike has lasted too long and affected far too many.”
Can’t come to terms
Negotiations between the two sides in the bitter strike resumed on Monday after a weekend of marathon talks, but management couldn’t agree to the pilots’ demands for job security. Norwegian Air thus asked employers’ organization NHO Luftfart, which has been negotiating on behalf of the airline, to seek voluntary arbitration.
NHO said it was willing to do that in order to bring an end to the strike that now has stranded nearly 200,000 passengers since it began 10 days ago. “This can resolve the situation, but only if both sides want voluntary arbitration,” said Torbjørn Lothe, managing director of NHO Luftfart.
Labour federation YS/Parat initially said it needed more time to consider the proposal but then its leader went ahead and told news bureau NTB that Parat would not agree to voluntary arbitration. Hans Erik Skjæggerud of Parat noted that arbitration normally applies to wage negotiations, and that wages were not the main cause of the labour conflict between the pilots and Norwegian.
‘Can’t understand’ arbitration request
“The conflict can therefore not be resolved through arbitration,” Skjæggerud told NTB, adding that Parat “can’t understand” Norwegian’s request for arbitration. “We’re still sitting in talks with the company, and this move can damage the negotiations that are going on,” Skjæggerud told NTB. He wouldn’t comment further, but didn’t seem to share Norwegian Air’s assessment that the strike was deadlocked.
The two sides had been relatively quiet since they resumed contact Monday morning, but NRK reported that it was only through email and over the phone. Each blames the other for failing to come to terms.
Skånvik, meanwhile, denied a report in The Sunday Times of London that Norwegian plans to flag out its fleet and become a British company called Westforce Aviation. Skånvik said Norwegian is seeing British authority to expand its already considerable operations from London’s Gatwick Airport, but said “the Norwegian parent company will be in Norway, also in the future.”
Weary negotiators for Norwegian Air and its striking pilots were back in contact on Monday, in an effort to finally end the bitter conflict. The strike, meanwhile, was delaying and cancelling far more flights to European destinations, and nearly all Norwegian’s Scandinavian flights remained grounded.
Norwegian Air officials are trying to keep the airline from heading off into the sunset. They claim the future of the entire company is at stake, while union officials claim they’re fighting to preserve Norway’s high levels of pay and working conditions. PHOTO: Norwegian Air
The airline claimed that another 25,000 passengers would be affected by the pilots’ strike on Monday alone. Flights to destinations in Europe were said to generally be operating as scheduled, but there were delays on morning flights from Oslo to St Petersburg and Barcelona, while flights to Hamburg and Budapest were severely delayed, by as much as six hours. Another flight to Prague was cancelled, as was one to Warsaw, and there were lengthy delays posted for more flights later in the day.
Norwegian’s long-haul flights to Bangkok and the US were due to depart as scheduled, since they use crews that are not part of the Scandinavian unions.
For Norwegian Air’s latest information on its disrupted flight schedule, click here (external link).
Negotiators spent the weekend in dramatic rounds of all-night talks and more highly public displays of hurling accusations at one another. On Saturday, the two sides all but continued negotiations that had broken down live on national TV, much to the amazement of viewers.
Then they suddenly switched to a more conciliatory tone and settled down for more talks that resumed late Saturday afternoon at what the media called a “secret location.” The talks then ran straight through to Sunday afternoon, when they said they simply had to take a break. The union denied talks had formally broken down again.
“Both sides have agreed we need a pause in the negotiation,” Halvor Vatnar, head of the Norwegian Pilot Union (NPU) told NRK. The leader of the union’s labour federation, YS/Parat, insisted they were not deadlocked but needed some rest after 29 hours of negotiations.
“We have agreed to meet again (on Monday),” Vatnar said, with Skjæggerud adding that “we hope to find a solution” on Monday as well.
So did management officials at Norwegian, who continued to claim that they had “extended themselves far” to meet the pilots’ demands. They’d hoped for a settlement Sunday night, but that didn’t happen. NRK reported that the contact between Norwegian and its pilots’ representatives on Monday was taking place over the phone and via email.
UPDATED: Marathon talks between Norwegian Air and the airline’s pilots’ union “took a break” Sunday night, according to the pilots, with no settlement reached. The pilots insisted negotiations would continue, while the airline warned that more airline employees will be laid off from Monday, and more flights cancelled.
Most Norwegian Air aircraft in Scandinavia remained parked on Sunday, as a strike by pilots entered its second week. PHOTO: Norwegian Air
Another 20,000 Norwegian Air passengers faced being stranded on Sunday, and 25,000 on Monday, as the airline’s Scandinavian pilots continued their strike into its second week. Frustrated Norwegian Air officials said that even if the strike is called off, it will still take several days to get flights running on schedule again.
Norwegian Air said it was forced to keep most of its flights within Scandinavia grounded, while departures from Scandinavian airports to European destinations faced delays. Some were also cancelled but most long-distance routes including those to the US and Thailand were operating as normal, since they’re crewed by pilots who are not members of the Norwegian Pilot Union (NPU) and its labour federation YS/Parat.
Passengers can check the status of their flights with Norwegian here(external link to Norwegian Air’s flight information).
Around 150,000 passengers have already had their travel plans severely disrupted by the strike that began on February 28. Efforts to end the strike resumed Saturday afternoon and carried on for around 20 hours, but talks broke off early Sunday afternoon because, as DN.no reported, there was no basis for a solution.
The pilots’ union denied there was a formal collapse, with a spokesman saying the union was instead merely waiting for a new response from employers’ group NHO Luftfart and Norwegian management. Norwegian’s management countered that the pilots had received a new offer, and that it was Norwegian that was waiting for a response. State broadcaster NRK reported that the negotiations were in a “critical” phase and at 9pm, the union announced that talks were suspended for the evening.
Public support has been growing in Norway for Norwegian Air’s hard-pressed chief executive Bjørn Kjos, even among some stranded passengers interviewed by various media. The head of Norway’s largest employers’ union NHO is now calling the demands being made by pilots’ union “the most unreasonable” from a labour organization in NHO’s history.
NHO is formally negotiating on behalf of Norwegian Air, although Norwegian officials are also directly involved. NHO’s boss Kristin Skogen Lund said the pilot union’s labour federation YS/Parat was putting the company into a very difficult, if not dangerous, situation. “I will go so far as to say that it will pose a huge challenge for the three-part cooperation we have in Norway if we get more of this type of irresponsible labour union behaviour,” Lund told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).
She noted how Norwegian Air lost more than NOK 1.5 billion last year, and how the airline industry faces severe international competition. “The company has a need for restructuring and cost reduction,” Lund said. “Bjørn Kjos has offered much more than can be expected in order to appease the (Scandinavian) pilots. They nevertheless are demanding job guarantees for more pilots than are needed in a company that must reduce its staffing. We have never seen such unreasonable demands in NHO’s history.”
Lund agreed with Norwegian’s management, other employees and even some pilots who have spoken out against their own union that NPU and Parat are also putting the jobs of their colleagues in danger, “many of whom perhaps earn only a third or half of what the pilots earn.” She stressed that the airlines aren’t the first industry to face tough international competition: “If the labour unions in other industries carried on like this, we wouldn’t have any industry in Norway.”
Lund’s harsh criticism of YS/Parat was flatly rejected by the union, even though others have also warned the union leaders against driving the airline into bankruptcy. Parat leader Hans Erik Skjæggerud called Lund’s claims “completely unreasonable” and said the only thing “historic” about the difficult negotiations was that “it’s been 80 years since (the pilots’) overall labour contract was agreed, and we feel we’re fighting for the same things now.” The pilots’ most fundamental demand is to be employed through their employer’s parent company, not subsidiaries.
The new round of talks that began around 4pm Saturday afternoon is without the state mediator that brought the two sides together on Friday, only to see mediation collapse early Saturday morning.
UPDATED: Norwegian Air CEO Bjørn Kjos and the leader of the airline’s pilots’ union were blaming each other on Saturday for an early-morning collapse of negotiations to end a bitter pilots’ strike. More talks loomed later in the afternoon, as the strike continued and another 20,000 passengers were stranded.
The collapse came after 16 hours of negotiations that extended through the night. State mediator Nils Dalseide reported that the two sides were deadlocked at around 5:30am and talks broke off, with “no basis” even for a temporary solution that could end the strike and get Norwegian flights back in the air.
Kjos later called the situation “terribly sad and stupid,” and claimed the pilots’ union made “impossible demands. “We can’t offer things that aren’t sustainable in the future,” Kjos told reporters early Saturday afternoon. Hans-Erik Skjæggerud of the union’s labour federation YS/Parat claimed the union had no faith in what Norwegian Air did offer.
‘Good mood’ turned sour
Dalseide, who had described the talks as “complicated” just before midnight, said he had to declare that further mediation at this point would not lead to a “reasonable solution” that would end the conflict. The pilots and management simply remained too far apart to carry on with their talks.
Dalseide said, though, that the “mood and dialogue” during the talks that began at 1pm Friday were “both good and constructive” for a long time, even though the tone between the two sides has been harsh in public during the past week.
News bureau NTB reported, however, that the good mood turned sour during the night and was “extremely bad” just before the breakdown in talks was declared. Pizza and sodas delivered to the hungry and weary negotiators at around 2:30am failed to revive spirits. Kjos and Skjæggerud later had very different versions of the talks and what was on offer.
Some movement, new alternatives
“We came closer than we were in the beginning, but not close enough to a solution,” Dalseide told NTB. Norwegian management officials expressed disappointment while Skjæggerud said both sides had moved away from their original demands. “If there’s anything positive today,” the union leader said later, “it’s that there have been 16 hours of talks, and there was some movement.”
He claimed the union had “moved a lot since the earlier round on many different issues, even the one that has been the most important for us, to have an agreement with the (airline’s) parent company (and not a subsdidiary). We presented alternatives where that would be withdrawn, and where we would rather get necessary ties to the company without that limiting the company’s needs but contributing to securing our members’ jobs.” He wouldn’t detail, however, what sort of “ties” that would involve.
Norwegian claimed it had offered the pilots ties to the parent company in the form of job guarantees for three years, even though there were “too many” pilots in the Scandinavian operations. Kjos said the Scandinavian pilots could “take their million-kroner salaries and benefits” to other bases, for example in Spain, and work from there. Norwegian’s management claims it needs such flexibility in order to compete in a tough international market where Norwegian’s costs are too high. Skjæggerud claimed the job guarantees “didn’t hold water” and were rejected. “We’ve lost confidence in Kjos,” he said.
He nonetheless stated repeatedly that the union had invited Norwegian Air negotiators back to the bargaining table, as another 20,000 Norwegian Air ticket holders faced spoiled travel plans on Saturday.
UPDATED: The state mediator guiding renewed talks between Norwegian Air and their striking pilots said late Friday that negotiations were “complicated.” After 10 hours of going through the issues, no settlement was in sight by midnight.
Mediator Nils Dalseide told reporters at around 11pm Friday that the “mood was good” and both sides were “working hard” to end the conflict that has grounded Norwegian Air’s Scandinavian flights and disrupted travel for around 100,000 people since the strike began last weekend. “These are complicated questions that we’re working with continually,” Dalseide said.
The union representing striking Norwegian Air pilots sat down with the mediator and the airline’s management Friday afternoon, just a day after the pilots’ strike escalated amidst a war of words.
“Both sides asked that we resume negotiations on a jointly agreed platform,” Dalseide told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). When the talks continued after the first hour without breaking down, it appeared both sides had agreed on the platform. At least they kept talking.
Breakthrough
As the bitter strike dragged into its sixth day, the tone among those involved had suddenly turned more conciliatory overnight. The talks, which began at 1pm, were viewed as a breakthrough in the strike that continued to ground most all Norwegian Air flights in Scandinavia on Friday.
The new talks involve both the labour organization representing the pilots, Parat, and the employers’ organization representing Norwegian, NHO Luftfart. Officials from Norwegian Air’s management and the Norwegian Pilot Union were also taking part in the meeting, Dalseide said.
Both sides claimed they’d wanted to return to the bargaining table all along, but couldn’t agree on an agenda. The pilots continued to demand that they be employed directly through the airline’s parent company, while management insisted on employment through various subsidiaries set up in accordance with specific operations. That, management argues, affords the airline more flexibility and less risk in a highly competitive international business.
Fury died down
On Thursday, pilots were enraged by the airline’s move to set up three new subsidiaries into which the pilots would be divided based on whether they’re Norwegian, Danish or Swedish. The pilots’ union leader, Hans-Erik Skjæggerud, likened the move to Norwegian “holding a gun against our heads” and he claimed Norwegian’s CEO Bjørn Kjos had no legal right to “decide over us while we’re on strike.”
On Friday Skjæggerud had softened his tone, as another 40,000 Norwegian passengers had their travel plans disrupted by cancellations and delays. “We accept that we must negotiate if passengers are to be able to fly again,” he told NRK Friday morning. “We hope Bjørn Kjos also accepts that.”
He also accepted criticism over his language on Thursday and agreed that “things could have been done differently.” The most important thing, he added, “was to get back to the bargaining table.” The union has also been criticized for going on strike when Norwegian’s Scandinavian pilots already enjoy relatively high pay and what one pilot himself called “probably some of the best working conditions in the industry.”
Future of the airline at stake
Kjos had been calling for new talks all week long, not least in a live debate program on NRK Thursday night where he and Skjæggerud appeared together for the first time. By the end of the debate, which included several other labour and business leaders, there were no clear signs the two sides had come any closer.
Both realize the passengers are suffering most of all, as are employees of other firms doing business with Norwegian who are being laid off because of the strike. The airline planned to try running a few flights between Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen on Friday, but otherwise the flights that should have been crewed by members of the Norwegian Pilot Union were parked.
Kjos has argued that future of the airline is at stake. “The alternative is that we no longer have a company,” said Kjos, who has claimed the union has been trying to assume commercial management of the company, a claim the union denies.
Insurance companies were reporting a wave of damage claims on Monday after the extreme weather system dubbed Ole slammed into central and northern Norway over the weekend. The storm, packing hurricane-force winds, left at least 10 people homeless and as many as 70,ooo were without electricity but there were few injuries.
Lofoten and Vesterålen were, as predicted in the storm warnings issued last week, hit the hardest and hundreds of residents remained without power Monday morning. Officials at the Hålogaland Police District, covering the area from northern Nordland County to southern Troms, said they’d received damage reports from all its regions.
Roof blew off
“More than 70 percent of the reports involve roof damage,” Magne Hugo Nilsen, acting police chief, told news bureau NTB. Three families had to leave their homes in Lofoten after the winds literally blew the roof off their houses.
The storm closed bridges and roads, forced cancellation of ferries and all but shut down the “Arctic capital” of Tromsø when it hit late in the afternoon after earlier raging over Bodø and Harstad farther to the south. Tromsø’s popular downtown area was nearly empty of people, who’d all been warned to stay indoors. Eight of the nine Hurtigruten ships that ply the Norwegian coast had to stop sailing and seek shelter in the nearest harbours.
The storm also extended as far south as Oppland County, closing most mountain roads again because of hurricane-force winds. Ski lifts shut down at Kvitfjell and other popular mountain resorts, while the annual dog sled race Femundløpet was cancelled, but not before several participants already had taken off and then were reported missing.
Teenager survived storm alone with her dogs Among the missing racers was 15-year-old musher Hanna Lyrek, who ended up spending 12 hours out in the storm alone with her dogs before she was found by search and rescue crews.
“I wondered if I was still dreaming when I heard the voices of the folks who found me,” Lyrek told newspaper Aftenposten. “It was a learning experience. After this I’ll be able to tackle most things.” She was cold and wet but otherwise in good shape. Six other race participants and a missing snow-mobile driver were also found after an all-night search in the blizzard that was kicked up by the storm in the Femund area of eastern Hedmark County, south of Røros.
While the storm abated on Sunday, officials were warning of severe avalanche danger all over Norway. “We advise people to say away from steep areas,” Solveig Kosberg of state agency NVE told NTB. The most dangerous areas were said to be in the counties of Nordland and Nord-Trøndelag, but warnings were also posted in the mountains of both southern and northern Norway.
UPDATED: Police evacuated residents of some outlying islands off the coast of Northern Norway, after state meteorologists warned that more extreme weather was moving in from the west and was expected to hit hard this weekend. Winds were due to reach hurricane force.
The new storm system called “Ole” is the latest in a string of severe and potentially dangerous storms to hit the counties of Trøndelag, Nordland and Troms in recent weeks. Residents of all three counties were warned to secure loose objects outdoors, moor boats as firmly as possible and move cars away from trees. They were also urged to stay indoors and to absolutely refrain from walking along any waterfront areas.
On Friday police evacuated residents from the island of Givær, claiming the hurricane-force winds could be dangerous. “I think they’re exaggerating a bit, we’ve had extreme weather before,” Ann-Kristin Dørmænen told state broadcaster NRK. “But we have three children and decided to be on the safe side this time.” The family planned to spend the weekend at a hotel in Bodø.
‘Enormous’ waves predicted
The storm was expected to churn up waves described as “enormous,” perhaps reaching heights of 25 meters (more than 80 feet). Most waves were due to be around 14 meters high, according to state meterologist Ine-Therese Pedersen in Tromsø.
The storm was also expected to be felt farther south in the county of Møre og Romsdal and in the mountains of Southern Norway. Winds in the high mountain areas may also reach hurricane strength, Pedersen told NRK.
The more northerly areas of Lofoten, Salten, Vesterålen and Sør-Troms would be hit the hardest, Pedersen said. “We’re afraid this is going to be bad,” she told NRK. “The wind can also blow for a long period, with the hurricane lasting for many hours.”
Worst on Saturday
She predicted the seas “would be completely white because of the waves and foam churned up. Visibility would be null, so most ferries and other forms of shipping would likely shut down.
The storm was building up force west of Greenland on Thursday and moving towards Norway. The worst weather was predicted for Saturday and comes just days after the Norwegian government disappointed environmentalists and climate experts, by refusing to set specific national goals for reduction of the carbon emissions believed to be causing climate change.
Despite widespread opposition to circumcising baby boys without a medical reason, Norwegian hospitals will all soon start offering the surgical procedure nationwide. A new law that took effect January 1 orders them to do so.
Doctors and professional organizations that warned against the new law have capitulated, reported newspaper Dagsavisen. All four of Norway’s regional state health agencies still have large numbers of physicians who have reserved the right to refuse to perform the surgery, but the regional agencies’ hospitals will solve any resulting capacity problems by purchasing the services of private health clinics or other state hospitals with available capacity. The two most likely are St Olavs Hospital in Trondheim and Oslo University Hospital-Rikshospitalet, which are the only two hospitals with dedicated pediatric surgery wards.
Setting age limits
At St Olavs, several doctors have refused to perform circumcision, arguing it it is not a necessary medical procedure for young boys. Hospital officials in Trondheim feel they have enough other doctors on staff to do the surgery, however, and the same is true in Oslo. Both also claim the new obligation to offer circumcision won’t be at the expense of other children with medical conditions who require surgery.
Neither St Olavs nor Rikshospitalet, however, will circumcise newborns. Full narcosis is considered the only adequate means of relieving the pain of circumcision, “so we have set an age limit of one year,” Dr Øystein Drivenes at St Olavs Hospital told Dagsavisen.
Parents who want to circumcise their sons are likely to face waiting lists at Akershus University Hospital (Ahus) northeast of Oslo, where 13 of 15 urologists have reserved themselves against the procedure unless there’s a medical need. The two urologists willing to circumcise have also set an age limit of one year.
Not a priority
“Circumcision is not a prioritized procedure, and children who need surgery for medical reasons must come first,” said Dr Anja Løvvik at Ahus. “Today we perform five to six operations on children every day. That means that boys who seek ritual circumcision will be at the back of the queue.”
Norwegian authorities estimate that around 2,000 boys were being circumcised annually in Norway outside the public health care system before the law went into effect. Most are Muslims whom politicians hope will now opt for circumcisions in a more professional medical environment. Drivenes said hospital officials think Jewish boys will likely continue to be circumcised in religious ceremonies on the eighth day after birth.
Sørlandet Hospital in Kristiansand appears to be the only hospital offering to circumcise newborns, using local anesthesia. All the other hospitals in Norway intend to use full narcosis and set age limits at one to two years.
The children of rejected asylum seekers in Norway continue to pose tough dilemmas for state officials and stir debate. At issue is whether the children, and thus their parents, should be allowed to stay in the country even though the parents didn’t qualify for asylum and, in many cases, violated immigration law and residence rules.
The issue rose again this week when Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that immigration officials suspect that more than 100 people who won asylum in Norway 10-15 years ago, by claiming they came from war-torn Somalia, did so on false pretenses. A lengthy investigation indicates they instead came from other countries including Kenya and Tanzania and thus were ineligible for asylum and the Norwegian citizenship they received. Those found to have lied about their background stand to have their Norwegian passports revoked and be sent out of the country.
Sins of the parents
Nearly all have children, though, many who were born and reared in Norway and who also have Norwegian passports, putting immigration officials in a bind. The authorities regularly face charges of being heartless if they follow the rules and deport the parents, since that poses the dilemma of either breaking up families or sending the children out of the country, too.
“It’s the parents who have done this, and it’s serious abuse of the entire purpose of asylum,” Karl Erik Sjøholt of immigration agency UDI told NRK. Even though the children themselves have done nothing wrong, and it arguably would be in their best interests to remain in Norway, “the children generally follow their parents.”
Ann-Margrit Austenå of the Norwegian Organization for Asylum Seekers (NOAS) is calling upon the authorities to “find other solutions” or means of punishment for the sins of the parents, as an alternative to deportation. She thinks fines or invalidation of their passports would be more appropriate, so that their children won’t suffer as well.
The Norwegian chapter of Save the Children (Redd Barna) agrees. “Children should not suffer because of their parents’ actions,” Tove Romsaas Wang, secretary general of Redd Barna, told NRK, pointing to UN conventions. “Children have their own rights.”
Innocent pawns?
Questions arise, though, over whether would-be refugee parents use their children as pawns in their efforts to obtain legal residence. Newspaper Aftenposten reported the case on Thursday of a woman from Ethiopia whose application for asylum was rejected and she’s now in Norway illegally. She had a second child last fall, though, with another man from Ethiopia who holds a Norwegian passport after being granted asylum several years ago. Both of their young children have also been granted Norwegian citizenship. As an illegal alien, though, she has been billed NOK 52,000 (USD 6,700) for her hospital expense during her last delivery since she doesn’t qualify for Norway’s national health service. She has no job since she lacks residence and working permission in Norway, and her partner is protesting the hospital bill, claiming he can’t afford it.
Sven Mollekleiv of the Norwegian Red Cross told Aftenposten that Norway is obliged under UN conventions to provide medical care to everyone in Norway on an equal basis, based on need and not their ability to pay. Health department officials refer to state regulations, however, that those who lack legal residence in Norway must cover their own health expenses. In this case, the mother also faces deportation because she did not qualify for legal residence, but that will complicated because she had children.
Asked whether he didn’t realize the family would face complications because of her illegal status, the father claimed “we didn’t talk about (legal residence) papers in the beginning, and when I learned she didn’t have legal residence, she was pregnant with our daughter.”
Justice minister under pressure
Justice Minister Anders Anundsen of the Progress Party has been under fire lately for allowing the deportation of families in cases where the parents’ asylum applications had been turned down. In many cases, they had children and had been in Norway for many years while their applications were processed and rejections were appealed. The children thus feel that Norway is their home, while their parents have refused to accept rejection of their applications and stayed on illegally. That’s when police carry out orders to deport them, even though the government has agreed to give amnesty in various cases. Anundsen has been criticized for not following through on that agreement.
On Thursday, newspaper Bergens Tidende reported that authorities in Afghanistan are objecting to the forced returns of Afghan families with children whose asylum applications were rejected. Afghanistan’s own foreign ministry noted in a letter to Norwegian authorities that Afghanistan is dangerous, has major economic problems and a lack of housing, jobs and schools. They reportedly have asked that Norway only send back families willing to return to Afghanistan voluntarily, “otherwise they will be denied entry into Afghanistan.”
Anundsen, already criticized for avoiding interviews about deportation cases, is now under fire for failing to share the Afghans’ letter with the parliamentary committe probing the issue of asylum children. Nor would the justice ministry comment on the letter or answer questions from Bergens Tidende. Anundsen has earlier maintained that immigration law and regulations must be followed, as did his predecessors in the former left-center government. Deportations of families with children spark controversy across party lines.
The Christian Democrats party, angry with Justice Minister Anders Anundsen, is threatening to withdraw its support for Norway’s minority conservative government. Party leaders, upset over how Anundsen has handled children of rejected refugees, will discuss formally ending its agreement to support the government when they meet later this week.
Anders Anundsen and his state secretaries have come under fire by the government’s two important support parties. One of them, the Christian Democrats, is threatening to withdraw from its support agreement with the minority government. PHOTO: Justisdepartementet
Several county leaders of the Christian Democrats have told newspaper Aftenposten that their confidence in Anundsen from the Progress Party has worn thin. While party members have been displeased with government action on a variety of issues, it’s Anundsen’s deportation of the children of rejected asylum seekers (called asylbarna) that has upset them the most.
“We must recognize that the government has broken its cooperation agreement and that KrF (Kristelig Folkepartiet) is free (to end its pact with the government),” Per Pedersen, leader of the Christian Democrats (KrF) in Nordland County. “It’s not us who have broken the agreement, it’s the government.” Morten Halling, county leader in Oppland, is calling for Anundsen’s resignation. Failing that, Halling thinks his party should cooperate with the Labour Party, which leads the opposition in Parliament, instead of the government.
‘Scandal’ Aftenposten reported that many of 19 county leaders of the Christian Democrats have expressed discontent with its deal to function as a support party in Parliament for the minority government coalition consisting of the Progress and Conservatives parties. Many county leaders of the government’s other support party, the Liberals (Venstre), are also dissatisfied.
While the Liberals aren’t muttering about any serious lack of confidence i the government, the Christian Democrats are. Aftenposten reported that two county leaders for the Christian Democrats think Anundsen should resign and on Friday, the party’s board will need to consider a proposal that it withdraw support for the government.
Trude Brosvik, county leader for the Christian Democrats in Sogn og Fjordane, called Anundsen’s handling of asylum children “a scandal.” Party members have been furious that Anundsen effectively allowed the deportatin of entire families of rejected refugees even though the children (and their parents) were supposed to be given amnesty.
Blaming the media
Newspaper Bergens Tidende revealed in early December that the amnesty agreement with the government’s support parties hadn’t been forwarded to the police by Anundsen’s justice ministry. In mid-January, Bergens Tidende reported that police put more emphasis on deporting rejected refugee families than refugees and other foreigners in Norway who had committed crimes.
Anundsen seemed to blame the media for the Christian Democrats’ threat of withdrawal. “I don’t really see this criticism as lack of confidence,” Anundsen responded in an email to Aftenposten. “It’s probably a reaction based on the how the media has portrayed a complicated issue.”
Anundsen said it was “important to have the best possible cooperation” with both government support parties, to which he referred as “partners,” and he claimed he was “working hard to succeed with that.”
Muslim cleric Mullah Krekar won’t be sent to a small village in Trøndelag after all when he’s released from prison on Sunday. His defense lawyer turned in a 20-page appeal of the forced move to a court in Oslo on Friday, and the police decided to suspend Krekar’s relocation pending a court ruling.
Oslo Police Chief Sverre Sjøvold said it would be “impractical” to move Krekar far from Oslo on Sunday, only to transport him back to Oslo for a court hearing on Monday. Krekar’s lawyer intends to fight the relocation order all the way to the Norwegian Supreme Court if necessary, so the appeal may take time.
Heading home
In the meantime, Krekar will be able to move home to his family in Oslo after serving a prison term for making threats against two Kurds in Norway and Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg, who is now Norway’s prime minister. He’d initially been ordered to move to an asylum center in the small community of Kyrksæterøra in Trøndelag pending his deportation, because Norwegian authorities wanted to distance him from his fundamentalist Islamic followers.
It remains debatable whether that would have been successful, even in Kyksæterøra, because Krekar mostly communicates with his followers over the Internet. Police said on Friday that they don’t think it will threaten public safety to have Krekar back in Oslo.
It was unclear whether police will also enforce an order that Krekar regularly report his whereabouts to police. Such an order was attached to his relocation order, but Sjøvold said a new order that he check in with Oslo Police had yet to be drafted. “We’ll get back to that,” Sjøvold said.
Krekar costly for taxpayers
Newspaper Aftenposten reported on Friday that Krekar, who originally came to Norway as a refugee from Northern Iraq in 1991, already has cost Norwegian taxpayers more than NOK 6 million just for some of his court costs, lawyers’ fees and incarceration costs in recent years. In addition come the costs of his various legal cases in the Supreme Court, while social welfare agency NAV won’t say how much it has spent on Krekar since he landed in Norway more than 20 years ago. Even though he regularly bashes western forms of government he has reaped the benefits of Norway’s democracy and social welfare system for years.
A deportation order for Krekar was issued several years ago after he was declared a threat to national security. He has ironically enough fought to stay in Norway and Norwegian authorities have been unable to deport him because they lacked assurances from Iraqi authorities that Krekar would not be tortured or executed for his earlier guerrilla activities in Northern Iraq. According to Wikileaks documents obtained by newspaper Aftenposten, US officials didn’t think the Norwegian authorities were trying hard enough negotiate a deportation.
Nearly sent to Australia Aftenposten also reported earlier this week on how Norway nearly was able to extradite Krekar to Australia in 2012 after Australian journalist Paul Moran was killed nine years earlier by a suicide bomber backed by the guerrilla group Krekar led, Ansar al-Islam. In 2007, another Australian journalist reported on the “Norwegian jihad” in which Mullah Krekar was interviewed and supported the suicide bombing that killed Moran. Australian Broadcasting (ABC) also showed clips of Krekar speaking when he led Ansar al-Islam, and condoning the murder of anyone who opposes Islam. Krekar even urged Muslims to “use an ax to cut off his head, or shoot a bullet through his brain … It if is possible for me to kill him, I will do it myself.”
Australian authorities later reportedly doubted they had enough information about the suicide bomber that killed Moran and decided not to investigate the Krekar case. Norway was portrayed as a haven for terrorists in Australian media for protecting Krekar, but no extradition request was filed and Norway lost its chance to rid itself of its troublesome refugee who wore out his welcome in the country years ago.
Meanwhile, Krekar’s Norwegian defense attorney Brynjar Meling continues to work to protect Krekar and effectively keep him in Norway. Meling claims he’s done of lot of work for Krekar for free “because it must be done.” He has often been Krekar’s legally appointed counsel, however, so has billed the state along with co-counsel Arvid Sjødin for more than NOK 2.25 million over the last eight to 10 years.
Since January 1st, all of Norway’s state-run hospitals have become legally obliged to offer circumcision of newborn baby boys. A majority of doctors all over the country, however, have been refusing to perform the operation that’s often part of religious rituals, claiming it’s an unnecessary surgical procedure on otherwise healthy infants.
Only one hospital in all of southeastern Norway is officially offering to circumcise newborns, according to an internal document obtained by newspaper Dagsavisen. In a response to the state health ministry’s request for a status report on circumcision, state agency Helse Sør-Øst (Health Southeast) wrote on January 16 that only the hospital in Kristiansand (Sørlandet Sykehus) offered to circumcise newborn baby boys. A few others offered circumcision only to boys more than a year old.
Strong opposition
At Akershus University Hospital (Ahus) northeast of Oslo, fully 13 of its 15 urologists have submitted written statements reserving themselves against performing circumcision. “The opposition to this emerged before the law on circumcision was approved,” Dr Anja Løvvik, leader of the urology department at Ahus, told Dagsavisen this week. “The fact that many (doctors) want to reserve themselves against this should not be unexpected.” Her colleague Dr Frode Steinar Nilsen at Ahus called circumcision “a surgical operation with no health advantages and one that, as with all surgery, carries with it a risk and a burden for the child. That’s why we don’t want to perform it.”
Doctors, however, have no right to reserve themselves against the procedure in the new law, making their resistance potentially illegal, according to state secretary Cecilie Brein-Karlsen at the health ministry. She told newspapers VG and Dagsavisen that Norway’s public health system must now offer the procedure to parents who want their baby boys circumcised. The Parliament approved the new law last year after reports that babies in Norway risked being seriously injured during circumcision rituals performed outside the health care sector. One baby boy died in Oslo in 2012.
The law was approved by a large majority in Parliament but not without controversy. Doctors’ and nurses’ professional organizations opposed it as did many individual Members of Parliament, but they followed their parties’ lines. In addition to fearing that circumcision would continue to be performed by non-health professionals in Norway, party leaders didn’t want to be seen as being either anti-Jewish or anti-Muslim, since circumcision is traditional in the Jewish and Muslim communities. Others pointed to how millions of men around the world are circumcised including a majority of American men regardless of religious persuasion.
Fending off any ‘fear of foreigners’
“I think many (MPs) were afraid to be accused of anti-Semitism or fear of foreigners,” Jenny Klinge, an MP for the Center Party, told Dagsavisen. She unsucessfully proposed offering hospital circumcision only to males over the age of 18, when they could decide themselves if they wanted to be circumcised. Klinge added that she could understand the health care professionals’ opposition to performing circumcision: “It is in principle wrong for the state to carry out such surgery on babies. One shouldn’t cut into small children in the name of God.”
US health authorities view male circumcision positively, but their Norwegian counterparts don’t. Some doctors’ attempts to reserve themselves against performing abortions also have sparked controversy, not least last winter, but Nilsen of Ahus is adamant: “If (politicians) think they can force an entire profession to perform surgery they feel is wrong both medically and morally, I think that’s remarkable.”
Brein-Karlsen told Dagsavisen that she also understands “that this is a difficult issue.” She said hospitals should take the doctors’ objections into consideration, “but the regional health agencies are still responsible for making sure that an offer (of circumcision) is there.”
Ahus, located in Lørenskog, has estimated that parents of as many as 400 babies a year may request circumcision, and worry they won’t have the capacity to perform it. “Children who need other operations are already having to wait,” Løvvik said. “If we have to offer circumcision, they may need to wait even longer.” Ahus has told expectant parents that it will only offer the procedure after the child is a year old, at the earliest. Hospitals in Bærum, Drammen and Ringerike have set an age limit at two years, while Oslo University Sykehus was expected to start offering ritual circumcision next month, for boys over one year of age.
State meteorologists were once again warning on Friday that a powerful new storm was expected to hit southern Norway and much of the rest of the country during the weekend. They’re warning of hurricane conditions along the west coast.
A storm center that was moving over Ireland on Thursday started heading towards Norway, due to reach the southern and western coasts late Friday and Saturday. The winter storm was then expected to move north towards the Trøndelag counties and the Helgeland coast, which was also battered during the Christmas holidays.
30-foot waves
Strong winds and heavy rain would be accompanied by extremely rough seas. The weather experts warned of high waves along the coast, possibly as high as 10- to 12 meters (more than 30 feet).
News bureau NTB reported that the worst weather would hit Vestlandet (the western counties of Rogaland and Hordaland). “There will be a lot of wind and by Saturday morning, we predict full storm, possibly hurricane-strength winds up to 33 meters a second,” Börje Johansson of the state meteorological institute, told NTB.
The storm would also be felt farther to the east, with residents of Telemark, Agder and Østlandet told to expect heavy rain and wind. Water levels were already high in the Oslo Fjord at the end of the week and there were new fears of flooding along the coasts.
Mountain passes may close
There were some predictions of only partly cloudy skies over Oslo on Saturday, with the storm arriving later in the day and evening. Johansson predicted that the rain and wind would ease on Sunday.
Motorists were advised of strong winds and hazardous driving conditions especially over the mountains, where some roads may close again. Northern Norway was expected to escape the new storm, but bitterly cold temperatures were predicted for much of Finnmark.
As the sun set not only on Oslo’s Aker Brygge on New Year’s Eve but also on 2014, we’d like to wish our readers “godt nyttår” from our base here in Norway’s capital, and share a few more holiday photos.
This photo was taken just after 3pm on New Year’s Eve, as a surprising number of folks strolled along Oslo’s otherwise quiet waterfront on the last day of the year. Clearly, not all Norwegians are off on skiing holidays in the mountains, although many are. Later in the evening, the nearby plaza in front of Oslo’s City Hall was expected to be filled with people watching the city’s annual display of fireworks.
After the sun dips below the horizon, a long sunset follows. The version on New Year’s Eve illuminated the Oslo Fjord in a soft, frosty winter light. This view is from the tip of Tjuvholmen, featuring some of the new residential and commercial complex’s artworks.
As darkness fell, Oslo’s Royal Palace lights up as always. King Harald V would broadcast his annual address to the nation at 7:30pm, and then New Year’s Eve dinners and parties would begin if they hadn’t already. With many restaurants closed on New Year’s Eve, unlike in other cities around the world, Norwegians often entertain at home and head outdoors for fireworks after dinner.
Once again (in English this time), “Happy New Year” from newsinenglish.no, and as the Norwegians would say, takk for det gamle – literally, thanks for the old year, too!
Norway’s ongoing financial support for democracy and reform in Myanmar (Burma) has come into question, as a royal entourage from Oslo visited the country this week. Humanitarian organizations worry that Norwegian officials aren’t being tough enough in fighting Myanmar’s child labour, corruption, human rights abuses, religious discrimination and ethnic conflict.
King Harald and Queen Sonja began a five-day official visit to Myanmar this week, accompanied by Foreign Minister Børge Brende (at right), Trade Minister Monica Mæland, state secretaries and a large Norwegian business delegation. PHOTO: Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet/Trond Viken
On Monday, Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor was accused of re-defining its own regulations against child labour in order to adapt to local business practice in Myanmar. Telenor won a potentially highly lucrative contract to develop Myanmar’s mobile phone network, but has run into several cases of child labour among its subcontractors. In Myanmar, it’s legal for children to work from the age of 13.
“We try to say that child labour for us means that no one can can perform dangerous work if they’re under 18 years old,” Sigve Brekke, chief of Telenor’s Asia operations, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) over the weekend. Line Hegna of Redd Barna, the Norwegian chapter of Save the Children, said that sounds like Telenor is choosing to adapt to local working conditions.
“We expect more from a large Norwegian state-controlled company,” Hegna told NRK. “As far as I know, Telenor has adopted the UN’s ‘Children’s Rights and Business Principles,’ and they obligate the company to contribute towards getting rid of child labour, and not employing children in any type of work.”
Trade Minister Monica Mæland visited a Telenor retail operations in Yangon and said she’d discussed the problem of child labour in Myanmar with Telenor officials. PHOTO: Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet/Trond Viken
Telenor executives are among those involved with a high-level delegation of Norwegian officials in Myanmar this week, including Trade Minister Monica Mæland. She told NRK that she has spoken with Telenor about the problem. “Telenor says they are going along with the ILO (International Labour Organisation) convention tied to this,” Mæland said, who could hardly ignore the sight of children working in various retail businesses as she toured Yangon’s main shopping area on Sunday. Telenor is also supporting efforts to offer at least part-time schooling to some of the young local workers.
Foreign Minister Børge Brende was also in Myanmar over the weekend and early this week as part of an official state visit by King Harald and Queen Sonja that includes a large delegation of Norwegian business leaders. State secretaries from the oil and environmental ministries are also along, as is Anita Krohn Traaseth, the new boss of Norway’s business and trade promotional agency Innovation Norway. Norwegian companies already active in Myanmar include DNV GL, Eltek, Jotun, Statoil and Yara, among others.
The Norwegian royals and top government officials will be meeting Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, parliamentary leader Shwe Mann and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle against the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades. As the country emerges from years of isolation and dictatorship, Norway has been keen to spur the democratic process. Humanitarian organizations don’t want Norway to lose its momentum or make too many compromises for fear of offending Burmese authorities.
Foreign Minister Børge Brende (left) with Myanmar’s minister in charge of peace talks with ethnic groups, U Aung Min, while meeting over the weekend in Bago with representatives of various armed ethnic groups taking part in the peace process. PHOTO: Utenriksdepartementet/Frode Overland Andersen
Brende insists that won’t happen, as he met with Myanmar’s minister in charge of the country’s internal peace process with ethnic minorities, U Aung Min, and leaders of the various ethnic groups involved. Norway has been trying to spur peace talks, but hostilities continue and one of the parties, representing the Kachin group, was noticeably absent from Saturday’s meeting after recent armed confrontation between the army and the people in the north.
Børge Brende and U Aung Min at a press conference after the meeting on the peace process. Norway has supported the effort, but some question whether Norway has any real influence as long as the military continues to have so much power in Myanmar. PHOTO: Utenriksdepartementet/ Frode Overland Andersen
“Norway has from the start been an active supporter of the major reform and democratization process in Myanmar,” Brende said. He claims the royal visit this week stresses the “close relationship that has grown between Norway and Myanmar,” and vowed that Norway “will continue our support for the reform process.”
Mæland also planned political talks with local authorities regarding business cooperation between Myanmar and Norway. “We’re eager to see how Norwegian companies can contribute towards building important infrastructure, using natural resources in a sustainable manner and contributing to good and positive development in Myanmar,” Mæland said. “Norwegian companies can set a good example for local business by setting high standards.”
Telenor, among the largest international investors in Myanmar at present, has admitted it faces huge challenges in trying to do so. Humanitarian organizations like Norsk Folkehjelp (Norwegian People’s Aid) warn against blending the roles of business with reform, peace broking and democratic development. Norway’s Burma Committee also worries that important political questions can be overshadowed by the government’s eagerness to help establish Norwegian businesses in Myanmar.
“We must remember that Thein Sein was prime minister during the revolution in 2007 when monks were shot and killed,” Audun Aagre, leader of the Burma Committee told NRK. Norwegian officials, he said, “must balance business and cooperation with political pressure to create democracy.”
Norway’s influence in doubt
Emil Jeremic, Norsk Folkehjelp’s representative in Myanmar, said he thinks Norway has a sincere desire to push through a national ceasefire among the army and ethnic groups before next year’s parliamentary elections. Others think Norway will have little influence, as long as the military still has so much power in Myanmar.
“When other countries try to push the (Burmese) government in the right direction, it has no effect,” Mon Mon Myat, a freelance journalist and human rights activist, to news bureau NTB. “We have to move from military rule to civilian rule. We say we have a civilian government, but most of the government officials are from the military and several military leaders have more administrative power than the government.”
She believes the only power Norway can wield in Myanmar is through its money, “by holding back economic support until it’s proven that all the millions in foreign aid are going to the right places and that the authorities are meeting their obligations.”
The Norwegian woman who was infected with the deadly ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone early this month has improved so much that doctors at Oslo University Hospital were releasing her from the hospital’s high-isolation ward on Monday.
Oslo University Hospital Ullevål released this photo earlier this month of the special high isolation ward where the ebola patient was being treated. PHOTO: Oslo Universitetssykehus/Anders Bayer
The hospital confirmed a report on Dagbladet.no Monday afternoon that the woman was now out of its high-risk unit in the infectious diseases division at Ullevål. Both the hospital and Leger uten grenser, the Norwegian chapter of Medecins Sans Frontieres for which she was working, were planning to hold a press conference on the woman’s condition and further treatment Monday evening.
Officials at Leger uten grenser said they were delighted that their colleague, who had been treating ebola patients in Sierra Leone when she caught the virus herself, was on the road to recovery.
She was diagnosed quickly and flown by special air ambulance home to Norway on October 7 to begin treatment at Oslo University Hospital Ullevål. Staff there had been training for months to handle ebola patients and claimed they were well-prepared to receive her.
They also used an experimental drug to treat her that apparently was successful. More details of her treatment and prognosis were expected to be revealed later in the day.
Leger uten grenser reported over the weekend that after an investigation into how she became ill, they now believe she was infected in the patient reception area at the organization’s clinic in Sierra Leone. Four employees at the clinic were infected in early October. Two have since died.
Doctors would initially release little information about how their ebola patient, Norway’s first, was doing, but reported late last week that she was showing signs of improvement.
Even though some weather forecasts were still showing sunny skies over much of southern Norway during the weekend, state meteorologists were warning that the first major autumn storm of the season was set to ram much of the country Friday night. Strong winds and rain, especially along the west coast, were already being felt in the areas around Ålesund and Molde.
Norwegians were being urged to take in any garden furniture still sitting outdoors after the record warm summer, along with plants, pots, trampolines and other “loose items.” They risked being turned into fatal flying objects otherwise, and boat owners were told to secure their craft as tightly as possible.
Many ‘will be surprised’
“Hang onto your hats,” trumpeted state broadcaster NRK, while state meteorologist Steinar Skare said that after a long period of good weather, “many will probably be surprised by the strength of the wind.”
The worst weather was due to bear down on central Norway and Nordland County to the north. Residents were advised to stay indoors.
In southern and eastern Norway, where the autumn school holiday week was getting underway, strong winds were also expected. Temperatures were to remain mild, but gusts are due to be just under hurricane force.
Already stormy in Romsdal
Stormy weather moved in over the counties of Møre og Romsdal and Trøndelag Friday morning. Winds were due to increase Friday night and into Saturday morning, and Nordland was warned to expect lots of rain.
Winds were due to subside on Saturday, but residents of central Norway were only due to get a slight break before another storm front moves in on Sunday.
“Luckily, this low pressure system will be weaker than the first one,” Skare said. “But it will be a weekend full of wind and rain for many.”
State politicians including Prime Minister Erna Solberg were worried on Friday that an ongoing teachers strike could drag on for a long time, after talks broke down again Thursday night. The state mediator agreed there were no grounds to continue the talks when the two sides were so far apart.
The teachers’ unions had resumed talks with the national organization representing their local government employers, KS, earlier this week and initially said the “tone was good.” By Thursday afternoon, however, the mood had changed.
‘Don’t understand the seriousness’
“KS has not understood the seriousness of the situation and won’t meet us halfway,” Ragnhild Lied, leader of Norway’s largest teachers’ union Utdanningsforbundet, told newspaper Aftenposten after 12 hours of talks on Thursday. “Therefore we don’t see any reason to continue mediation.”
Three other smaller unions representing teachers also decided to break off mediation with KS. More than 6,000 teachers at 132 schools around Norway are already on strike at a time when teachers otherwise would be preparing for the new school year that begins next week. In some areas of Norway, school was supposed to start this week, and students showing up for class were sent home on Thursday.
Mediation reportedly has been difficult because of the teachers’ frustration with their local government employers. The main issue has been over work hours but teachers also now feel the municipal officials lack confidence in them. KS officials have also complained of a lack of mutual confidence, and claim they’re frustrated as well.
State staying out of the conflict
State government officials are not officially involved in the negotiations and Solberg told reporters on Friday that the strike may drag on unless the two sides make more efforts to end it. Neither she nor other government ministers will involve themselves at this point, calling the strike “a legal means” to be used in a labour dispute and that Norway’s system of “local democracy” also must be respected. The state can only step in and end a strik when it is determined to affect life or health.
As many as 90,000 teachers can be taken off the job if the strike continues and spreads. The start of school looked likely to be disrupted all over the country on Monday except in Oslo, were negotiations between teachers and the city were conducted separately and the two sides came to terms in June.
Norwegian meteorologists posted what they called “extreme storm warnings” on Saturday, especially for the country’s western and southern coasts, as a powerful weather system dubbed “Lena” moved in over the North Sea. The storm was expected to bring more torrential rain and winds up to hurricane force.
The storm was brewing Saturday afternoon and expected to hit with full force during the night and into Sunday. More storms, churned up by the remains of the tropical hurricane “Bertha,” were also predicted to ram Norway’s southern coast from Monday.
Batten down the hatches
Meteorologists were urging anyone out on boats in the still-unusually warm summer weather to return to land and tie them up as securely as possible. They also also warned residents to secure all outdoor furniture, other loose items and, not least, children’s trampolines. Otherwise, they warned, the strong winds can send them flying.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported Saturday that the meteorologists decided to upgrade earlier storm warnings to “extreme warnings.” The reason was that the weather system heading for southern Norway is considered highly unusual for a summer day in August.
“It looks like the bad weather has become much worse than we thought, and that it will come closer to land than it looked like earlier,” Tone Kristin Taule, a meteorologist on duty at the weather service Vervarslinga på Vestlandet, told NRK.
‘Extremely turbulent’ along the coast
Winds from the southeast were rising Saturday afternoon and were predicted to rise much more during the night. “We’re predicting extremely turbulent weather along the coast,” Taule said, especially in the counties of Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane. The coast of Rogaland, already hit by torrential rain earlier this past week, would also be pounded but the winds were expected to ease during the night.
More extreme weather was expected from Monday, also up through the Oslo Fjord and extending into inland areas, when the tropical hurricane “Bertha” is due to reach Norway. Meteorologists were tracking the hurricane over the Atlantic and predicted heavy rain through Wednesday.
Opposition is growing to US President Barack Obama’s nomination of George James Tsunis as the next US ambassador to Norway. Some leaders of the large Norwegian-American population in the US are now calling Tsunis “damaged goods,” and a petition is circulating that also calls for the US Senate to reject his nomination if Obama fails to withdraw it.
Tsunis, a wealthy businessman from New York who raised campaign funds for Obama, set off howls of protest and ridicule on both sides of the Atlantic after he stumbled badly under questioning at his US Senate confirmation hearing last month. Tsunis was being grilled by US Senator John McCain, who ran against Obama for the presidency in 2008 and had Tsunis’ support at the time.
Tsunis’ blunders, including his reference to Norway’s Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, Frp) as a “fringe element” that can “spew their hatred” when in fact it’s a member of the country’s new conservative government coalition, surprised both the left and right in Norway and sparked demands for an apology from Tsunis. Others claimed that Tsunis displayed ignorance about the country to which he was being sent as US envoy, while some defenders think he simply misspoke.
Nomination under severe pressure
He eventually indicated that he regretted his remarks and Tsunis’ nomination was forwarded to the full US Senate for confirmation, but only after an unusual roll-call vote and under dissent. There it sits, and now the pressure is growing on Obama either to withdraw it, or for senators themselves to reject it, which is something that almost never happens. Tsunis’ nomination is known as a “political appointment,” commonly made by US presidents who wish to reward major campaign supporters with prestigious ambassadorial posts in friendly countries. Most if not all of the ambassadors sent to Norway over the years have been political appointments, not career diplomats.
Among the most vocal opponents of Tsunis’ nomination to emerge recently is T Michael Davis, a Minnesota lawyer described as a longtime member of the Norwegian-American Chamber of Commerce and a former chairman of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in Minnesota, home of tens of thousands of Scandinavian immigrants and their descendants. In a commentary in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Davis argued that Obama’s “selection for ambassador to Norway cannot stand.” His commentary, published earlier this month, was also signed by former presidents of the Norwegian-American Chamber of Commerce and the large Norwegian-American organization Sons of Norway International, along with Bruce Gjovig, chairman of the Nordic Initiative at the University of North Dakota.
‘Irreparably damaged goods’
Davis and his backers called Tsunis “irreparably damaged goods … who will not be respected within the Norwegian government, let alone among ordinary Norwegians.” He wrote that Tsunis’ lack of judgment and background about Norway, along with the fallout his remarks have caused, “is so egregious that Minnesota’s and the nation’s Nordic communities, led by Norwegian-Americans here (in Minnesota), are doing what they rarely do: asking for help.” They’ve asked Minnesota’s two US senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken from Obama’s Democratic Party, and their colleagues “for bipartisan solidarity over and above political loyalties.”
Davis argued that if Tsunis is confirmed as ambassador to Norway, he “would become little more than expensive window-dressing for however long he would remain in Oslo, leaving him hindered in the roles of diplomacy that really matter.” Davis warned that since Norway is “an important member of NATO, a top oil producer and reliable trading partner, the appointment, especially for Norwegian-Americans, would have grave, destructive and long-lasting consequences.”
Intense lobbying against Tsunis
Others have followed up on Davis’ published objections(external link) on behalf of the Norwegian-American community, with the website MinnPost calling Minnesota “a natural place” to raise the movement against Tsunis, since it has the largest Norwegian-American population in the US. Many Scandinavian-Americans also tend to side with the Republicans on political matters, but Davis stresses the campaign against Obama’s choice is a bipartisan effort.
“We want the American citizens to have a qualified ambassador in Oslo, and we want the government in Oslo to be dealing with a qualified ambassador,” Davis told MinnPost on Friday(external link). “This is just basic common sense.” MinnPost reported that in addition to writing their commentary in the Star-Tribune, Davis and several other leading Norwegian-Americans have appealed directly to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough along with Minnesota’s two Democratic senators, Franken and Klobuchar, who can vote on Tsunis’ confirmation. Members of the so-called Norway Caucus in the US House of Representatives have also been approached, and say they share the concerns about Tsunis’ nomination.
A petition directed at US Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat, and Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican, is also circulating on the website change.org (external link). It’s been signed by opponents to the nomination in both the US and Norway.
‘Lost credibility’
Gjovig, of the University of North Dakota, said he’s also lobbied his state’s top politicians in Washington as have Nordic community leaders in the states of Wisconsin and Iowa. Tsunis, Gjovig told MinnPost, has “lost credibility with the people of Norway right from the get-go with his comments during his hearing,” Gjovig said. “You don’t get that credibility back very easily.”
Senator Al Franken. meanwhile, admitted he has “very serious concerns about whether he (Tsunis) is up for the job.” Klobuchar has also said she has “significant concerns” about the nomination and that she would be speaking with members of the Norwegian-American community to discuss them “in the coming weeks.”
That indicates the nomination itself may be stalled in the Senate. It remained unclear when the nomination may come up for a vote. A spokeswoman for the US Embassy in Oslo said on Monday that embassy officials had nothing new to add on the confirmation process and that “we don’t know” when a vote might take place. Tsunis himself has stated that he’s barred from commenting on his nomination while its evaluation is underway.
COMMENTARY: Some high-profile Norwegian politicians are trying to force the use of the local language in immigrant homes. A reality check seems in order: One question is whether Carl I Hagen of the Progress Party, who put forth new demands for Norwegian language expertise this week, would really drop his own Norwegian if he ever retires to his home in Spain. Another is whether he really would follow though on his language demands and accuse this writer’s own Norwegian grandmother of child neglect, because she continued to speak Norwegian in her new home in California.
It’s been endlessly fascinating to be an immigrant myself in Norway, a country constantly grappling with immigration issues. After growing up in a melting pot like California, it quickly became clear when I arrived in Oslo 25 years ago just how inexperienced my new country of residence was in dealing with things like culture clashes and, not least, language barriers. I ran into them constantly myself, and still do, despite having the advantage of being of Norwegian and Swedish descent. My challenge was, and still is, that Scandinavian language skills did not descend to my generation.
Norway is also a country that produced record numbers of emigrants itself just 100 years ago, when times were tough and opportunities limited for the vast majority of Norwegians. Politicians like Hagen often seem to forget that, and they could gain quite a bit of insight into immigration issues, possibly even empathy, by studying how Norwegians themselves have behaved over the years as immigrants in a new country.
Bear with some family history
Among the immigrants that Norway produced was my grandmother, a cook and housemaid in Oslo (still called Kristiania at the time) who headed for a new life in California in 1917. Her older brother Nils was already there, working as a cabinetmaker in San Francisco. He’d met and married another Norwegian immigrant and they’d had a son, but she got sick and died. My grandmother was summoned to come care for little Roald until Nils remarried.
When he did, to another Norwegian immigrant from Romsdal, my grandmother moved south to Los Angeles, where she cooked in a small café at LA Harbour that was run by yet another Norwegian immigrant from Stavanger who had learned enough English to handle the business. Norwegians, it seems, were like magnets for one another and clustered quickly, just as other immigrants often do in Oslo and other cities. My grandmother spoke little if any English, but it didn’t matter since she spent her time in the kitchen and almost everyone she dealt with were either Norwegians, Swedes or Danes. They could communicate well among themselves. Most of their customers were Scandinavian dock workers and fishermen anyway, so there was no pressing need for my grandmother to learn or use the main language of her adopted country.
When she met and married a Swedish immigrant from Öland, she quit working and stayed home to take care of the house he built and their three children. Among them was my mother Karin, who, along with her older brother Didrik and younger sister Alma, grew up in their Los Angeles suburb mostly speaking Norwegian. Their father spoke English, after getting a job as a carpenter at Union Oil Company, but at home the conversation flew in Norwegian and Swedish. In the relatively large Scandinavian community around the harbour at the time, which still boasts a Norwegian Seamen’s Church in San Pedro, they could also read Scandinavian newspapers, go to Scandinavian church services and socialize with other Scandinavians.
My mother and her siblings did encounter challenges when they started school and had relatively poor English skills. My mother said that she even came home one day and announced to her mother that she wouldn’t speak Norwegian anymore because she’d been teased at school (this was in 1926). She and her siblings quickly learned English at school and spoke it at home, while their mother answered in Norwegian. She died in 1932, and her obituary was actually printed in Norwegian in a local paper. Much of the family’s Norwegian expertise died with her, although my mother maintained Norwegian cooking and baking traditions to the day she died herself. As the granddaughter of a Norwegian immigrant, I wished the language skills had hung on, not least when I wound up living in Norway and felt functionally illiterate for the first time in my life.
Flash forward to the reality at hand: On Tuesday of this week, politician Hagen of the Progress Party grabbed media attention once again for condemning exactly the sort of lifestyle that my Norwegian grandmother and her immigrant family had lived themselves, as have millions of other immigrant families like them, past and present. It’s a lifestyle that politicians like Hagen often have praised because it contributed to preserving Norwegian traditions “over there” in America. In fact, it’s only natural for immigrant families arriving in new countries to continue speaking their own language, at least in the beginning. Most eventually shift over to the local language, but it takes time, often at least a generation. Others, admittedly myself included, continue to think and function first in their native tongue. The new language just doesn’t come as naturally.
An impatient Carl I Hagen and his party colleague Christian Tybring-Gjedde, however, have now suggested that immigrant parents who fail to ensure that their offspring have strong Norwegian language skills by the age of six should be charged with child neglect. They called for home inspections by Norwegian authorities two weeks after the birth of a child, where immigrant parents would need to present a plan for how the child will learn Norwegian before they start school. Tybring-Gjedde wants all immigrant parents to read Norwegian fairytales to their children, to have their children watch Norwegian television, to become active in the local neighbourhood and to stop taking their children back to their homelands for long holidays. Hagen and Tybring-Gjedde also proposed, to the Oslo City Council, that Norwegian authorities also should demand that the parents attend classes in Norwegian life and society, history and language. The authorities, they contend, should be able to demand that immigrant parents place their children in Norwegian day care centers, if they don’t find other means of making sure their children can speak and understand Norwegian.
All in the name of integration, the two men said. The new state government minister in charge of family and equality issues, also from the Progress Party, said she would “take the proposals further” in her government work. The proposals otherwise were largely met with ridicule and rejection by both Norwegian officials and immigrants alike, who dismissed Hagen and Tybring-Gjedde as politicians who thrive on provocation.
Reality check, and legitimate concerns
A reality check, at the very least, is in order for both men and others who support their policies. They should study how Norwegian immigrants themselves still behave in new countries. It’s doubtful that Norwegian parents working in the oil or shipping industries who move their families to Houston or Singapore, for example, will instantly speak only English or Chinese at home even if they already can function in the languages. It’s also doubtful whether Hagen himself, who has owned a home in Spain for years, will speak only Spanish in it if he ever moves there permanently in retirement. Why should immigrants in Norway be any different, or be forced to meet Hagen’s and Tybring-Gjedde’s demands?
There are, of course, legitimate concerns about language and integration in Norway. The issues also came up last fall, when newspaper Aftenposten ran a series of articles about deficient Norwegian language skills among many immigrant children, and even editorialized that thousands of children in Norway are being “let down” because their parents aren’t “taking responsibility” to teach them Norwegian before they start school.
Personal experience, also with a Swedish grandmother on my father’s side whose English was frankly terrible after 60 years in California, suggests such fears are unfounded. My father used to marvel that despite our immigrant background and some “funny English” in the family, both of his daughters ended up making their living by using the English language, one as a teacher and the other as a journalist. I still rely on my English skills to make a living in Norway, ironically enough. And Hagen’s solutions would leave a Norwegian woman from Østfold spinning in her grave in Southern California.
It was a “terrible” weekend for public bus transport in Oslo, conceded a spokesperson for regional transit authority Ruter. Three people were killed and several more injured, some seriously, in two separate bus accidents late Saturday night and Sunday evening. Bus company workers were gathering for a memorial on Monday, while police and state accident investigators try to determine what happened.
The first incident involved the 321 line from Oslo to Lillestrøm, northeast of the capital. A bus with 17 people board heading north on its way to Lillestrøm suddenly careened off Highway 4 at Rommen, rolled down the embankment and landed on its side.
‘Chaos and folks screaming’
“We had no time to think as the bus rolled over,” passenger Bjørn Rogne, age 55 from Skjetten, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). “Everything was chaos and folks were screaming.”
One passenger, a 60-year-old man, was found dead at the scene. The bus’ 56-year-old driver was seriously injured and later died at Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo. Another woman was also badly injured but was listed in serious but stable condition on Monday. Three others were rushed to hospital as well but their injuries were listed as moderate and not life-threatening.
Passengers questioned by police reported no unusual incidents on board the bus before its driver lost control, and the roads were said to be wet but not especially dangerous. Police said they were “keeping all options open” in their probe, with an autopsy of the driver scheduled to see whether he had any sort of seizure before running off the road. The bus itself, operated by Unibuss on contract to Ruter, was also being examined for any signs of malfunction. The driver had been working for Unibuss for 10 years, reported newspaper Aftenposten.
Another collision, and rolling out of control
On Sunday evening, another Ruter bus serving the 31 line between Grorud in Oslo and Fornebu, west of the capital, collided with a vehicle farther south on Highway 4, where it turns into the busy city street known as Trondheimsveien. Passengers were let out of the bus as its driver filled out an accident report, when witnesses told media outlets and police that the bus reportedly started rolling on down the street towards the busy rotary intersection called Carl Berners Plass. The bus was said to have traveled at high speed, eventually crashing into a parked car but not before it had swiped other vehicles, hit trees and street lights and careened dangerously close to startled pedestrians, hitting and killing one of them. Several others were injured, including the driver.
“This is another tragic incident,” Philipp Engedal of Nobina Norge, the company that runs the bus line under contract to Ruter. Engedal, Ruter officials, police and state accident investigators suddenly needed to launch another full-scale probe.
“It’s been a terrible 24 hours,” Gry Isberg of Ruter told newspaper Dagbladet. The accident at Rommen on Saturday was the worst in Unibuss’ history and the company planned to contact and offer assistance to all passengers on board as soon as police released their names. Employees of both bus companies were gathering Monday “and our thoughts go to all the survivors,” Isberg told NRK.
Nearly five years after we started up this website, we’ve taken a big step in the ongoing development of newsinenglish.no. We’ve started offering subscriptions that will allow readers full, ongoing access to all our stories and provide a far more systematic means of keeping the site itself strong.
An autumn appeal from the editor in Oslo: Nina Berglund at the Akershus Fortress and Castle, with City Hall in the background. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no
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Norway’s Magnus Carlsen was only a half-point away from victory in the World Chess Championship on Thursday, after defeating defending champ Vishy Anand at the end of a long and difficult game. That means Anand must win on Friday to keep the tournament going.
Magnus Carlsen of Norway won again on Thursday and only needs another half-point to claim the World Chess Championship. PHOTO: Paul Truong
“There were some very difficult positions, and I was uncertain,” Carlsen admitted to reporters after the game in Chennai, India. But then Anand made a mistake and that secured Carlsen’s victory.
The score thus stands at 6-3 after nine games, with 6.5 points needed to claim the championship. Carlsen can get that either in another draw or another win on Friday, the 10th game in the 12-game championship.
“It’s too early to start celebrating,” Carlsen’s manager Espen Agdestein told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK), which has been airing all the games live from Chennai and attracting surprisingly high viewership.
“But the chances are very good,” Agdestein added.
Anand, who used more than 40 minutes on just one move on Thursday, admitted things were not going his way. “I will of course try, but the situation doesn’t look very good,” he said.
Carlsen’s father Henrik was more inclined to celebrate, while his son remain typically restrained. “This was very exciting,” Henrik Carlsen told NRK. “Both of them were fighting hard until Anand made a mistake so that Magnus won.”
Raising rates
The entire championship action has been going so well for Carlsen, meanwhile, that Agdestein is already planning to raise the rates for the young Norwegian chess star’s sponsorships. He currently has Nordic Semiconductor, Arctic Securities and Oslo law firm Simonsen Vogt Wiig on his jacket and shirts, with more coming.
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported Thursday that Nordic Semiconductor, which signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Carlsen this summer, hopes it will “open doors” to boardrooms of leading, “universal customers.” Simonsen has sponsored Karlsen since 2009 and has decided to extend its agreement and support, to the tune of NOK 1 million a year.
“There’s an incredible amount of attention around our sponsorship of Magnus, both in Norway and among overseas colleagues,” partner Espen Tøndel told DN. “It’s a fund ride to be on.”
Oslo-based Arctic Securities has also sponsored Carlsen for the past four years but the deal expires at the end of the year. Managing Director Mads Syversen seems inclined to extend it: “As a sponsor for Magnus Carlsen, Arctic is long-term. We are both proud and humble to be along on this trip,” Syversen told DN.
Agdestein wouldn’t say which other sponsors may come on board, noting that chess doesn’t involve a lot of equipment like other sports do, nor is it big on TV despite NRK’s surprising ratings success. He said he’s nonetheless “in dialogue with some big international companies, but it’s too early to name any names.”
The next, and possibly last, championship game begins Friday at 10:30am again, Norwegian time.
Norwegian authorities were sounding a national alarm on Tuesday after a series of bomb threats hit locations from Tromsø in the far north to a firm near the country’s biggest refinery complex in the south. The state police bomb unit in Oslo was summoned to Mongstad in Nordhordland and military forces were mobilized as well.
The alarm at Mongstad wasn’t directed at Statoil’s large refinery there itself, but at the recycling company Norsk Gjenvinning, reported Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). Police said a “suspicious item” was found at the firm just before noon on Tuesday, that the bomb squad from Oslo was to examine.
The military’s divers’ commando unit was also alerted and the area around the firm at Mongstad was evacuated until at least 3:30pm. “No one will be allowed into the area we’ve cordoned off and we won’t be doing any further examinations until the bomb group arrives,” Kjell Idar Vangberg of the Nordhordland police told NRK.
He wouldn’t say why police thought the “suspicious item” might be a bomb. Norsk Gjenvinning’s base in Nordhordland is located a few kilometers away from Statoil’s refinery and terminal complex. Around 30 employees were evacuated and were under protection.
Meanwhile, police were also responding to bomb threats at Bergen’s airport at Flesland and the University of Tromsø. The threats came in just a day after police in Oslo evactuated a government ministry and cordoned off several blocks around it after a suitcase found to be empty had been left on a bench just outside the ministry.
The threat at Flesland was called in to Norway’s airport authority Avinor in Bodø, but the airport wasn’t evacuated. “Nothing has been cordoned off and traffic is operating as usual,” Leif Johansen, operations chief at Bergen Lufthavn Flesland, told NRK.
The university in Tromsø wasn’t evacuated either. “We have investigated and haven’t found anything that would indicate a bomb,” Steinar Gudmundsen, operations leader of the police in Troms County, told NRK. “We’re talking about empty threats.”
Preparedness around Mongstad, however, was high. “As far as we can tell, the threat at Mongstad isn’t tied to those at the airport or elsewhere in the country,” said Inger Myrtvedt, operations leader of the Hordaland Police District.
UPDATED: Sunday’s midnight strike deadline came and went in the ongoing conflict between Norwegian Air and 603 of its pilots in Scandinavia. By Monday morning negotiations were running many hours into overtime, and were set to continue until 9:30am, as uncertainty remained over whether the pilots would walk off the job.
Norwegian’s pilots earlier won a pensions dispute with their employer but are now at odds over the airline’s planned restructuring that would leave them working in a subsidiary they equate to a mere crewing agency. They fear that will ultimately threaten their pay and benefits. PHOTO: Norwegian Air/Hans Olav Nyborg
A strike would ground most flights at Norwegian’s airport bases in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Its troubled long-haul flights would continue, since they’re operated mostly by non-union crews through a subsidiary, but domestic traffic and routes within Europe would be seriously disrupted.
All operations were continuing as normal Monday morning, despite the uncertainty. Passengers were advised to show up as scheduled and proceed with check-in, even though a strike could be called at any time.
A state mediator was in charge of the negotiations through the weekend between pilots’ union Parat and employers’ organization NHO Luftfart. It was clear both sides were wearing down through the night. Mediator Nils Dalseide told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that “the mood was good” and there’d been some progress on pay issues, and they were heavily into overtime talks “because there’s a possibility of reaching a settlement.”
Disagreement continued, however, over what the pilots called “matters of principle,” mostly over the airline’s plans to restructure operations through new subsidiaries that the Scandinavian pilots fear will threaten their pay, working conditions and benefits. The new subsidiaries have been likened to crewing agencies aimed at keeping the airline’s costs down, not least through more employment of non-Scandinavian crews willing to work for far less than Norwegian, Swedish and Danish pilots and flight attendants.
Specifically, Norwegian wants to split its current labour agreements (called tariffavtaler) in three among its Danish, Norwegian and Swedish pilots. At the same time the airline wants to transfer its pilots to the newly formed crewing company that would be able to free itself of the pilots’ agreements.
Norwegian management has claimed that’s the only way the airline can continue to offer low fares and remain profitable. Others believe the practice would clear the way for what they call social dumping, and one major union called last week for a boycott of the airline, after news broke that Norwegian’s Thai crews on its long-haul flights were earning a fraction of its Scandinavian crews.
As mandatory mediation got underway on Friday between pilots and management at troubled Norwegian Air, the leader of the airline’s negotiating team said he expected a settlement. If none is agreed by midnight on Sunday, around 600 pilots will walk out of their cockpits.
Norway’s low-fare carrier Norwegian has been experienced much darker days this year, and now faces a pilots’ strike on Monday. PHOTO: Norwegian
“We have an open mind,” Thore Halvorsen of Norwegian told state broadcaster NRK on Friday. “So we’ll see what happens.”
There’s been little contact between the two sides since negotiations broke off in the middle of October. They didn’t prevail in their arguments for higher pay for pilots, especially those just launching their careers, and then they got angry if not embarrassed when Norwegian management released lists showing that 93 of the airline’s 100 most highly paid employees are pilots. Two of them topped the list, ahead of the airline’s finance director, its operations director and its chief executive officer.
Strike can ground flights
A strike threatened to begin on Monday will ground aircraft in Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim in Norway, at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport and at Kastrup in Copenhagen. Cabin crews’ plans to launch a sympathy strike as well, however, were dashed by a labour court this this, so some flights may take off with non-union pilots and Norwegian’s cabin personnel.
Halvorsen said he ‘wouldn’t start flinging around adjectives” to describe what he thinks of the pay conflict, “but just acknowledge the fact that we are in disagreement.” He still hopes that a settlement can be reached that also will reduce the potential for more labour conflicts at Norwegian Air, which launched regularly scheduled, low-fare service just over a decade ago and hasn’t had the strikes that have plagued rival Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) over the years.
This year, though, has been very tough for the airline, after it launched new intercontinental service using the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Delivery of its new aircraft was delayed because of myriad problems with the new jets, forcing Norwegian to lease in old aircraft to fly its new routes to Bangkok and New York. Passengers were disappointed and then angered by Norwegian’s poor on-board service, lengthy delays and flight cancellations. The airline incurred losses, had to apologize for its customer relations and had crisis meetings with Boeing. Problems and delays have continued, however, seriously damaging Norwegian’s reputation as a reliable, low fare carrier.
Norwegian has also been accused this week of social dumping, after NRK reported that its Thai cabin crews hired to work on board the long-haul flights had base pay of less than NOK 3,000 a month (USD 500). That led to calls for a boycott by some unions in Norway along with strong criticism from unions in the US as well.
Negotiations ‘difficult’
Kristine Nergaard of research institute Fafo warned that negotiations between Norwegian and its pilots were likely to be difficult. “This isn’t as much about money as it is about principles,” Nergaard told NRK. She said it’s become more and more common to use pilots (and cabin crews) from other countries and bases, to cut costs, and that’s threatening full-time airline jobs in the Scandinavian countries. “There’s a great deal of argument over this,” she said.
The constant expansion of low-fare carriers ushers in huge pressure to reduce costs, with some labour officials claiming that the trend, and what carriers like Norwegian and Ryanair have been doing, can undermine the social welfare state.
Both outgoing and incoming government officials in Norway are evaluating a request by the US and Russia, via the UN, to help with the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons. International weapons experts, meanwhile, already started destroying some of Syria’s chemical weapons and their production facilities over the weekend.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported on Saturday that both Russian and American authorities had asked the Norwegian government to destroy parts of the Syrian chemical weapon arsenal on Norwegian soil. Norway, reported NRK, was asked to help because it’s viewed as a politically stable country, has the water resources needed for such destruction, the highly educated people able to be trained to carry out such destruction and the money to help finance it.
‘In dialogue’
Outgoing Prime Minster Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that Norway was “in dialogue” with the United Nations about the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria, after NRK reported that Russia and the US had specifically asked Norway to be involved. Stoltenberg stressed, however, that it was too early to say whether Norway would take part in the destruction.
Any decision would be up to the incoming Conservatives-led government that won the September 9 election. Prime Minister-elect Erna Solberg, currently immersed in negotiations with the Progress Party to form a new non-socialist coalition government, said during the weekend that “we’re not negative to something the UN believes is important.” Her government will need to make a decision by November 15.
Both Solberg’s party and the Progress Party are strong supporters of the US, viewed as Noway’s most important ally, and likely would find it difficult to reject any requests for help. With Russia as a mighty neighbour to the east, the new Norwegian government would also likely be inclined to acknowledge its call for help as well.
No experience
It was a deal finally struck between Russia and US that led to a UN resolution declaring that Syria won’t have chemical weapon capacity after June 30, 2014. That means that between now and then, Syria’s highly controversial arsenal believed to have been used to kill Syria’s own citizens will be destroyed.
Norwegian officials candidly admit they have no experience in destruction of such weapons. “We’ve never been involved in this type of operation,” Lt Col Per Inger Ohrstrand of the Norwegian military told newspaper Aftenposten. “If this is going to be a reality, we must first get some answers about what the operation would involve.”
Jørn Siljeholm, a former Norwegian weapons inspector in Iraq with a doctorate in chemical risk analysis who’s worked for many years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NRK on Sunday that he thinks Norway must take part in the efforts to disarm Syria’s chemical arsenal. “Norway has the money, the stability and the competence to do this,” Siljeholm told NRK. “We absolutely must agree to take in the chemical weapons from Syria.”
He received support from a former colleague and environmental activist Frederic Hauge of Bellona, who also thinks Norway should help get rid of Syria’s chemical arsenal. “Despite the transportation challenges, it will be much more environmentally friendly to destroy these weapons in a responsible manner in Norway,” Hauge told NRK.
UPDATED: After two weeks of talks and a final get-together on Monday, Norway’s four non-socialist parties formally ended their first round of talks on forming a new government. They then moved on to meetings with their own party fellows Monday afternoon, with a decision expected soon on whether they’ll all move forward with forming a new Conservatives-led government coalition or whether one of both of the two small parties will drop out.
“I think our party will be satisfied when the day is over,” a smiling Knut Arild Hareide, leader of the small Christian Democrats party, told reporters before heading another meeting with his board and fellow Members of Parliament. Neither Hareide nor the other party leaders would give any indication of the outcome of their last 12 days of talks.
That’s at least one area where the four parties (the Conservatives, the Progress Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats) have been united – in their commitment not to reveal the substance of their talks or how they might have ironed out their differences on a long list of issues. They have all found some common ground, however, that may at least lead to some pacts in parliament for future legislation if not to shared government power.
Manic Monday
The four parties had recessed over the weekend, breaking away from the marathon negotiations of late last week to meet with their respective party fellows, spend time with family or even engage in some home remodelling. Ketil Solvik-Olsen of the Progress Party, for example, sent out a message on social media, for example, that he would spend part of his weekend working on some roof trimmings, while Jan Tore Sanner of the Conservatives said he’d be cooking up some stew and only negotating on dinner music. “Nice with a change,” Solvik-Olsen wrote.
Monday was expected to be hectic, though, with the last round of negotiations and then their party meetings. Political commentators expected some sort of announcement about which parties will make up Norway’s new government coalition on Monday evening. Hareide said it was unlikely before 8pm.
It’s the two small parties, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, that have been making the most demands even though they hold only 5 percent of the vote each. They nonetheless may be able to push through their positions on such issues as amnesty for children of asylum seekers (extracting promises from the Progress Party and the Conservatives to let them stay in Norway) and even on a delay in any oil exploration off scenic Loftoten and Vesterålen.
Both the Conservatives and the Progress Party may want them in the government badly enough that they’ll cave in on such issues and let the two small parties get their way.
More money needed
It may be tougher on the issues of agricultural policies, several social issues and funding for local governments, even though the four parties already seem to have agreed on a need to streamline municipal bureaucracies and reduce the sheer number of local governments in Norway.
The Christian Democrats, however, want to keep protecting Norwegian farmers from foreign competition, giving them the same level of subsidies (the highest in the world) and maintaining high tariffs to restrict imports. “The Christian Democrats want to protect agricultural land and that’s not an option for us or the other two parties,” Torgeir Trældal, agricultural spokesman for the Progress Party, told newspaper Dagsavisen. “We disagree on how much we’ll give the farmers in subsidies, but there I think we can come to some agreement.”
Some commentators were predicting that Conservatives leader Erna Solberg, whom all four parties back as Norway’s next prime minister, will simply need to find more money in the state budget to appease all of them. That may not be so hard, given the increase in available oil revenues that can be spent.
PHOTO FEATURE: Two years after a bomber attacked Norway’s government complex in Oslo, Norwegians could finally see for themselves how the buildings held up. State officials hosted an unusual “open house” that resulted in a weekend of reflection for many over the events of July 22, 2011, and over options for rebuilding.
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Hover your mouse over the photos for caption information. For more on the unique access to the bombed government complex, click here.
The Norwegian National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) plans to visit seven Norwegian cities next month to strengthen their computer security. Norway, the authorities claim, is “a tempting goal for data- and industrial espionage,” and computer systems, they fear, are still too vulnerable.
“Many Norwegian operations are targets of hacking attempts every day,” NSM wrote in a press release issued on Wednesday. “It’s still too easy to break into computer programs that aren’t updated, or because sensitive information is too easily accessible.”
NSM has designated October as “National Security Month,” and will be sending its own experts to Tromsø, Bodø, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand and Oslo to host seminars(external link, in Norwegian) aimed at improving computer security both regionally and in the capital.
The seminars arranged by NSM, whose official stated purpose is “to counter threats to independence and security of the realm,” will address issues such as security culture, online habits, how to secure mobile telephones and securing information through encryption.
NSM’s targets are companies, state and municipal operations, organizations, academic circles and “normal folks with an interest in information technology and information security.”
NSM director Kjetil Nilsen said that Norway has become an attractive target for economic crime, espionage carried out by foreign powers and so-called “hackers who want to show off.” He said there was a doubling of the number of breaches and attempted breaches of computer systems in the country last year.
He said officials at NSM, charged with fending off espionage, sabotage and acts of terrorism, thus feel it’s “more important than ever to secure our assets and values.”
HERE’S WHAT’S UP FOR NEGOTIATION: The leaders of the four non-socialist Norwegian parties that collectively won last week’s parliamentary election were sitting down to demanding talks at a hotel in Oslo on Monday, to decide how they might govern the country. They need to agree on a common platform if they hope to form a coalition government, with the degrees of their lust for power deciding the outcome.
This rare joint press conference of the four non-socialist party leaders, held to criticize the now-defeated left-center government’s handling of hospital reforms, marked the first time they mounted a common front. Now they’re getting together again, in the hopes of hammering out a coalition government platform after collectively winning a majority in last week’s election. From left: Trine Skei Grande of the Liberal Party (Venstre), Siv Jensen of the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, Frp), Erna Solberg of the Conservative Party (Høyre) and Knut Arild Hareide of the Christian Democrats (Kristelige Folkeparti, KrF). PHOTO: Reynir Johannesson/Frp
It’s all a matter of how much each party will be willing to compromise on the issues where they disagree. “We will be tough negotiators,” vowed Progress Party leader Siv Jensen on Election Night, “but we will be realistic.”
This first stage of talks is known as sonderinger in Norwegian – a preliminary round where they sound each other out on the issues. Real negotiations begin later, if they feel there’s grounds for them.
Both Jensen and at least two of her potential government partners from the dominant Conservative and small Liberal parties seem to have won room to maneuver during the negotiations from their party faithful. Their desire to win government power, for the first time in the case of the Progress Party, seems greater than their desire to hold so fast to their individual stands on issues that they won’t budge. Not so at the small Christian Democrats party, where many of its members who served in previous coalition governments have advised against ruling with the Progress Party because their differences are too great. It’s been widely speculated that the Christian Democrats may be the first to withdraw from the new government negotiations, but even they can find some common ground, so the outcome is wide open. All four leaders, with Prime Minister-elect Erna Solberg from the Conservatives steering the negotiations, claim they’re heading into the talks with open minds.
It’s expected that the most difficult issues will be tackled first when the four party leaders start talking at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Oslo’s Nydalen district on Monday afternoon. Here’s a rundown of the biggest differences among them that need to be resolved:
OIL DRILLING OFF LOFOTEN, VESTERÅLEN AND SENJA: This has repeatedly been mentioned, also by Solberg who’ll be leading the negotiations, as the toughest issue that clearly separates the Conservatives and the Progress Party from their two smaller potential partners. Both the Liberals and the Christian Democrats are strongly opposed to allowing oil drilling off some of Norway’s most scenic coastline and in the heart of its richest fishing grounds. Liberals leader Trine Skei Grande has said she won’t accept anything less than another postponement of any oil drilling. Even one of the Conservatives’ biggest financial supporters, businessman Jens Ulltveit Moe, has warned against Norway’s over-reliance on oil, and there are signs both of the bigger parties may give in to their smaller partners, not least since the prospect of oil drilling off Lofoten isn’t popular.
HIGHWAY FINANCING: All four parties have stressed a need for extensive road improvements in Norway and support new ways of financing and building them, to expedite their completion. The Progress Party, however, wants to drop reliance on tolls (bompenger) to help pay for new roads, while their potential partners have supported the concept of user fees. It will be difficult for the Progress Party to back down on this issue.
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM: Both the Liberals and the Christian Democrats have softer stands on these emotional issues, with the Progress Party calling for the toughest measures to stem immigration. Newspaper Aftenposten has reported that the Conservatives and the Progress Party may go along with offering amnesty to the roughly 400 children of asylum seekers who already are in Norway, in return for getting the two smaller parties to go along with tougher immigration polices. Knut Arild Hareide, leader of the Christian Democrats, said over the weekend that the fate of the children called asylbarn in Norway tops he party’s concerns. If they’re given amnesty, he may be willing to accept tough new immigration requirements.
USE OF OIL REVENUES: The Progress Party has argued for years in favour of investing more of Norway’s oil wealth in Norway, instead of stashing most of it in the so-called “Oil Fund” for future generations that’s invested in international stock markets and, most recently, some prestigious real estate abroad. Siv Jensen’s party wants to be able to use more of the oil money to finance more and better roads, schools, hospitals and, not least, nursing homes, while most others argue that could overheat the Norwegian economy. It’s highly unlikely the rule that limits expenditure of Norway’s oil revenues will be ignored, so this is one area where Jensen will probably need to compromise. The good news for her, though, is that the oil fund has grown so big that the actual amount of money that can be used gets bigger every year. The new government will still have lots more to spend, even when abiding by the rule.
PROTECTIONISM AND HIGH PRICES: Here’s where both the Conservatives and the Progress Party risk betraying their voters, if they cave in to the Christian Democrats’ demands that Norwegian farmers still need current levels of subsidies and protection from imports. The Progress Party and to a large degree the Conservatives and the Liberals want to ease Norway’s highly protectionist agricultural policies, with Progress wanting to reduce the farmers’ power over the state, gradually reduce subsidies, roll back tariffs that keep cheaper and often better imported food out of the Norwegian market and ease restrictions on agricultural property. The Christian Democrats want to retain the current system of negotiations between the farmers’ lobby and the state, increase support and subsidies to the farmers and retain the import tariffs.
FOREIGN AID: The Christian Democrats want to increase financial aid to poor countries, while the Progress Party wants to cut it. Discussion is also likely over how aid is distributed. This is an issue where the Progress Party seems to stand alone on its views, and given funding available, may need to compromise.
ALCOHOL POLITICS: This is another issue where the Progress Party and the Christian Democrats are as diametrically opposed as they are on asylum and immigration issues. The Christian Democrats claim they can’t accept any further liberalization of rules restricting access to alcohol (through serving times in bars and restaurants, opening hours at the state-controlled retailer Vinmonopolet and rules over when other stores are allowed to sell beer), nor will they lower taxes on beer, wine and liquor. The Conservatives, the Progress Party and the Liberals all favour expanded sales hours,while the Progress Party even wants to shut down Vinmonopolet.
All these issues need some immediate clarification before negotiations can proceed. There are other thorny issues as well, from an agreement on how parental leave should be divided between mothers and fathers when a child is born, whether begging should be prohibited in Norway (both the Conservatives and the Progress Party want a ban as soon as possible) and whether Norwegians should be able to try having children through egg and sperm donations. There also are differences on such issues as tax relief, whether the state should take over responsibility for elder care from local governments and how Norway’s bureaucracy can be trimmed.
Negotiations leader Solberg has claimed she’s optimistic that there’s enough willingness on the part of all four parties to form a coalition government that they’ll all be able to find common ground. Political commentators think it’s far more likely that the Christian Democrats will leave the table and take a place among the opposition parties in the Parliament, leaving the Conservatives, the Progress Party and the Liberals to form a government together that would still have a majority in parliament. Talks must be wrapped up by October 14, when the current left-center government will present its last budget. A new group of government ministers is expected to be presented on the grounds of the Royal Palace following the first Council of State after that, on Friday October 18.
Erna Solberg, leader of Norway’s Conservative Party, could finally announce on Monday night that she will finally and formally start the process of taking over as prime minister and forming a new government, after voters handed the non-socialist parties a solid majority in Monday’s parliamentary elections. She called her own party’s victory both “historic” and “important,” and linked it to one major factor: “The voters believed in us.”
Erna Solberg, head of Norway’s Conservative Party, will start meeting soon with the other four non-socialist parties to negotiate a platform for a new government that she will head as prime minister. PHOTO: NRK screen grab/newsinenglish.no
Solberg made a triumphant entrance to her party’s victory celebration at an Oslo hotel Monday night after preliminary election results gave her party 27.3 percent of the vote with well over half the country’s precincts reporting. That’s less than what public opinion polls had suggested earlier this year, when her party scored more than 30 percent, but Solberg seemed genuinely pleased.
As the crowd chanted “Erna, Erna, Erna,” (roughly pronounced “Air-na”), she then announced that she already had called the leaders of the three other non-socialist parties and congratulated them with their own election results. “We will start meeting and give this country a new government,” Solberg said as her party faithful cheered.
With her party’s motto looming behind her on the podium (Nye ideer, bedre løsninger – New ideas, better solutions), the 52-year-old Solberg has an important and demanding job ahead of her. She’ll need to negotiate a common platform with the other parties of which the more conservative Progress Party is by far the biggest with around 16 percent of the vote pending final tallies. And she’ll need to strike a balance among their differing views on many key issues.
Siv Jensen, head of the conservative Progress Party, was energetic and on the offense in her own victory speech but also promised to “give and take” during negotiations to form a new government. It will be the first time the Progress Party is part of a government in Norway, and Jensen is widely tipped to be finance minister. PHOTO: NRK screen grab/newsinenglish.no
Siv Jensen, leader of the Progress Party, seemed to extend an unusually large dose of goodwill at her own party’s victory celebration at a nearby banquet hall. “We will be tough negotiators but we will have respect for all the others,” Jensen announced. “Everyone must be seen and heard, and must get something. We know that we must give, in order to get.”
Monday’s election results were particularly historic for the Progress Party, which has never held government power before and now stands to hold several key ministerial posts as the country’s third-largest party after Labour and the Conservatives. Together, Jensen’s and Solberg’s parties hold more than 43 percent of the vote alone and may only need one of the two other much smaller parties (The Liberals and Christian Democrats) to form a government pending final election results. The intent, however, is for all four parties to share government power in accordance with their election results.
Solberg, meanwhile, didn’t leave her victory podium without thanking “those who are going out of the government offices,” not least Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. Solberg graciously stated that they “deserve respect for the job they’ve done,” adding that Stoltenberg “has been a symbolic and unifying person for the entire nation.”
Meetings of the four parties are due to begin later this week, with Solberg intending to present a new government and take over shortly after Stoltenberg’s government delivers its state budget in mid-October and formally asks King Harald V to be relieved of duties.
“For many of us,” Solberg said, “the job has really just begun.”
NEWS ANALYSIS: As Norway’s parliamentary election campaign clicks into high gear, much of the local media attention has been on how the parties stand in the polls and how they might cooperate to form a government. That’s overshadowed many of the actual issues at stake, so it’s time, perhaps, to offer a rundown of how a new non-socialist government would differ from the current left-center coalition.
No, it’s not a large Kraftwerk concert, rather all the leaders of Norway’s seven largest political parties gathered for their first major debate of the election campaign on Monday night. Their constant maneuvering for government power has all but clouded the actual issues at hand, and voters can’t be sure which parties will eventually form a government. PHOTO: newsinenglish.no/NRK screen grab
Many questions remain, not least because the four non-socialist parties have refused to campaign on a common platform. No one can say what kind of government they may form if they jointly win, as expected, a majority of seats in Parliament. Instead of taking firm stands or revealing how they may cooperate, they’ve been keen to campaign separately and stress the differences among themselves, even though it’s unlikely any single party will win enough votes to rule alone.
Norway’s two biggest parties, the Conservatives and Labour, appear most likely to lead any coalition. Siv Jensen, leader of the country’s third-largest and most conservative Progress Party, made an interesting and provocative comment earlier this week when she claimed it was difficult to see major political differences between the two arch-rivals. She accused Conservatives leader Erna Solberg of “living in a social democratic bubble” and running a campaign that tried to further similarities among the parties instead of differences.
“The whole point of changing a government must be to change politics,” said Jensen, repeating much of the same at Monday night’s debate and stressing the need for voters to vote for the party that best reflects their own politics. Jensen’s comments can hardly grease the skids for a much-vaunted cooperation between her party and Solberg’s.
Voters are left with only a general idea of how things might work if either the left or the right emerges victorious. Here are some of the main issues in the country that’s already widely dubbed to be the best place on the planet to live:
Price levels
Jensen claims that without her party in a non-socialist government, there won’t be any real change in Norway’s notoriously high prices for food, drink and most other household items. The Progress Party wants to seriously cut subsidies to farmers, reduce Norway’s protectionist tariffs that keep out imports, and cut taxes on alcohol and other consumer goods. The Conservatives go along with some of that but Solberg has cautioned that any major cuts would come as too great a “shock” to producers.
In the current left-center government, Labour went along with the Center Party’s demands for more protectionism and more support for farmers, which led to the controversial new tariffs on imported cheese and meat and sent prices up again at the grocery store. A non-socialist government is expected to reverse them.
Oil revenue use
Jensen has long campaigned for more use of Norway’s oil revenues, instead of stashing the vast majority of them away in a fund for future generations. Solberg also wants to spend more, but not as much as Jensen, and the Conservatives and the two other non-socialist parties, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, want to abide by the rule limiting spending to 4 percent of the size of the fund.
The Labour-led coalition won’t spend any more than the 4 percent limit, and has spent less.
‘Pappa permission’
This turned into a bigger campaign issue than expected as the parties argued over how families should be able to use the 59 weeks of fully paid parental leave they get upon the birth of a child.
On this issue, the non-socialists are arguing among themselves, with the Conservatives and Progress Party keen to remove a requirement that at least 14 weeks must be used by fathers. Their potential partners, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, want to keep the “pappa quota,” as do all three left-center parties: Labour, the Center Party and the Socialist Left.
Worklife
Here the non-socialists want more flexibility over how working time should be determined, and they want to ease other restrictions on employers as well. The incumbent government parties want to maintain all current restrictions and actively fight against social dumping and exploitation of foreign labour.
Hospitals and health care
The Labour-led parties want to maintain a strong public health care system and full state control over hospitals. They don’t want to turn hospital care over to the private sector.
The non-socialist parties want to allow more private players into the health care system and they want the state to send more patients stuck on waiting lists over to private clinics. The Conservatives recently raised eyebrows by revealing that they may increase the relatively small portion of health care costs that are paid by patients (called egenandel), with Labour officials claiming that’s not much different than a tax increase. The Conservatives also have been accused of not clarifying how they would pay for health care improvements, since they also favour tax cuts.
Defense
Not a big issue in the current campaign, with the pullout from Afghanistan underway and Norwegian defense policy so closely connected to NATO’s. The military also has been undergoing major reorganization and modernization moves, and women can now be called in for service, so many issues that were hotter a few years ago have been resolved. Debate continues over the huge expense tied to orders for new fighter jets from the US.
Media support
The Labour-led government wants to maintain current levels of financial support for various media outlets, claiming it ensures a diversified, nationwide media. Without the financial support, several newspapers face closure.
The Conservatives want to cut media subsidies by NOK 100 million, the Progress Party wants to cut it by NOK 180 million and their partners want to either limit or continue it. A Conservative-led government would most likely cut media subsidies by some negotiated degree.
Taxes
The current left-center government wants to maintain current tax levels. The Conservatives want tax cuts of around NOK 25 billion, the Progress Party advocates cuts of NOK 100 billion and their partners much less or none at all. A non-socialist government would probably reduce overall tax levels, not least on the controversial fortune tax on individual net worth.
Oil drilling off Lofoten
Two of the three government parties formally oppose it, even though Oil Minister Ola Borten Moe from the small Center Party supports it. Labour wants to move forward with a feasibility study of it, because of the jobs it would create.
Both the Conservatives and the Progress Party also want to move forward with oil drilling off Lofoten, while their two partners are firmly opposed. On this issue, the dynamics in both blocs are largely the same, but the small parties may prevail.
Foreign aid
The Socialist Left wants to further increase Norway’s already substantial levels of foreign aid, while the two other socialist parties want to maintain current levels. The non-socialists want to either reduce foreign aid or redefine how it’s extended. Reductions would be likely if they win government power.
Immigration and asylum
The current government wants to continue existing policies. This issue is particularly divisive on the non-socialist side, with the Progress Party demanding restrictions and the two smaller parties wanting more liberal immigration and asylum laws. The Conservatives are caught in the middle and would likely force through a compromise.
Foreign policy
Norway’s political parties generally come together on foreign policy issues and most foreign policy is likely to continue regardless of a change in government. There is potential for some change, though:
The Conservatives have always been in favour of joining the European Union (EU) and now may wind up with a majority of like-minded colleagues in parliament. The Progress Party has kept mum on the EU issue while Labour also is believed to support EU membership, but has been held back for the sake of government unity, since its two left-center partners firmly oppose joining the EU.
Changes may thus come on the EU issue, as well as in the areas of foreign aid (see above) and on human rights issues. It was a Conservative politician (Jan Tore Sanner) who nominated Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize, which plunged Norway into diplomatic crisis with China. Now Conservative politicians also advocate a tougher stance against Russia on human rights issues.
The Conservatives also are likely to move away from Labour’s eagerness to engage in peace talks around the world. Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide, a candidate to be foreign minister for the Conservatives, told newspaper Dagsavisen this summer that she wants to dampen Norway’s image as a “peace nation” so as not to spread Norway’s resources too thinly. She also wants to restrict peace brokering to areas that would clearly serve Norway’s interests.
Schools
The current left-center government claims to put a priority on a strong public school system. They are traditionally skeptical towards private schools, and want to maintain a system where elementary school students don’t receive grades on the work they do.
The non-socialist parties want to allow more private schools and start grading students from the 5th grade. The Liberals and Christian Democrats side with the socialists on these issues.
Road financing
The socialist parties want to maintain Norway’s current combination of road tolls and state funding. The Progress Party is the only party that wants to do away with tolls. The Conservatives and Liberals want more cooperation between the public and private sectors on road financing.
All nine political parties in the Norwegian Parliament came together on Wednesday to present a new long-term defense plan. It involves an extra NOK 11 billion on defense spending after all the top politicians involved managed to set priorities.
Representatives of all nine political parties in the Norwegian Parliament announced their agreement Wednesday on major expansion of the country’s defense systems. PHOTO: Sigbjørn Pettersen Kiserud / Stortinget
There’s been broad agreement on the need for enhanced defense even after all the inceased allocations in recent years. The new plan represents yet another “historic boost” as Norway invests more heavily in everything from ground-to-air defense systems and drones to six new submarines, not just the five proposed in 2024.
It amounts to the biggest increase in defense spending in the past 30 years. Norway will also get five new frigates and three new Army brigades in addition to the enhanced ground to air defense especially in the southeast, where most of the population lives.
“This is historic,” said Conservatives leader Ine Eriksen Søreide, a former defense- and foreign minister herself who now leads the defense- and foreign affairs committee in parliament. She was among all the other party leaders and committee members who gathered to announce the breakthrough on Wednesday.
The numbers are daunting, but boil down to the use of around NOK 1,635 billion on defense over the next 12 years. Norway’s Labour Party government had sought a broad compromise and got it, as parties from the far right to far left all agreed that the new “security policy situation makes it completely necessary to secure clear priorities through shifting political majorities,” Søreide said.
That especially includes the long-range air defense systems for “permanent protection” of Oslo and the rest of what’s called “Østlandet” in the southeast. The area not only has the largest concentration of the Norwegian population but is also home to the country’s most important institutions.
Naval protection all along Norway’s coast will include six new submarines “that will at all times operate on patrol” in Norwegian waters and Arctic areas.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre called the new defense agreement “an important signal” both to Norway’s allies and “others,” presumably potential enemies. As he’s stressed so many times before, Støre stated that “at a time with war in Europe, a sharpened security policy situation and a more unpredictable Russia, we must invest more in our defense and security.”
He also stressed that the agreement confirms that Norway “stands together on the defense of our country” as well as with its allies. Norway has also entered into a recent series of new defense pacts with individual allies within NATO, including Great Britain, Canada, Germany and, most recently, France.
One of the biggest challenges facing the defense department is staffing, with an ongoing lack of personnel and many new positions unfilled as of yet. At the same time, a military career is becoming more and more attractive to new recruits.
The Norwegian government has been keen to restrict social media access to those under age 16, but that’s proving more difficult than expected. A new law proposal has reportedly been watered down, and the tech companies may not face fines after all if they fail to make sure all of their social media customers are 16 or older.
The government now worries that fines wouldn’t be allowed under trade regulations with the European Union, so now the new law merely encourages companies offering social media to set an age limit on use. Most top politicians still want to protect youngsters from predators ready to exploit them on social media, and keep them from being hooked on it.
Newspaper Klassekampen editorialized this week that tech companies including Meta, Tiktok and Google should be held responsible for what kind of content they allow: “They speculate … and allows swindlers and criminals to prey on children,” editorialized Klassekampen, “and that’s what we need to do something about.” It urged much stricter regulation of social media content.
Norway is known for its strict rules around the purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages, from high taxes to the state monopoly on retail sales. They’ve been loosening up in recent years, though, and now the government is proposing that both Norwegian wine, bubbly and spirits can be sold directly from the farms where they’re produced.
Norwegian cider producers have been allowed to sell direct to the public since 2016, instead of having to go through the Vinmonopolet retail system. As grape-growing and wine production expands in Norway, calls have also gone out for sales from vineyards, and there’s a majority in Parliament to the Labour government’s proposal to do so.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has also been keen to allow expanded hours for beer and wine sales during the upcoming World Cup. Football fans will be able to buy drinks long into the night, since some matches won’t even begin being broadcast until midnight because of the six-hour time zone difference between Norway and the US East Coast, where opening matches will play out.
Not everyone is happy about the liberalization, pointing to all the drunkenness and violence during recent 17th of May celebrations and the late-night partying by graduating high school students known as russ. The right-wing Progress Party, though, promises removal of even more restrictions if they get their way, including an end to the state monopoly (Vinmonopolet) and pouring round the clock.
Norway’s national ice hockey team avoided a meltdown at the world championships in Switzerland over the weekend, and ended up with the bronze medal after beating mighty Canada. They celebrated with thousands of Norwegian football fans back in Oslo on Monday, who’d gathered for a World Cup warm-up match against Sweden that Norway also won.
It all led to a grand “welcome home” party for the hockey heroes and a great send-off on Tuesday for the Norwegian national football team. The latter has since landed in the USA and started a two-week training session before their first match against Iraq on June 17. Norway will then face off against Senegal on June 23 and France on June 26.
It was Norway’s new hockey heroes who grabbed half-time attention in Oslo on Monday, though, as sports fans cheered for the country’s first medal at the hockey world championships in 90 years. When Norway beat Sweden as well at the exhibition match, ambitions rose for the World Cup. “Norway is winning in many arenas now,” noted sports commentator Reidar Sollie in newspaper Dagsavisen.
Anti-nuclear activists in Norway are unhappy with their country’s new defense agreement with France, named after the northern Norwegian city where French allies helped fight back against Nazi invaders. Others, though, have been praising the pact and giving Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre credit for being “politically brave” in a “completely new security situation.”
Paris pays tribute to its success in the northern Norwegian city of Narvik, by calling this intersection “Place de Narvik.” A plaque at the site notes how Narvik became the first city in the world that European allies Norway, France and Great Britain managed to win back against Hitler’s Germany at the time. The French Foreign Legion played a decisive role in the battles there on May 28 1940, and now Norway and France are joining forces again in an expansion of their NATO cooperation. PHOTO: Wikipedia
The praise comes from Norway’s leading newspapers on both sides of the political spectrum, including Dagens Næringsliv (DN) on the right and Dagsavisen on the left. Støre’s government had initially turned down an invitation from French President Emmanuel Macron to join his new, strengthened French nuclear weapon strategy. It aims to further deter any enemy at a time when reliance on the US and its nuclear weapons has come into question.
Other close NATO allies including Great Britain (which also has nuclear weapons), Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and, perhaps most importantly, both Sweden and Denmark had already signed on. After futher consideration, Støre quietly conferred with some other parties in the Norwegian Parliament including the Conservatives in opposition, and received favourable feedback.
The Place de Narvik in Paris honours French soldiers led by General Antoine Bethouart, who fought back against Nazi German invaders in Norway and lived to be more than 90. More than 40 other plazas, streets and bridges in France have been named after Narvik, in addition to a new defense pact with Norway. PHOTO: Wikipedia
Now all three Scandinavian countries are included in the French initiative to further ward off any threats from, for example, an increasingly aggessive Russia. It means French nuclear weapons can also hinder attacks on France’s partners, even though Støre maintains that Norway is not being brought under France’s nuclear umbrella.
At a meeting on Friday with members of the Foreign Press Association in Norway, Støre claimed “we are not moving under the nuclear umbrealla,” stressing the “deterrent” factor. “We will sit down with the French and have an exchange over how the deterrent will be handled,” Støre said, while also stressing that “there will be no nuclear weapons placed on Norwegian soil” and that Norway won’t be financing any nuclear weapons purchases.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre met with foreign correspondents in Oslo on Friday, the day after he returned from Paris and formalized the new defense pact with French President Emmanuel Macron. PHOTO: NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
“I have been working all my life on arms control,” Støre said. He and Norway continue to support non-proliferation treaties and nuclear arms reduction and he all but bristled at the suggestion Norway is moving away from its arms control policies. “There are no changes,” he said, in Norway’s nuclear policy, even though he has some critics within his own Labour Party and some think there should have been more public debate, hearings and studies of the agreement with France.
At issue, though, is that the “deep peace” that came after the fall of the Berlin Wall is now all but gone, with an increasingly hostile president in Russia and an unreliable president in the US who has made it clear that Europe must be able to defend itself. Støre views the new defense pact with France, which follows Norway’s bilateral agreements with Great Britain and Germany, as “more and more integration within the NATO system.”
He added that France “has explained this to the US,” and he agrees the new pact will “enhance” non-proliferation. Top Norwegian politicians have long referred to the US as Norway’s “most important” ally. On Friday, Støre called the US “a significant ally,” while promoting the new pact with France.
Reaction is now generally favourable from Norway’s largest political parties, commentators and defense experts. Kristian Skard of newspaper Dagsavisen noted how such a defense pact based on a nuclear deterrent “would have been unthinkable” just a few years ago, but now “we must relate to an entirely new security situation. The brutal war on Ukraine, a threatening Russian regime and a totally unpredictable American president is behind the decision the Norwegian government has made.” He added that all the uncertainty tied to the US’ role in NATO makes it “logical to develop a broader defense cooperation with other European allies.”
His counterparts at the otherwise critical DN agreed, editorializing that “the fact more countries than the USA can offer nuclear security guarantees is, in today’s world, unfortunately good for Norway.”
Neither the captain of Norway’s national men’s football team, Martin Ødegaard, nor Norway’s football superstar Erling Braut Haaland will be playing in an exhibition match against Sweden in Oslo on Monday. That’s just the day before the entire team heads for the World Cup in North America, and head coach Ståle Solbakken thinks they need a break before two weeks of intensive training and their first World Cup match against Iraq in Boston.
Haaland was reportedly taking some time off at home with family before the World Cup action begins. Ødegaard, meanwhile, was hard at work over the weekend: He’s also the captain of the British football team Arsenal, and it faced off against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final on Saturday. It ended in a 1-1 tie that prompted a lengthy round of penalty kick competition that Paris Saint-Germain won 4-3.
Even though Ødegaard and Arsenal had won the Premier League in the UK, the loss in Paris was a major disappointment and not the best send-off for the trip to the US on Tuesday. After that comes two weeks of training in North Carolina before their first World Cup match on Wednesday June 17 at 6pm in Boston, midnight back home in Norway.
Australian police have heightened security around Norway’s Princess Ingrid Alexandra, who’s studying at the University of Sydney. They’ve also issued a restraining order around a man who’s reportedly believed to have been threatening her.
Princess Ingrid Alexandra, second in line to the throne in Norway, has been studying at the University of Sydney in Australia since last summer. PHOTO: Raquel Pires Photography / Det kongelige hoff
The Daily Telegraph newspaper has reported that a “suspicious” letter had been sent to the princess, the contents of which were withheld. It’s unclear whether the wording of the letter or the envelope’s contents posed a threat.
The newspaper reported that an investigation into the case resulted in the issuance of the restraining order against a man in his 60s. He’s been charged with stalking and been ordered to appear in an Australian court next week.
The letter reportedly had been stopped by the security team around the princess in Sydney. It remains unclear if the letter actually reached her or whether she handled it.
Princess Ingrid Alexandra, shown here celebrating Norway’s 17th of May / Constitution Day in Sydney earlier this month. PHOTO: Gary Friedland / Det kongelige hoff
Princess Ingrid Alexandra, daugher of Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, moved to Sydney in July of last year to begin a three-year bachelor’s degree program that involves international politics. Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) has earlier reported that she lives in a student housing complex on campus.
NRK reported on Sunday that Norway’s police intelligence agency PST, which is responsible for security around the royal family, had been informed of the threat. A PST spokesman said “various measures” had been put in place around the princess “in cooperation with Australian authorities.” PST had no further comment, nor did the Royal Palace in Oslo.
It’s been nearly eight years since Anne-Elisabeth Hagen disappeared from her home in Lørenskog, northeast of Oslo. Now a man in his 50s has been charged in the case, but he claims he had nothing to do with it.
Police have used this photo of Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen since her disappearance was made public. PHOTO: Private
Hagen, married to wealthy Norwegian businessman Tom Hagen, is believed to have been kidnapped or murdered or both on the morning of October 31, 2018. When her husband came home from work later that day, he found a letter demanding a large ransom to be paid in crypto currency, and he quickly called police.
Their initial investigation went on in secret for more than two months, until police finally went public with it in January 2019 and confirmed that Anne-Elisabeth Hagen had disappeared from the couple’s home on Sloraveien in the Fjellhamar portion of Lørenskog 10 weeks earlier. The investigation continued and on April 28, 2020, not long after the pandemic had mostly shut down the country, Tom Hagen himself was charged with the murder of his wife, or as an accessory to her murder.
Several others were also charged in the case, but all denied any involvement. Tom Hagen was later released and charges against him were dropped in 2024, as were the others, and the case was branded as unsolved. Anne-Elisabeth Hagen has not been seen or heard from since.
Now police have a new suspect, a Norwegian citizen with a criminal record who has not been publicly identified. “In connection with the investigation of a suspect in the case, a decision was made to undertake a seizure,” Guro Holm Hansen of the police told Norwegian Broadasting (NRK) on Saturday. She said that makes those involved automatically charged in the case.
Hansen said the case continues to be investigated as a murder. The man charged denies have anything to do with the case and has refused to speak with police. His defense attorney, Victoria Holmen, told NRK that he was told last week that he had been the subject of an undercover investigation for several years and that he’d been charged in the disappearance of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen.
Holmen said she thinks the only reason the police have charged her client is because he was in Lørenskog on the day of Hagen’s disappearance. Newspaper VG has reported that police also continue to investigate other individuals or groups both in Norway and abroad. At least five police investigators continue to work on the case including experts on cyber crime.
Three Norwegians, among those arrested by Israeli forces in international waters off Gaza in May, returned to Norway last week. They claimed they were among those suffering abuse while in Israeli custody, while a fourth Norwegian living in Wales reported being beaten and held in a dark container on board a cargo ship, while others around him were raped with batons and rifles.
All four had taken part in a flotilla that sailed from Turkey in an effort to get through Israel’s blockade of Gaza to deliver emergency aid to Palestinians. Instead their boats were boarded and more than 400 people were taken prisoner and held in Israeli custody. Earlier reports of their treatment has sparked international protests, not least after an Israeli government minister shared a video last week showing many of the activists bound and kneeling on a metal floor, and told guards to ignore the activists’ shrieks of pain.
He was later disciplined but that hasn’t halted the protests. Not only did the arrests violate maritime law, Norwegain Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide called the Israelis’ subsequent treatment of the activists “completely unacceptable.” Eide told news bureau NTB that Norway has also repeatedly claimed that Israel’s blockade of Gaza violates the rule of law. Israel’s embassy in Oslo had no comment when contacted by Norwegian media.
NEWS ANALYSIS: As security threats rise around the world, Norway continues to cement even closer ties with other NATO allies in Europe. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was back in Paris this week to sign another new mutual defense agreement with France, even though it set off some concerns over nuclear weapons issues from his own government partners.
French President Emmanuel Macron gave a thumbs up to photographers as Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre arrived in Paris on Wednesday. PHOTO: Christian Liewig / Statsministerens kontor
They’re already longtime NATO allies, but now France and Norway are even more committed “to come to each other’s aid should the need arise,” according to an official statement. Norway has earlier signed new individual defense pacts with the UK, its Nordic neighbours, Germany, Canada and others. Norway and France have struck what they call a “comprehensive” defense agreement in times of trouble.
It’s all a result of increasing uncertainty over how Russian President Vladimir Putin will react as his unsuccessful war on Ukraine continues to drag on, more than four years after he launched it. With Ukraine continuing to defend itself and launching new drone attacks on Russia, there’s concern that Putin will become desperate and lash out at other neighbours.
Norwegian soldiers have long been part of NATO defense exercises here in Lithuania, which joined NATO in 2004 along with Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia and Bulgaria. PHOTO: Forsvaret/Frederik Ringnes
Those concerns have risen in recent weeks after some Ukrainian drones have strayed beyond their targets in Russia, even landing in friendly Baltic states and NATO territory amidst speculation they were jammed by Russia. Last week the foreign ministers of all the Nordic and Baltic countries issued a joint statement “strongly condemning” what they claim is a disinformation campaign and false claims by Russia and Belarus regarding violations in the Nordic-Baltic region.
The NATO ministers cited “Russia’s threats to use force against Latvia and other countries in the region.” They stressed that incidents involving drones entering NATO airspace “are a direct consequence of Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine,” and suggested Russia is “attempting to divert attention away from its war against Ukraine and intimidate NATO allies.”
Norway’s border to Russia in the far north and close proximity to Russian bases on the nearby Kola Peninsula is also an area of concern, especially given overland access and all the Russian naval traffic in the area. The Kirkenes-based Barents Observer(external link) continues to cover the Russian threat on an ongoing basis, with the Ukrainian ambassador to Norway claiming this week that Kirkenes itself is standing “on the front line.” He called the far northeastern Norwegian city “the main watchtower of the democratic world in the north.”
On top of all this come threats from US President Donald Trump, who is once again angry that Norway, along with other NATO allies, didn’t support his grab for Greenland and don’t support his new war on Iran. Trump has rejected their reminders that NATO is a defense alliance, not one on the offense. Trump has already cut off aid to Ukraine, is pulling US troops out of Europe and continually bashing his NATO allies for not investing enough in defense, even though most all have met or even exceeded much higher defense spending goals.
Trump’s foreign minister Marco Rubio told NATO allies at a recent meeting in Sweden that Trump is “very disappointed” in them. Many are just as disappointed in Trump, if not outraged, even though few are as brave as Canada in challenging the US president. Norway’s Støre still called the US “Norway’s most important ally” while in Paris on Wednesday, but was also clear that’s it’s just as important to be forging stronger ties “with the European allies that are most important in terms of safeguarding our security.”
Støre stressed at the outset that they are facing “the most serious security situation since the Second World War.” His government is thus “pursuing a hedging strategy, aimed at reinforcing the foundation that underpins Norwegian security.” Norway and France were among NATO’s founding members in 1949 and Støre called that membership “essential to our national security.” Now Norway is keen to work even more closely with individual and cooperative NATO allies who share Norway’s values.
The new defense agreement between Norway and France was ceremoniously signed by Norwegian Defense Minister Tore O Sandvik and French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin on Wednesday. PHOTO: Christian Liewig / Statsministerens kontor
The new so-called “Narvik Agreement” with France is named after the northern city in Norway that was attacked at the outset of World War II and at the forefront of resistance to German occupation. That resistance was formed, according to the prime minister’s office, when the two occupied countries “joined forces to secure the allies’ first victory during World War II.” French soldiers on skis joined British and Norwegians in fending off invading Nazi German forces.
France also remains second among NATO allies only to the UK in sailing the most extensively in the north. “The (new) agreement reinforces our cooperation through concrete structures, plans, exercises and prepositioning of equipment,” Støre said, “and will enable us to mount a swift and coordinated response when it’s really needed.”
The new pact also calls for closer cooperation on hybrid warfare, maritime security, space cooperation, cyber security, support for Urkaine and defense industry cooperation. Støre claims it “will bring new momentum to our cooperation.”
The new pact between Nowray and France was signed in elegant French surroundings at the Elysee palace. PHOTO: Christian Liewig / Statsministerens kontor
It also brings Norway, though, into what’s been called “nuclear deterrence,” launched by Macron earlier this year to use nuclear weapons as a means of deterring a nuclear war. That’s controversial in the staunchly anti-nuclear-weapon Norway. Kirsti Bergstø, leader of the Socialist Left party (SV) that’s a partner of Støre’s Labour Party government, is not pleased that Støre has brought Norway into such an effort.
“To think that more nuclear weapons and reliance on nuclear weapons is something Norway’s security can rest on is an historic mistake,” Bergstø said. “The world needs fewer nuclear weapons, not more.” France is one of only nine countries in the world with nuclear weapons.
She won support overnight from both the Reds and the Greens parties, leaders of which claimed Norway should not be part of “legitimizing a new wave of nuclear build-up in Europe.” Greens leader Arild Hermstad warned against responding to Russia’s provocations by expanding nuclear arms supplies. The secretary general of the Red Cross in Norway, which Støre himself once led, was also negative to Macron’s nuclear deterrence plan.
Støre stressed that the new agreement with France does not change Norway view on nuclear weapons. “There won’t be any nuclear weapons placed on Norwegian soil in peacetime,” he told state broadcaster NRK. “We’re still working for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. That’s very important.”
Nor will Norway finance any nuclear weapons, Støre said, and hasn’t been asked to do so. “That’s not an issue,” he told NRK.
Norway’s Conservative Party, meanwhile, supports the new agreement between Norway and France. “This is all about how those of us in Europe are doing more for our own security when several countries take part in this French initiative,” said the new Conservatives leader Ine Eriksen Søreide. She claimed it comes in addition to the US’ “nuclear umbrella” and that it does not alter Norway’s own nuclear policy.
“Cooperation is always better than going it alone,” said Søreide, “and this agreement is an importnat step towards tighter cooperation.” The UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Greece have also joined the French nuclear deterrence initiative. A major goal for all is to become less and less dependent on the USA for defense needs.
Oslo-area residents were in for a treat, though, when the sun suddenly reappeared after finally rising just after 9:30am Saturday morning. When it sets around 3pm on Christmas Eve, most all stores will be closed, church bells would be ready to ring and the streets go quiet.
