Northern Light: Norway Past and Present 9781898823919

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NORTHERN LIGHT

‘The Scream’ (cover) is the popular name given to a composition created by Norwegian Expressionist artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The original German title given by Munch was Der Schrei der Natur, and the Norwegian title is Skrik. Debate on Munch’s intentions in creating the work (he produced various versions) continues. Courtesy National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

Northern Light Norway Past and Present – A Critical Assessment Z

By

NILS-JOHAN JØRGENSEN

NORTHERN LIGHT NORWAY PAST AND PRESENT – A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

First published 2019 by RENNAISANCE BOOKS PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP Renaissance Books is an imprint of Global Books Ltd © Nils-Johan Jørgensen 2019 ISBN 978-1-898823-90-2 ISBN 978-1-898823-91-9 [eBook] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Bembo 12 on 13.5 by Dataworks Printed in England by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wilts

Contents Z Acknowledgements Introduction

ix

Chapter 1: Look to Norway

1

Chapter 2: Suddenly, the Country was Lost Chapter 3:

But Slowly, the Country was Ours Again

11 18

Chapter 4: Independence and Neutrality

32

Chapter 5: The German Occupation

38

Chapter 6: Political Parties

46

Chapter 7: Before and After Ibsen

50

Chapter 8: The Other Arts

57

Chapter 9: The Nobel Peace Prize

59

Chapter 10: Defence in Nato

62

Chapter 11: The Eternal Half European

68

Chapter 12: The Sea

93

Chapter 13: Bordering the Bear

99

Chapter 14: Self Image and Reality

129

Bibliography Index

149 155

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Other Works in English By The Same Author

Culture and Power in Germany and Japan: The Spirit of Renewal (2006) Four Days in January: A Letter to Jillsan (2009) North of the North Wind (2011) East of the East Wind (2012) West of the West Wind (2014) An Image of the Times: An Irreverent Companion To Ben Jonson’s Four Humours and the Art of Diplomacy (2015)

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Norway’s location in Europe showing the island group of Svalbard in the far north

Hinnøy (Author’s birthplace)

Introduction Z I was born on the island of Hinnøy, in the heart of the Northern Lights Belt. The lifestyle philosophy of Denmark, Sweden and Norway are different, summed up in the Danish word hygge, meaning pleasure and comfort, the Swedish lagom, balance and moderation, and the Norwegian Northern Light, which I introduce to signify endurance, change and mobility. The distinct design of the Norwegian passport, introduced in 2016, seeks to capture the essence of the national identity. The winning concept, entered by Neue Design Studio in Oslo, highlights the poetry of nature, the beauty and diversity of landscapes and coasts, the variations from south to north of mountains, fjords, winter darkness and Midnight Sun. On my island I can see the Midnight Sun from 22 May until 18 July. The colours and the abstractions of the landscapes are aesthetically subtle. When security staff at the airport puts the passport pages under UV light the daytime landscape changes to night-time and the Northern Lights, the magnetic midnight, appears. Kongespeilet (The King’s Mirror), written about 1250, records the presentation of the lights as a natural phenomenon. Fridtjof Nansen, the explorer and diplomat, described the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis1 above the Arctic Ocean, as an infinite 1

Aurora is the Goddess of the Sunrise Colours and Boreas the God of Winter and the North Wind.

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sparkling play of colours that exceeds all that one can dream. Sometimes the view would reach such immensity and intensity that it almost took one’s breath away. Myths and mysticism surrounded this billowing light and to some it was God’s presence and a way of helping human beings in the Northern part of the country to endure the winter darkness and make the long night lighter. But the Northern Lights were sometimes seen to carry a deep warning of accidents, even of war. The killing of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the defeat of Attila in 451 AD and the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 were all associated with the appearance of the Northern Lights. On the 25 January 1995 we might have been minutes from war because of the Lights. In cooperation between Oslo University and NASA a Black Brant XII research rocket was launched from Andøy to measure the morning Northern Lights above Northern Norway, Svalbard and Alaska. On its way it was, inevitably, observed by Russia, interpreted as a missile from a US submarine in the North Sea, aiming for Russia. Just in time it was understood that this rocket was only a peaceful observer of the magic light. Perhaps the Northern Lights warn us of malevolent intentions emanating from our near neighbour? In 2018, the Legatum Prosperity Index did find that Norway came top out of 149 countries based on her performance across nine criteria, including the economy, education, personal freedom and health. She was also seen as the world’s best democracy by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Thus, Norway has been named as the most prosperous country in the world, the best democracy, and was also ranked as the world’s happiest country in the World Happiness Report, submitted to the UN on 20 March 2017. The new 200 kroner note features Norway’s most abundant fish, the cod. The passport and international ranking both reflect a fundamental pride in fedrelandet (the fatherland) as beauti-

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ful, independent, politically stable, economically advanced, educated and competent. But behind the open magic and celebration what secrets emerge under the ultra-violet rays when we look closer? I am standing by the statue of King Karl Johan (of Sweden/ Norway). His Majesty, sculpted by Brynjulf Bergslien, is on horseback, and was placed in front of the Royal Palace in Oslo in 1875. As I look towards the right across Henrik Ibsen Street I can see the impressive statue, sculpted by Nils Aas, of his successor, our first King after independence, Haakon VII (the Danish Prince of Schleswig-Holstein-SonderburgGlücksburg).This stands in front of Utenriksdepartementet, UD (the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs), adorning 7-juni plassen, named after the day when the union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905 and King Haakon VII returned from exile in 1945. The statue of his wife, Queen Maud, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, is appropriately in the part of Slottsparken (the Palace Park) named Dronningparken (the Queens Park). A statue of their son, King Olav V, was unveiled in the City Hall Square in 2015. In an opinion poll of August 20162 the present King, Harald V, came top on the list as the most admired and respected Norwegian today. The Royal family became the national symbol during the Second World War and the high standing and popularity have continued. The King is close to his people. His Majesty has made the point that today’s multicultural society does not diminish Norwegian culture but may enrich it as long as we are conscious of our distinct historical and cultural foundations and continue to cultivate and preserve the unique Norwegian identity.3 2 3

Dagbladet, 20.8.16 See interview with His Majesty in Aftenposten, 4 May 2017, cf. also his speech in Slottsparken, 1 September 2016.

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The UD-building continues into Victoria Terrasse (where Ibsen once had an apartment) and on the external wall of Nordkvartalet a circular blue sign has been placed which states in white lettering that the Secret German Police (Gestapo) had its headquarters right here, where opponents of the German regime were tortured and sentenced to death. Some took their own lives rather than surrender secret information. I look down Oslo’s and Norway’s prominent Karl Johan’s gate (indeed we also, with historic realism (and irony?), kept the former King’s name for the street) and immediately on the right is the Nationaltheater (began as Christiania Theatre in 1829) with statues of Ibsen, Bjørnson and Holberg. Then on the left is Det Kgl. Frederiks Universitet, founded in 1811 in Christiania (Oslo) and renamed Universitetet i Oslo (Universitas Osloensis) in 1939, statues in the square honouring the eminent jurist, Anton Martin Schweigaard and the historian Peter Andreas Munch. Further down on the right is Stortinget (Parliament), built 1861-6, with statues of the conservative politician Carl Joachim Hambro (the Speaker who resolutely saved the Royal family from being captured by the German invaders in 1940), Chr. Michelsen (our first Prime Minister after independence in 1905) and our last Danish King, Christian Frederik. Then as I turn and look up Drammensveien I spot Det Norske Nobelinstitutt, the seat of the International Peace Prize, with appropriately a bust of Alfred Nobel at the entrance. From my prime position I had in a glimpse taken in key symbols of recent Norwegian culture and history. I watched the Norwegian flag flying in the sun from the top of Stortinget. Surely, says the patriot in me, the most beautiful flag in the world. It just looked so against the blue sky.The red, blue and white lift my spirit to remember the past and prepare me to meet the future. Just further down from Grand Café on Karl Johan, where Ibsen took his regular refreshments, is Akersgaten, the Gov-

INTRODUCTION

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ernment quarter and the High Block now restored after the terrorist attack 22 July 2011, a prelude to the massacre of so many young people at Utøya in the Oslo Fjord. The word tillbakeblikk means retrospection, looking back, in Norwegian. It is also the name of a joint project between the Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute and Norsk Folkemuseum, a presentation of photographs taken of the same places but separated by long periods of time to illustrate the changes. We must remember our history and continue to defend our freedom and democracy against old and new enemies as times change, just as we did in 1814, the display seems to say. The Latin prayer at Lindisfarne in 793, a furore Normannorum nos libera, Domine,4 hardly constitutes words of welcome, but it does confirm that the visitors had come from the west coast of Norway, they were Normanni from Nordmanna land or Norðweg in Old Norse and they later gave name to Normandy. Vig in Old Norse means battle and vik means bay.Take your pick, the name Viking is Norwegian. An epic account of Norway’s oldest history was written by Snorre Sturlasson in Heimskringla in the thirteenth century. The splendid Oseberg and Gokstad Viking Ships were found in Norway. In the 890’s the wealthy North Norwegian Ohthere from Halgoland (Ottar from Hålogaland) had the audacity to visit England’s King Alfred. The English prefer to talk about the Viking world, the Viking homeland, Viking powers and Viking Art. The concept Viking is identified as Norse and Scandinavian. Scandinavia and the Nordic countries become one group, one region and one people. We are lumped together as latter-day Vikings and referred to as a Scandinavian triumvirate. The airline Norwegian is identified as ‘the Scandinavian carrier’.5 4 5

From the wrath of the Norwegians save us God. The Times, 31.12.16, p15.

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As a Norwegian I react to the unqualified overuse of the word Scandinavia, because it puts Norway back to a time when she was being ruled by Scandinavia - by Denmark and Sweden. Scania, the southern part of Sweden reported by Pliny the Elder, is etymologically the same word as ‘Scandinavia’. Svensk Alt Sammen (it is all Swedish) as we mockingly used to call the Scandinavian airline SAS, a joint project but with Swedish majority shares. The humour held a harmless but deeper sentiment of Norwegian patriotism. Also, the popular English adjective, Scandi, apart from again highlighting Sweden, is in itself indecorous and is one of a number of derogatory adjectives ending in i to denote nationality or even a group of nationalities.The geographic region of Norway and Sweden however I may, reluctantly, call the Scandinavian Peninsula. Norway is an independent but surprisingly unknown country. British Prime Ministers have not visited in recent years. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher did but Blair did not because ‘there is no problem with Norway’. Contact was established with the Norwegian Prime Minister, the Conservative Erna Solberg. While we had great rapport and cooperation with the United Kingdom in the past – just mention the war – and during the negotiations for EC-membership in 1971-2, the link between our two countries appears to have been taken for granted these days and the only sign of life is an occasional Ibsen-play in London; Ghosts with Ralph Fiennes was excellent, but our relationship should not be only shadowy. Not being a member of the EC in 1972 reinforced distance and separation. President Obama invited the five Nordic prime ministers to a meeting in Washington on 13 May 2016; the agenda for the discussions included terrorism, extremism, nuclear security and the challenges for the environment and the climate. The five Nordic countries are demonstrably independent and different, in spite of, or even because of, the bridges

INTRODUCTION

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between them. The Scandinavian countries are Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The Nordic countries (Norden) are the Scandinavian countries plus Iceland and Finland. The Scandinavian countries possibly spoke the same language before 800 A.D. but then they developed separate languages. For good measure two official languages evolved in Norway. The Norwegian languages (like Danish, Swedish and Icelandic) belong to the North-Germanic branch of the IndoEuropean language family while Finnish is from the Finnish-Ugrian branch of the Uralian language family (Hungary, Eastland and part of Russia). Separate languages, literature and history develop distinct nations and cultures. The Norwegians would prefer to be Norwegian and not any other nationality (including Swedish, Danish, German or English). The point is that we are very different from any other nation. To put the Nordic countries together under one umbrella and advance one image is surely as misguided as grouping Spain, Portugal and Italy or Germany, Austria and the Netherlands or a group of English-speaking countries like the UK, the USA, Australia and New Zealand.We refer to someone from the Netherlands as Dutch, not as a Be-Ne-Luxian. The so-called Scandinavianism in the nineteenth century was largely lacking in support and solidarity and the modern use of Scandinism by the media is an insult to the individuality of each country. Norway is no longer in union with Sweden and/or Denmark. The Nordic countries (Norden) have never come together as a united political idea. Norway resented the concept and indeed the reality of a union, either with Denmark, Sweden or the EU. The fact that Denmark, Sweden and Finland all joined the EU as full members did not seem to sway a majority in Norway to follow in their footsteps; it might even, for some of the more hardened patriotic nationalists, have been an incentive to step away and say ‘No’. Many Norwegians would agree with the explorer Fridtjof Nansen that to find yourself you need solitude and con-

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templation; deliverance will come from the lonely places. It may feel like splendid separation and island isolation to live in Norway simply because of its geography, severed as mother Norway is from Denmark and the continent of Europe by the Skagerak and given its long coastline facing the Norwegian Sea, containing hundreds of islands, the biggest being Hinnøy in the north. Magic fairytales. In the Arctic, Norway maintains an uneasy treaty control, challenged by Russia, over Svalbard and Bjørnøya. Norway faces the sea and has an island mentality; its back is turned on her border neighbours, Sweden, Finland and Russia, indeed Norway borders Russia in the north, part of NATO’s Eastern border no less. Norway is the European outpost in the North and turns towards the open seas in the West. In my home town the sun does not sink below the horizon between Constitution Day and St Olav’s Day but between the middle of November and the middle of January it disappears altogether. It is almost as if we have to give something back, a sacrifice, for the Midnight Sun. But history intrudes into any geographical setting. Although Norway sometimes seemed to avoid the world, political reality always entered. It was just possible to claim a sort of neutrality in the First World War but not in the Second. German was the leading foreign language before the war and culturally Norway had seemed closer to Germany and to Goethe and Schiller than to England and Shakespeare. Kaiser Wilhelm II loved the Lofoten islands and was there, fishing, at the outbreak of war in 1914. It did not stop the invasion in 1940; on the contrary, Norway (like Austria) was to the Germans ‘one of us’ and the German soldiers were asked to be ’nice’ to the Norwegians after landing. German language continued to be a compulsory subject in the high schools after the war. I am grateful for learning German in a non-escapist syllabus at my grammar school but it is no longer prominent in Norwegian schools, because of wider (easier?) subject choice.

INTRODUCTION

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I wish to ask and convey what it means to be Norwegian, what we were and what we are, and to begin to answer that I must first briefly turn to our history in a European context, largely unknown outside (and even in) Norway. This brief book is for anyone who looks to Norway and wishes to discover why she survived and became a distinct, and in this century, a rich nation. She is a young state and an old nation. In 2014 we marked the beginning of the First World War one hundred years earlier. In 1914 Norway had been an independent country for only nine years, but the foundation for modern Norway was laid in 1814, in the inspired making of our 17 May Constitution between two occupations, Denmark and Sweden. The first handwritten words of the original text were in Danish, Konstitution for Kongeriket Norge, but it was revised and renamed by a Norwegian word, Grundlov (Basic Law). It was anathema to use a foreign word to name the fundamental principles of the re-emerging nation. One way to freedom is through language and we shed Danish and created two official Norwegian languages, one developing as bokmål (book language), the other, nynorsk (new Norwegian) from the west-country dialects; intelligentsia and patriots yet again, international and national. When Disney made the animated film Frozen in 2014 it was set in a fictional Kingdom called Arendelle (Arendal?), clearly imaging the fjords, mountains, stave-churches and national costumes of Norway.The film director confirmed that he had Norway in mind and had visited the west coast. So far, so good for the tourist industry and for visitors from the USA, but there was a snag, the project was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Snow Queen. How could Innovation Norway sign a deal with Disney to promote a film based on a Danish story? Do we lack fairytales in Norway?6 6

To be facetious I could suggest one of my own, e. g. North of the North Wind.

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The marking of the 200th anniversity of the Constitution tells the story of Norway, the once great European power until the thirteenth century, subsumed for five hundred and twenty-five years under Denmark and Sweden and occupied for five years by Nazi-Germany. No wonder we said no to the European integration process, twice. But the interesting aspect, which I will argue, is that so many said ‘yes’ in 1972 and again in 1994. Norway nearly did join and this reveals an important nuance. The Viking ship and spirit are mobile and always search for Vinland, a word coined by the Norwegian who discovered the new world in the year 1000. A toast!

Chapter 1

Look to Norway Y In his ‘Look to Norway’ speech on 16 September 1942, given at the handover ceremony of the Norwegian naval escort ship King Haakon VII, President Franklin D. Roosevelt honoured Norway with these words: If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway. If there is anyone who has any delusions that this war could have been averted, let him look to Norway; and if there is anyone who doubts the democratic will to win, again I say, let him look to Norway.”1

The Europeans began to look to Norway a long time ago. The Greek merchant, astronomer and explorer, Pytheas of Massilia (Marseilles) set out for the unknown north, and came to a land without night in Summer but filled with darkness in Winter. It was the land later called Ultima Thule, the remotest of all lands, the end of the world, Norway. It reflected tales from The Odyssey of the Laestrygonians living in eternal daylight and of the Cimmérians in eternal night at the gates of the underworld. It was a creative 1

The phrase ‘Look to Norway’ was suggested to Roosevelt by Norway’s King Olav V.

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image of the Midnight Sun and mørketid (polar night, when the Goddess of the Dawn was absent). I was born and grew up there. The Greek intelligentsia at the time did not take Pytheas too seriously, even mocking him, but held on to the fictional and magic journey to a sunny land north of the cold northern wind where the happy Hyperboreans lived. Yes, happy, because war, injustice and disease did not exist and people lived to a ripe old age; at the end they simply committed poetic suicide and jumped into the sea to make room for a new generation. Pliny the elder also spoke of this land beyond the borders of the known world where the nights disappeared at midsummer. These ideas lingered for a long time in Greek and European imagination, ignoring new facts discovered by sailors, merchants and warlords. Caesar defeated the haruders - had they come from Hordaland in Norway? The Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus also mentions a tribe living further north than Denmark. The first nomads settling in Norway had come from the north-eastern part of continental Europe and from the coast of Kattegat.They were hunters and gatherers. Sometimes they might be accompanied by a dog but they did not keep other animals. Their tools were made from bone, wood, stone and flint. Gradually the coasts were populated by small groups of settlers, not living in isolation, but seeming to have contact and trade routes with Denmark. The emerging Norwegian society was built on impulses from the more advanced developments abroad and an important change came with farming and the introduction of livestock in the third millennium B.C. They moved from stone to bronze and then to iron and got better tools and weapons. Embryonic organized societies appeared and silver and gold from abroad were exchanged with skins and furs. The rock carvings found at Vingen and Kalnes illustrate the development from hunters to farmers and then to seamen in long-ships. Norway had begun to set sail as a nation. The Roman Empire split in two. This was

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bad for Rome but good for Norway. Some historians argue that the vagina gentium, the mother of the (new) people, the barbarians, now migrating south, was indeed Norway. Norwegians participated, emigrated in groups and sometimes returned with new knowledge of the wider world. Norway, an outsider before the fall of the Roman Empire, had become part of Europe. The first picture in Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (1969) is the prow of a Viking ship and the first pages include pictures of the splendid Gokstad and Oseberg Viking ships found in Norway. The Vikings have a place in European civilisation, says Clark, beyond their seamanship and technical skill, because they contributed a spirit of discovery. It took them as far as Persia, Delos and America. ‘If one wants a symbol of Atlantic man that distinguishes him from Mediterranean man, a symbol to set against the Greek temple, it is the Viking ship. The Greek temple is static and solid. The ship is mobile and light.’2 Was Norway, even then, refusing to be held by a static Europe? It has come to light that women were also Viking leaders and warriors, as can be seen from the grave of Birka in Sweden. When I was at primary school in Northern Norway we learned piously that Norway had been united as one country at the battle of Havsfjord in 872 under the able command of King Harald I Hårfagre (Fairhair). It was a year we would forget at our peril; the national pride was unrestrained. The thousand year anniversary of the Havsfjord victory was duly celebrated in 1872. The problem was that it is untrue. There was no such battle in 872; it took place perhaps thirty years later, and it did not in just one battle unite the country. King Harald had vowed not to have his hair cut until Norway was united into one kingdom. The process had started but lasted for another two hundred years. Harald died with 2

BBC/John Murray, 1969, 14

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very long hair. The different parts of the land (Ringerike, Hålogaland, Telemark, etc.) had begun to form regional cooperation inside the larger geographical unit Nordveg, the Land of the Norwegians, Norway. Harald Hårfagre had only begun the process of unification and it was not until the battle of Stiklestad on 29 July 1030 that we may talk of a united kingdom, a political Norway.The then King, Olav II Haraldsson, fell in the battle, believed to have received the fatal wound from Tore Hund from Bjarkøy, my great grandfather’s island. The battle was a defeat for the King but a victory for the royal line of Harald Hårfagre and for Christianity. He was canonized in Nidaros Cathedral and was later made a Saint by Rome. The Order issued by the King is called the Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav. As my birthday is the 29 of July I used to pay particular attention to this part of Norwegian history at school. It is listed and celebrated as St. Olav’s Day. Fame has, appropriately(?), been bestowed upon Christopher Columbus who landed in America in 1492 but he did not discover the continent, a Norwegian did that about five hundred years earlier.3 This has been recognized.The Vinland Sagas are supported by new archaeological evidence. Eirik Raude from Jæren in Norway travelled with his father to Iceland in 970. He was exiled, as he had also been from Norway, and travelled in a westerly direction to reach Greenland’s eastern coast in 982. He spent the next three years in what he named Grønland before he was allowed to return to Iceland. He left for Greenland again in 986 and established a farm there. His son Leif on a visit back to Norway had been instructed by King Olaf I Tryggvason to bring Christianity to Greenland. On the return journey he sailed too 3

If, as argued by President Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an of Turkey on 15. 11.14, that Muslims discovered America in 1178, it was still long after the Norwegians set foot there.

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far south, missed Iceland and Greenland, but found what he called Vinland in the year 1000. A navigational error made him, and Norway, famous. In 2014 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 9 October US Presidential Proclamation of Leif Erikson Day. As the exact date of Leif Erikson’s landfall is unknown, this date was chosen to honour the first arrival of Norwegian immigrants to New York City aboard the sailing ship Restauration in 1825. The idea of a special Leif Erikson day gained momentum in the nineteenth century and in 1887 a statue was unveiled in Boston. In 1893, as Chicago celebrated the four hundred anniversary of the voyage of Columbus, a Norwegian sea captain had a replica of the excavated Gokstad Viking ship built and sailed it to Vinland to prove the point that Leif Erikson had been able to do it. The Governor of Wisconsin issued the first Leif Erikson Day Proclamation on 9 October 1929 and it was followed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first National Proclamation of the day in 1935. In 1963 Senator Hubert H. Humphrey took the initiative to proclaim 9 October an annual celebration because …the Norse expeditions, and particularly the discovery of North America by Leif Erikson, can no longer be regarded as myths. The sources have been examined and studied too carefully for that. The time is long overdue for the recognition of Leif Erikson’s role in the discovery of the New World.

A Congressional hearing was then held with the participation of Helge Ingstad who had made important discoveries at l’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland and finally in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill proclaiming 9 October as the official Leif Erikson Day. The political unification of Norway was helped by three essential elements: language, defence and Christianity. The

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Norwegians came from the same ethnic group and spoke the same language. Also, the Kings needed armed forces for protection and conquest and so a comprehensive system of logistics and compulsory conscription was introduced. The country was divided into defensive areas, long-ships and provisions were required and demanded from the people. The threat from a world outside the borders, imagined or real, helped to unite the country into one nation. Christianity as a one-belief system replaced the old mythology. Odin and Tor, one a great intellectual, the other a great warrior, had reluctantly to bow out to the new Saviour. The Norwegians were the last people in Europe to resist Christianity. A new power structure, a unity between the King, the Church and the farmers organized in representative assemblies (allting and lagting), emerged. Only the descendants of King Harald I (Hårfagre, fair hair) were entitled to inherit the kingdom, but all the king’s sons had equal right to the throne. As the kings often had children outside marriage it made the succession somewhat blurred. This was fine as long as the new state power was still weak, but when the King gradually became more than a ceremonial head of state the competition for his power increased.The result was civil unrest, even civil war, and new pretenders to the throne popped up all over the land. The civil war was at first a limited but vicious fight between the self-proclaimed candidates supported only by their close followers and not involving the people, but gradually the royal strife created new groups and parties who sought out an heir apparent who could support their ideas of political development in the power struggle between the clergy and the king. The reign of King Olav III Kyrre (the peaceful) from 1066 introduced a period of peace and economic growth and the Pope gave his blessing. (I was daily reminded of this period as we lived in our flat in Olav Kyrres gate in Oslo during home postings.)

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In the same year his predecessor, King Harald III, Hårdråde (hard ruler), landed a large invading army at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire and fought a fierce battle against the English army of King Harold Godwinson. His brother, Tostig, had joined the Norwegian invading force but Harald and Tostig were both killed and the battle was lost. The English king was then defeated and killed in the battle of Hastings on 16 October 1066. The bloody battle against the Norwegians three weeks earlier perhaps reduced and weakened the English chances against the invading Normans? One can only speculate if the Norwegian King had won the battle at Stamford Bridge and in effect been King of England he would have beaten William of Normandy. Duke William of Normandy was a successor to GangeRolf (called Rollo in French). He came from Møre in Norway where his father was the Earl. This was peak time for Norwegian Viking raids and the French King, Charles III, must have calculated that it would be a smart diplomatic move to get Rolf on his side as a defender. Rolf became the ruler of Normandy (nordmann means Norwegian) in 911 and married the King’s daughter, Gisela. Rollo was the great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror. The Norwegian Church grew in organization and influence, the country was divided into a number of bishoprics and the first archbishopric was established in Nidaros in 1152. The Church was not satisfied being a subordinate to the King and demanded to have equal powers and maintain a direct link with Rome. An uneasy alliance was reached and sealed in 1164 when Magnus IV Erlingsson became the first Norwegian King to be crowned by Rome. A law of succession was approved but a new challenge upset the truce. The self-appointed pretender, Sverre Sigurdsson, ordained as a priest, appeared with a group of so-called birkebeinere, killed King Magnus and made himself king. He was an able military leader and he mastered the new theological debate.

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He tried to reach out and reconcile the divisions in the country and assert a stronger central government. King Sverre won his last battle in 1202, but died from illness soon after. Norway had become a great power by the thirteenth century after the Viking period and the civil wars. King Sverre’s grandson, Håkon III Håkonsson was the favoured candidate of the birkebeiner alliance and they successfully defeated the devious challenger, Duke Skule Bårdsson in 1240. Ibsen restored Skule’s reputation in Kongsemnerne to the detriment of the King. The reputation of King Sverre was maintained. Nidaros cathedral was under construction. The tug of war between the King and the Archbishop was formally and publicly settled in 1247 when Håkon IV was crowned King of Norway by the Pope’s special envoy, Cardinal Viljalm of Sabina.This took place in Bergen and the coronation dinner followed European protocol in seating and etiquette. Noble ladies had also been invited. Inevitably, the Cardinal made a speech and according to the saga he said: Honour to God that I have completed this mission authorized by Holy Rome, my Lord the Pope and the Cardinals, so that your King is now crowned and so perfectly honoured that no one in Norway has ever received a greater respect. God be praised that I did not turn back on my way here, something I was urged to do. I was told that I would only see very few people here and if I met some they would behave more like animals than human beings. But here I meet a great number of the country’s people and it seems to me that they have good morals. I have also seen a great number of foreign men in town and I have never seen so many ships in one harbour. I believe the majority have come here with good cargoes. I was also warned that I would scarcely be offered bread and other foods and if I got any it would have a terrible taste. But I think this place is full of good things, the houses and the ships are well supplied. I was also told

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that the only drink I would see would be water but God be praised because I see such good things here that are better to have than to be without.

The King of Castile sent envoys to ask for Princess Kristin’s hand in marriage to one of his brothers. King Håkon gave his consent on the condition that Kristin could choose the prince. She picked Don Filip and a splendid wedding ceremony and celebration ensued in 1260. Sadly Kristin died two years later, reportedly from homesickness. The liaison is an indication of Norway’s growing reputation as a new European power. Diplomatic relations were established with other leaders in Europe: the kings of England, France and Spain, Emperor Frederick II, the Pope and even the Sultan of Tunesia. Treaties and trade agreements were signed with the Hanseatic cities, in particular with Lübeck. Håkon was also recognized as the King of Iceland and Greenland became a Norwegian possession. Rumours even circulated that the Pope wanted Håkon to be King of Germany. The wealth, power and influence of the state continued to grow. The tax system was extended and refined, a King’s Council and an administrative system was established, the army and navy were strengthened and fortresses built. The rules of succession were enshrined in a new law and a common law for the whole country was adapted in 1273. The King was now the absolute ruler and had gained a large extension of land, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, the Orkneys, Shetland, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man together with parts of Sweden (Jemtland, Herjedalen and Båhuslen). Norwegians travelled to foreign countries and sought education at their universities and received foreigners in Norway. The sagas of kings and leading families (e.g. Heimskringla and Speculum Regale) were treasured literature and from foreign books they learned new customs, beliefs and ideas. Norway was a leading actor on the international stage for over six hundred

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years, an expansive Viking period culminating in a united, prosperous, influential and respected European nation. How could it then go so wrong? There is a sense of loss, of nostalgia even, when we smile about our past possessions and international greatness. The 1 April (1967) exchange between the British Embassy in Oslo and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry reflects this, and perhaps it also conveys a new assertiveness that finally we can at least afford to pay. The elegant Latin Note replying to the British Embassy’s Note of the same date and to King Henry IIIs request to King Håkon IV from 1217, focused on the still unresolved question of the ownership of the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands: This special April extravaganza came about because the Royal Ministry at that time had a Chief Archivist who was also a Latin Scholar.4

4

Nils-Johan Jørgensen, An Image of the Times, Renaissance Books, 2015, 160–5.

Chapter 2

Suddenly, the Country was Lost Y In the Summer of 1349 a merchant ship arrived from England, entered Bergen harbour and began to discharge her goods. The crew was already mortally ill and the people ashore who made contact immediately caught the disease. The ship soon sank in the harbour with the dead sailors on board. The Black Death, the bubonic plague which had been spreading through Europe over the past three years had finally come to Norway. Other epidemics followed and between half and two thirds of our population perished. Of the three hundred priests in Nidaros Cathedral only forty survived. No divine protection. It took nearly three hundred years before the population had reached the same level as it had been before the Black Death. The country faced economic and political decline and national humiliation. Perhaps the downward trend had started with the loss of the Hebrides and Isle of Man to the King of Scotland and when the male royal line died out, not even an illegitimate candidate reported for royal duty. It seemed that no one wanted to be King of Norway. Now, how humiliating and demoralizing was that? The dramatic fall in population had a fundamental effect on economic activity, industry, farming and trade. Villages and towns were deserted, the state and the church lacked income, the church lost its influ-

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ence and moral guidance. Almost as a warning it seemed, Nidaros Cathedral, the largest in the Nordic countries and just completed, was destroyed by a fire in 1328. The system of defence lacked tax income and resources and the proud ships rotted in boathouses. The saga tradition had gone and only a few mundane letters have survived from these times. No literary work remains. After the male line of Harald Hårfagre died out in 1319 Norway obtained a common king with Sweden, Magnus Eriksson, until 1355. One of his sons was elected King of Norway as Håkon VI. Norway was united with Denmark in 1380 and Sweden became part of this union nine years later. After the death of King Olav II of Denmark (listed IV of Norway) the King’s Mother, Margrete of Denmark, held the reins and she succeeded in making a distant German relative, Erik of Pommern, the new heir and king of the three Scandinavian countries. He was duly crowned in the Swedish town of Kalmar in 1397 (the Kalmar union). This union existed until 1523 but Sweden was never an active participant. Norway and Denmark were united as one monarchy according to a Danish decree of 1536. The Archbishop of Nidaros Cathedral, Olav Engelbrektsson, started a religious and national uprising against the Lutheran invasion and the dependence on Denmark. The Danish government resented this and his support in Norway was curtailed and limited.The Archbishop attempted to secure the fortresses of Akershus and Båhus and restore an independent Norwegian Kingdom under a Roman-Catholic King (he even had a German candidate in mind, supported by Emperor Karl V) but failed. He fled from Norway in 1537 and died soon after. Norway ceased to exist under constitutional and international law and simply remained as a province and different counties under Denmark.The King and the administration were now foreign and had little interest in this poverty-stricken land.

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Norway had fallen apart into counties and districts; only the farmer was up early to catch the first sunshine. The proud international nation, expansive, victorious and powerful, second to none in Europe, had vanished and become weak, dependent and subdued. A priest, high-school teacher and historian in Bergen, Absalon Pedersson Beyer, gives us a glimpse of the general feeling of defeatism and hopelessness as he divides the nation’s history into childhood, youth, manhood and old age in an Essay written in 1567, Om Norgis Rige (On the Kingdom of Norway). Norway’s manhood had started with Harald Hårfagre. Then Norway had eyes, could look far and wide and gained honour and respect; she carried a crown of gold and displayed a golden lion holding a blue axe. But from the time Norway had lost her own kings and masters and came under the rule of Denmark she had also lost her strength and power. She began to look old, grey and cold and was unable to give birth to new royal children. The nobility had also vanished; of three hundred noble families only sixty remained after the Black Death. Norway’s political influence was reduced to nothing. The ancestors had gone to other countries for war, trade and education but now they could hardly leave their towns and villages. Norway was on crutches and would soon fall over. The German cities Lübeck and Rostock, with offices in Bergen, had a virtual trade monopoly in Norway. But Beyer’s Essay is not entirely without hope.The title itself speaks of the Kingdom of Norway. He maintains that Norway could wake up from her sleep, find a new native ruler and gain independence because some of the old spirit and strength must surely remain. He was right, but he could not have imagined how long it would take. The geographical land continued to be referred to as the Kingdom of Norway even by the Danish kings and the Norwegians certainly saw Norway as a national entity albeit without political influence.The political identity and independence

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had been wiped out. The country was at a standstill when the Renaissance and the Reformation influenced Europe. The Lutheran concept became the state religion in Denmark and Norway; again this decision was made in Copenhagen. The Danish Law Book of 1604 was further evidence of the reduction of Norway in the incorporated Kingdom of Denmark. The Norwegian language and culture was not even a footnote. Sweden had her eyes on Norway, wished to conquer the land and even propagated for it in Norway. This made Denmark strengthen the Norwegian unit and appoint a Governor. The old national laws, diluted with Danish paragraphs, were collected in a body of laws called Christian V’s Norwegian Law. A Norwegian army was established but led by Danish officers. Norway had always been a hereditary monarchy while Denmark elected their new Kings. If Norway was still seen to have this rule for succession it would help the Danish Kings to copy it and get acceptance for the same in Denmark. It worked. Denmark-Norway became a hereditary monarchy and from 1661 under absolute rule, but it was not a personal dictatorship held by the King. Indeed, King Christian VII was insane during his forty-year rule. The introduction of absolute power did not imply arbitrary and tyrannical systems, but the two countries were not like twins, they were not equal. Norway was a dependency under Denmark.The Danish nobility was the ruling elite, the Norwegian nobility was sidelined and not promoted to higher positions in their own country. The courts of law were in operation but the treatment of the farmer’s leader Christian Lofthus and the religious leader Hans Nielsen Hauge hardly enhances the reputation of the courts. Lofthus was chained at Akershus castle for ten years and died there. The Kalmar Union, the alliance between the three Scandinavian powers with common kings, was dissolved in 1523 when Sweden left and created a new, independent, royal line beginning with King Gustav Vasa. Sweden established

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an independent, national kingdom but two wars between Sweden and Denmark (the 7-year war in the 1560s and the Kalmar War 1611–13) still left Denmark as the leading Scandinavian country. Then between 1625 and 1660 Denmark was severely beaten, first by the German Emperor in the 30-years war and then by Sweden, and had to give up possessions in Denmark and in Norway (e.g. Jemtland and Herjedalen which still belong to Sweden today). Sweden was at this point the leading Scandinavian country and a big power in Europe. Denmark could not accept this and looked for allies, particularly Russia. Sweden’s wars under King Carl XII, meant she lost possessions around the Baltic and her brief status as a leading power had gone. Denmark now sought neutrality and succeeded in preserving the peace for Denmark/Norway for eighty years until 1800. An agreement of armed neutrality existed between Denmark, Sweden and Russia during the Napoleonic wars but Denmark was forced out of this alliance by England after the battle of Copenhagen Harbour in 1801. Napoleon held exceptional powers in 1807, demanding a blockade of the continent in which the Nordic states would be forced to participate. Denmark had to give up its fleet to England after the powerful bombardment of Copenhagen harbour and Denmark-Norway then formed an alliance with Napoleon, joined the continental blockade and agreed to participate in a war against Sweden. England declared war on Denmark-Norway.The age of neutrality had gone. The seven years after 1807 were fatal for Norway. Hundreds of Norwegian merchant ships were occupied by England and foreign trade was paralysed. New epidemics reduced the population further. The political situation was even darker than the economic and financial crises. The plan was to launch a Danish/Norwegian/Russian attack on Sweden. From occupied Finland, Russian troops were to enter mid-Sweden, Danish troops would enter Skåne and

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the Norwegian troops would move eastwards. The plan was that the three groups met in Uppsala and divided Sweden between them. Count Wedel of the Norwegian government commission was very critical of this plan. He argued that it was wrong to assist Russia against Sweden, it was a dangerous policy for Denmark-Norway. Swedes and Norwegians should support each other, not kill each other. At any rate, Norway lacked resources to enter into an offensive war and, perhaps more importantly, Norway ought to have a foreign policy more in line with national interests and that implied peace with England. The coordinated attack on Sweden failed completely. The Governor of Norway and the commander of the Norwegian forces made peace with Sweden against the wishes of the Danish King Frederik VI. Russia did not attack Sweden and Danish forces did not cross Øresund. The Swedes deposed their King, Gustav IV, and chose his uncle to be the new king known as Carl XIII. A new constitution was introduced making Sweden a limited monarchy. Many Swedes had wanted the Norwegian governor Christian August as their king and he was indeed made king in 1809 but died a few months later. Sweden chose one of Napoleon’s field marshals, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, as their new king. He was elected heir apparent to the Swedish throne in August 1810 and took the name Karl Johan. He immediately took charge of Sweden’s foreign policy and supported circles that wanted to win Norway for Sweden. It was assumed that he would support Napoleon, but Sweden entered the war on the side of England and Russia. Sweden had lost Finland to Russia in 1809 and Carl Johan now had his sights on Norway as compensation, hence his alliance against Denmark. He gained treaty support from the Tsar. Indeed, when Napoleon attacked Russia, Sweden made an agreement with the Tsar and was promised Norway if Sweden helped the allied powers against Napoleon on the European mainland. Sweden

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made a similar agreement with England. The campaign against Moscow in 1812 weakened the Napoleonic effort and in October 1813 Napoleon suffered another defeat at Leipzig. Inevitably, Denmark became the target of extensive diplomatic and military pressure and had to agree to demands from King Karl Johan. After Napoleon was beaten at Leipzig, the new Swedish leader accompanied by armed forces visited Holsten and forced Frederik VI of Denmark to accept peace and its conditions. Norway was ceded to Sweden by King Frederik VI in the Treaty of Kiel on 14 January 1814. The Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and Greenland were not covered by the treaty and remained in the possession of Denmark. England agreed not to oppose a ceding of Norway to Sweden, but the process must be conducted ‘with all possible leniency and with due regard for the happiness and freedom of the Norwegian people’. Not exactly what King Karl Johan had in mind. The union with Denmark lasted four hundred and thirty four years. The union with Sweden would be much shorter and the seven years between 1807 and 1814 was a time for innovative political initiatives and radical change for Norway.

Chapter 3

But Slowly the Country was Ours Again Y Norway had gone from being a possession of the Danish king to holding a new subordinate role under the Swedish king, but a political vacuum had arisen as Danish authorities no longer exercised power in Norway and a Swedish presence had not yet been established. In this situation Norway refused to accept the terms of the Kiel Treaty. The Danish king had relinquished his claim to Norway for all time and sovereignty had reverted to the Norwegian people. The 17 May Constitution was created with all convenient speed. This is how it happened: The Viceroy of Norway since 1813, the young Crown Prince Christian Frederik, heir to the Danish throne, wrote these lines in his diary when he received the news from Kiel: ‘I should leave the Norwegian nation without even trying to defend it? Never…no, not as long as I live.’ Denmark declared war on Sweden 3 September 1813, Norwegian units were in position on the Swedish border, the navy was alerted and in January 1814 the army was fully mobilized. Then sixty leading citizens in the city of Trondheim supported the independence mood and suggested that a congress ought to assemble ‘to create the foundation for the future constitution of the kingdom’. The Viceroy gathered 18

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a group of twenty-one distinguished men at Eidsvoll 16/17 February 1814, referred to as the meeting of notables. It was a revolutionary act. The Prince’s declaration after the meeting confirmed that the Norwegian people had been released from their oath to King Frederik VI in Kiel, had regained the full rights of a free and independent people to decide their own constitution and would accordingly assert and defend its independence and autonomy. The sovereignty principle was enshrined in the North-American constitution of 1787 and in the French revolutionary constitutions after 1789. John Locke had introduced the concept of the rights of man, Jean Jacques Rousseau the sovereignty of the people and Charles de Montesquieu the separation of powers (legislative, executive and judicial). These principles were known in Norway, but the dramatic transition from a constitution built on royal sovereignty to one built on the people’s sovereignty, from total rule to total democracy, had not been discussed and prepared in Norway. The delegates unanimously stated that the Norwegian people would resist a transition of sovereignty to Sweden and Professor Georg Sverdrup made this statement to the Viceroy: ‘You have no more right to the Norwegian Crown than I or any other Norwegian, it has now returned to the Norwegian people who will know to transfer it to the one believed to have the greatest talents, ability and virtue.’ In the churches the parishioners were asked, in a de facto referendum, to answer this question: ‘Do you swear to uphold the independence of Norway and risk life and blood for the beloved Fatherland?’ The elections for the constitutional assembly were organized by the churches (the first elections held in Norway) and on 10 April the assembly of 112 delegates (the youngest was 17, the oldest 65) met at Eidsvoll. One half of the members were academics and civil servants, five landed gentry, 18 businessmen and 37 farmers.Very few had previous political experience. They divided into two factions. The indepen-

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dence group (led by Christian Magnus Falsen) demanded full independence for Norway while the unionist partition (led by Count Hermann Wedel Jarlsberg) argued for a union with Sweden. A committee started work on the constitution 20 April and gave its recommendation 1 May. It was duly dictated to the whole assembly. The deliberations began 4 May and seven days later the Constitution was broadly ready and then accepted. The finishing touches were added by a three-man committee. The signing could take place on 17 May and they voted unanimously to elect the Vice-Regent, Christian Frederik, the new King of Norway, the first since 1380. He officially accepted the honour two days later and agreed to govern in accordance with the new constitution. When they are pushed the Norwegians gather speed. It had only taken six weeks. It had been a year of miracles, so far. At their meeting on 18 May the Eidsvoll Assembly adopted a declaration, a manifesto, to the states of Europe and copied it to their elected King: ‘The Norwegian people feel certain that the powerful states that over the past years with such great effort and success have fought to restore freedom and peace to Europe would not consent to the suppression of a people that does not demand more than to live in freedom between its rocks, and who, if this hope should fail, is determined to prefer death to slave chains.’ What Norway did in 1814, echoing the French Revolution, was to rebel against the old, established European system giving the King absolute power over people and territory. King Karl Johan was not amused. He argued that the Danish King had ignored the Kiel-treaty and accused him of siding with Prince Christian Frederik who was the next in line to the Danish throne. Most reluctantly, the Danish King came to the conclusion that the Prince had to give up Norway simply to save Denmark. The international situation had made Denmark and Norway isolated. Napoleon was beaten and now a prisoner at

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Elba. Still, Christian Frederik wrote official letters to the victorious powers of Europe and sent personal envoys to den Haag and to London. But the British Prime Minister told the envoy, Carsten Anker, in March: ‘If the Norwegians let Crown Prince Christian go back to Denmark, we will in every way we can, help them to obtain good terms with Sweden, but if they keep this Danish Prince and refuse to give up their independence, then we have to help Sweden to occupy Norway.’ Thus the Danish King was pressurized to call the Prince back under the threat that otherwise he would cut himself off from the succession in Denmark. Karl Johan in fact had in his sights something even bigger than Sweden and Norway, namely to be the new King of France. He knew he had to tread carefully between the great powers as the enthusiasm for him in Prussia and Austria was limited. Russia was content to have Sweden focused and anchored in the west and not considering any design on Finland. At the same time the Tsar only wanted a union of two independent states, Sweden and Norway, and England held the same view. A delegation of envoys from Prussia, Russia, Austria and England visited Copenhagen and Christiania (Oslo) in June 1814. While the delegation was still in Copenhagen a special envoy (Acting Under Secretary of State, John Morier) from England visited Christiania on 6 June and suggested that the Eidsvoll Assembly met again to consider the political situation. The Prince agreed to call an extraordinary meeting as this was something he had already suggested to the Danish King. England would play the part of mediator with Sweden.The independence dream was fast fading away. Karl Johan invaded Norway in July 1814 and defeated the Norwegian forces. On 14 August 1814 a peace treaty was signed in Moss and after further negotiations Norway entered into a union with Sweden. Norway had managed to join the union as a state with its own constitution, but was hardly independent.

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Karl Johan accepted the 17 May Constitution with minor adjustments. An extraordinary Storting met 7 October and confirmed the union. King Christian Frederik’s abdication letter was received three days later at Bygdøy. At a meeting in Moss on 21 October Christian Frederik - who was still the King - secured the pledge that Norway would keep the Constitution but he agreed to leave the country.The Constitution was again confirmed by Sweden on 4 November and Karl Johan was almost unanimously confirmed as King of Norway by the Storting. Six days later the new King made a speech expressing the double honour of seeing two free people, unforced and unanimously, offered him the throne. Christie, in a brief speech, responded that ‘these two kingdoms now stand next to each other, each supported by its own distinct constitution and the exact observance of it will ensure their independence’.The content of the union was set down in the State Act of 1815 and accepted by the two parliaments (the Norwegian Storting and the Swedish Riksdag). It stated that the two countries would have one King and act together in the case of war but otherwise be independent of each other. But Norway was immediately in a weaker position as it lacked a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a diplomatic service. The King had also been given the right to appoint a Governor for Norway. Norway lacked her own national flag and was only granted a merchant flag in 1821 which could only be used North of Cape Finisterre. Norway after 1814 was still at a low tide; the past had been a foreign country and the future remained the same. The Napoleonic wars had left the international economy in a state of flux and Norway’s shipping and export industries, timber, iron and glass, together with the fisheries, faced low prices and high custom’s barriers. The economic and financial problems bankrupted many of the traditional trading houses. Agriculture employed about eighty per cent of the population but except for forestry it had not yet entered the money economy. The capital city

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named Christiania, Kristiania and then finally Oslo (the estuary of the river Lo) in 1925, was indeed a backwater in 1814 but began to develop the features that distinguishes her today: the Royal Palace (1848), the University (1852), Parliament (Stortinget) (1866) and the National Theatre (1899).The first newspaper, Morgenbladet appeared in 1819 followed by Aftenposten (1860), Verdens Gang (1868) and Dagbladet (1869). The Eidsvoll Constitution was at that time the most democratic in Europe and King Karl Johan tried to change it to obtain more power. This was always unanimously rejected by the Storting. In 1824 the 17 May was celebrated for the first time and it became a firm tradition, not least helped by the poet Henrik Wergeland. The July revolution in France in 1830 encouraged liberal and national movements and expressions. The farmers began to understand that the Storting was their entry to political power and in 1833 the farmers elected the largest group of forty-five representatives, led by a farmer and teacher from Stavanger, Ole Gabriel Ueland. To increase the power of the people a municipal system of government was introduced in 1837. It created local interest in political issues and promoted the elections to the Storting. In 1835 Norway also obtained the right to participate in the evaluation of diplomatic issues relating to the country and the consuls were now appointed by a cabinet of both countries, taking the oath as Norwegian representatives. The use of the merchant flag was no longer restricted after1838. Norway got a separate naval flag from 1844 and the national coat of arms was improved. Ideas of having a separate foreign ministry and diplomatic service were suggested but not yet possible. The poet Henrik Wergeland argued for a rebirth of Norwegian literature and cultural traditions, a release from the dependency on Denmark and at the same time for more international contact and participation. Danish had become the official language in Norway and Wergeland recommended a language reform, a gradual introduc-

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tion of words and expressions from the Norwegian dialects. This idea continued by P. Chr. Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their retelling of Norwegian fairy tales and myths. The rewriting of Danish into a distinct Norwegian language has continued to this day. A more fundamental effort for a new, independent language based on the dialects, particularly of the Western counties, was introduced by Ivar Åsen. A new language (landsmål) was created and Norway had two official languages. Together with these moves came a new focus on our past history. The people, the nation, would arise from the languages. The independence movement was directed against Denmark in the cultural field and against Sweden in the political field. In contrast to the national romanticism in language and literature an idealistic Scandinavian movement emerged in all three countries. Prussian forces had occupied the Danish possessions Schleswig and Holstein, and entered Jutland in 1848. A Swedish-Norwegian military unit was then ready to assist Denmark but the Russian Tsar, Nicholai I, challenged Prussia and a truce was signed. A new uprising soon occurred in the two disputed dukedoms and SwedishNorwegian troops entered Northern Schleswig. Russia now began to see a united Scandinavia as a military threat. Indeed, Sweden saw a possibility of winning Finland back from Russia in the Crimean war in 1854. The border in the north became an issue and the rumour spread that Russia planned to annex the Northern Norwegian county of Finnmark. King Oscar I signed a treaty with England and France not to cede any part of the union to Russia, securing their defence against Russian aggression in Norway.The new Danish king, Christian of Glücksburg, incorporated Schleswig against the existing treaties and was at war with Prussia and Austria in 1864. Denmark stood alone and lost Schleswig and Holstein. The Swedish-Norwegian government had declined to assist Denmark unless England and France participated. They did

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not. This was the end of Scandinavianism, later reflected in works by Henrik Ibsen who had argued for military assistance to Denmark in 1864. The key factor in our economic development is the expansion of the mercantile marine, still dominated by the sailing ships until 1880. From the middle of the 19th century free trade began to replace the protective customs regimes in Europe. Free trade internationally and free enterprise nationally changed Norwegian society from the middle of the century. Agriculture advanced from a single corn production economy to dairy farming; agricultural schools and an agricultural university were established. The rich forests encouraged industrial expansion into paper and pulp; a textile industry and a canned fish industry developed. The fishery fleet was no longer limited to the coast and began to sail out to the rich fishing banks. Boat engines replaced the sails and the purse net was introduced. The hunt for seal and whale became a big industry and Svend Foyn’s invention of the harpoon gun increased the whaling reward. The Bank of Norway was established in 1816 and held a currency based on silver (the sølvdaler and the speciedaler) but from 1875 it was linked to gold (gullkronen). The economic expansion did not benefit all and an increasing population faced hard conditions at home and began to look for opportunities abroad. The first group of fifty emigrants left from Stavanger for North America in 1825 and the exodus increased after the American Civil War. A total of nearly one million Norwegians had settled in the New World by 1914. The first Labour organization and movement was founded in 1849 by a young student, Marcus Thrane, who was influenced by French socialist ideas. He gained a membership of about twenty thousand industrial workers, artisans and tenant farmers, but as suggestions of armed resistance began to circulate, Thrane was held responsible, arrested and imprisoned. He later emigrated to America.

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Parliament voted in 1859 to abandon the Swedish governorship of Norway. It was not formally abandoned until 1873 but the vote had immediate political significance as Parliament then unanimously adopted a resolution maintaining full equality in the union and independence in all matters not expressly stated as union responsibility. A young member of Parliament, Johan Sverdrup, became the ardent spokesman for a parliamentary system of government and together with the liberal academics and the farmers (led by Søren Jaabæk) in Parliament they formed an agreement which led to the formation of Venstre (the Liberal Party). The party aimed at full equality for Norway in the union and an increase of the universal suffrage in Norway. The union supporting members formed Høyre (the Conservative Party). They viewed a strengthening of the union with Sweden as a link and a new alternative to the former Scandinavianism. The leading personality for this policy was Frederik Stang, the head of the Norwegian government for many years, who had been allowed to call himself Prime Minister. Venstre succeeded in securing annual sessions for Parliament in 1869 and increased its power. A Swedish proposal to have only one union government, one military force and appoint one foreign minister was totally rejected and Sverdrup aimed to turn the members of the government into real politicians who would participate in the parliamentary debates. A long debate ensued, involving the supreme court, which led to the dismissal of the government, including the then prime Minister, Chr. Aug. Selmer. King Oscar II asked Sverdrup to form the government in June 1884. This year is important in Norwegian history, seventy years after the celebrated Constitution year, as the party system and parliamentarianism had become Norway’s form of government.The franchise was extended a year later, general franchise for men was introduced in 1898, limited franchise for women in 1907 and full franchise six years later.

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New laws concerning primary and high school education were introduced. Then Venstre split, divided into two parties and Høyre became the largest party in 1888, but Venstre was back in power three years later. The working class founded Det norske Arbeiderparti (The Norwegian Labour Party) in 1887. From the 1890s international questions, particularly the peace movement, had broad support in Parliament and among the people. Our national writer, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, was the prominent front figure. Norway’s Storting was in 1890 the first Parliament to vote for a resolution recommending arbitration treaties as a means to solve conflicts and it was repeated in 1897 in connection with the first Hague-conference. Norwegian delegates also attended the first international parliamentary session. The Swedish industry leader, Alfred Nobel, in a gesture to honour excellence in science and literature, also included the work for peace in his will. The honour and management of the Nobel Peace Price was given to Norway, to a committee appointed by the Norwegian Storting. It started work in 1901. Less known in the democratic year of 1884 is the meeting of a group of Northern Norwegians at Hotel Royal in Oslo where the spontaneous decision was made to call the three counties of the Arctic North (Nordland,Troms and Finmark) simply Nord-Norge (North Norway).The name had immediate success and has remained. Patriotism eigener Art. The first hurigrute (fast route), named Vesterålen, sailed from Trondheim to Hammerfest on 2 July 1893 but the breakthrough for a regular service along the coast of Norway came in December the same year when the ship sailed from Tromsø to Harstad to prove the point that it could be done in drifting snow on a bleak winter’s night. Captain Richard With had laid the foundation for an all seasons and all weather hurtigrute, a daring navigational feat. The obstinate, kind hearted dreamer north of the Arctic Circle who never gives up. The first regular air connection between Tromsø and Bergen was

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established in 1935 although seaplanes had been operated between Harstad and Narvik as early as 1929.5 The prominent Norwegians who argued for international peace and justice were also in the front line for Norwegian independence.Venstre suggested the creation of an independent Foreign Service led by a Norwegian Foreign Minister. Høyre only supported the idea of a joint foreign service, but with equal right for the two countries to occupy the office of Foreign Minister. Venstre stood for an independent Norwegian approach, Høyre sought negotiations with Stockholm. Then Venstre with a majority in the Storting in 1892 adopted a resolution to establish a separate Norwegian Consular Service, but the King, Oscar II, refused to sanction the decision. A minority Høyre-government led by Emil Stang took over and Sweden demanded a recall of the consular decision and even suggested negotiations for a revision of the union agreement, the State Act, of 1815. It was rumoured that force might be used by Sweden. Norway lacked defensive capabilities and new negotiations about the whole union content began. No agreement was reached but the dream of independence had not vanished and Norwegian military power was now seen as the key to strengthen the argument.The navy and the army were modernized and new fortresses were built along the Swedish border. The combination of Norwegian rearmament and Russian aggression in Finland led the Swedish Foreign Minister to accept negotiations with Norway for separate consuls for each country but Sweden changed its tune when Japan defeated Russia in1904 and removed the threat. Again, Sweden made clear that it wished to maintain Norway as a dependent country but the consulate question had become a key national issue for Norway. A coalition government led by Christian Michelsen, supported by the 5

See also articles about the North Norwegian town Harstad in http://lokalhistoriewiki.no/index.php

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representative in Stockholm, Jørgen Løvland, took over. The consular bill was unanimously accepted by the Storting and presented to the King who did not give his assent. The Norwegian government refused to countersign his refusal and resigned. The King declined to accept the resignation, arguing that ‘no other government can now be formed’. These words by the King gave Michelsen a constitutional opening to declare the union dissolved. Oscar II was no longer the King of Norway because according to the Constitution he could only perform his duties through a responsible Norwegian government and there was no government. As Norway and Sweden no longer had a common king there was no union between them. The Storting declared unanimously 7 June that the union had ceased to exist. They suggested that a Prince from the Bernadotte dynasty could be the new king in Norway. The Swedish Parliament (Riksdagen) agreed that if the Norwegian people accepted the position of the Storting in an election or a referendum the Riksdag would be willing to negotiate a dissolution of the union. The ensuing referendum showed a unanimous support for the 7 June decision by the Storting. The final negotiations with Sweden were held in Karlstad in September and an agreement was reached after three weeks of difficult, even critical negotiations. Future conflicts were to be settled by arbitration, a neutral zone was created on both sides of the border and some of the Norwegian fortresses were to be dismantled. Norway was finally recognized by Sweden and then internationally as an independent state. As expected, King Oscar II refused to consider a Swedish Prince from the Bernadotte dynasty as the new King. Norway had made early contact with Prince Carl of Denmark who was married to the English Princess Maud, daughter of King Edward VII. Prince Carl wished to know the opinion of the Norwegian people before he would accept the offer of King. A new referendum gave a large majority for the new monarchy.

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The Storting unanimously elected Prince Carl as King of Norway under the name King Haakon VII, a link to former times of greatness. He arrived in Norway with Queen Maud and the young Crown Prince Olav on 25 November 1905 and was crowned in Nidaros Cathedral. When he is challenged Ola Nordmann is resolute, clever and independent. The rivers and waterfalls held the key to industrial Norway and it was seen as essential to prevent foreign capital from controlling the development of power plants and new factories. New laws to regulate the right to use natural resources were introduced and the purchase of waterfalls, mines and forests needed the consent of the government. The concession policy was introduced during the time of Gunnar Knudsen as prime minister. The new agenda created a new class of industrial workers and they began to be organized in the Labour Party created in 1887 and in the Norwegian confederation of trade unions (LO), established in 1899. This was followed by the Norwegian employers association a year later. The factories came under public inspection, new laws were introduced about working conditions and child labour was no longer permitted. The ideas of a social and welfare policy including an 8-hour working day and medical insurance were introduced before and during the First World War. The basis for a strong labour movement and a dominant Labour Party had been laid and it entered Stortinget for the first time in 1903 with four representatives from North Norway. I grew up with the understanding that 17 May represented a celebration of freedom and independence from Denmark and Sweden and five years of Nazi-German occupation. It is a national celebration, not related to entrenched nationalistic assertiveness or reactionary insularity, but an expression of love of country and a repeated thank you to the generations that made it possible for us to rule ourselves.

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We are simply holding the freedom colours of the flag high as a token of respect and we put on our finest clothes. The traditional bunad was often made and embroidered by the grandmother, given to the next generation and worn with pride. My mother first made a bunad to herself, then to her daughter, daughter-in-law and granddaughters. Her choice out of more than four hundred regional designs was, patriotically, the Arctic Nordlandsbunad first introduced in 1928. This is not fancy dress but party dress, even full dress for any special formal occasion. It is an expression of regional and national identity and civil cohesion. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s poem Ja, vi elsker dette landet (Yes, we love this land), set to music by Richard Nordraak, became the patriotic national anthem to honour the day.

Chapter 4

Independence and Neutrality Y In 1905, Norway had won independence and her own foreign policy but the first Foreign Minister, Jørgen Løvland, declared through his lion’s skin that ‘we will not have a foreign policy’. It was, to be kind, a sophistic attempt to declare that Norway was going to pursue a strict policy of neutrality and concentrate the external relations on foreign trade and shipping. Indeed, Prime Minister William Pitt the younger had emphasized that British policy is British trade. But for Norway it was national independence resting on pacifism and isolationism, a self-imposed neutralization more like that of Switzerland, a peace policy without alliances, a European policy based on international law, arbitration and international agreements, isolated from the international chess games. The great national poet, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, echoed the Foreign Minister in confirming that ‘the aim of the Norwegians is to get a Foreign Ministry without foreign policy’. Not a very sustainable position. Independent Norway began a foreign policy journey that over the next hundred years would take her through several stages of international commitment, influenced and defined by European and global challenges. The first and easy decision, 1904–14, was the determination to stay free of any alliances and it was followed by a strict neutrality policy during

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World War I. But opening to a system of collective security, with England as the main player, was introduced after the war in 1918 and continued as a close war alliance against Germany during 1940–45. An optimistic bridge-building policy was then attempted with the Soviet Union but it only lasted until 1949; Stalin invaded Czechoslovakia, Norway joined NATO and the cold war alliance against the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall built in 1961 fell in 1989 and a new perspective and focus on Europe together with development and humanitarian assistance entered Norwegian foreign policy. During the nineteenth century, England had kept an eye on Russian territorial ambitions in Norway and had been in favour of the union with Sweden as a protective measure. Weakened Russian power after the war with Japan in 1905 and a new Anglo-Russian rapprochement undermined the Swedish union policy in the European balance of power. It was important however that independent Norway did not join an alliance with any of the major powers in Europe. Also, a closer Scandinavian cooperation in foreign policy was ruled out, not only because Norway had distanced herself from Sweden after the union, but because of Sweden’s relationship with Russia, Denmark’s link with Germany and Norway’s dependence on England for trade and shipping. The Napoleonic wars and the conflict with England in 1807 had been a setback for Norway in union with Denmark. Isolated neutrality had become an unwritten part of the Constitution of 1814. Norway wished to be the quiet corner of Europe. The Integrity Treaty signed between Sweden/Norway, England and France in 1855 was directed against Russia. Following her independence, Norway wanted it replaced by a new Treaty with England and France but with Germany and Russia as participants. The aim was to guarantee Norway’s integrity and neutrality but Norway wanted excep-

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tion for a possible future Nordic Defence Union. This was turned down by the major powers but they guaranteed Norway’s integrity and inviolability in a new Treaty (1907) and Norway pledged not to cede any part of its territory to any power. Critics in Norway pointed out that the guarantee in fact meant that Norway had lost some of its national independence and status as a country. It was also felt that the new Treaty was directed against Sweden. The lamps were going out all over Europe. Norway had confirmed the ‘complete neutrality policy’ on 1 August 1914, but the reality of war did rock this concept and Norway began to strengthen its defence forces.The British trade blockade of Germany and Germany’s submarine warfare meant that Norway had entered the economic warfare with England. After the USA joined the war Norwegian business and shipping became part of the allied war economy. Norway had become the neutral ally. In fact, it suited Norway to take sides because the German submarine war destroyed half of the Norwegian merchant fleet and two thousand seamen were killed. At the outbreak of the war the fleet was three and a half million tons and the third largest in the world. It was restored and had reached five million tons at the outbreak of the Second World War. The German navy command had realized the importance of controlling the Norwegian coast in an Atlantic conflict, a knowledge applied twenty two years later. Svalbard (Spitzbergen) and Bjørnøya in the Barents Sea were placed under Norwegian sovereignty by an international treaty as part of the Versailles settlement after the First World War. This was signed in Paris on 9 February 1920. It had the support of fourteen High Contracting parties, including Denmark, Sweden and England and has forty signatories today. The Soviet Union signed in 1924 and ratified in 1935, but proposed a Soviet-Norwegian condominium of Svalbard in 1944 and even suggested a transfer of Bear Island to the Soviet Union.

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Norway was granted Jan Mayen in the Greenland Sea, Bouvet Island, Peter I’s Island and Queen Maud’s Land in the Antarctic, clearly influenced by Roald Amundsen’s status as the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911. One important commercial factor was the development of commercial whaling in these waters. The world economic crises affected Norway in the 1920s and 30s. These were difficult times for Norwegian shipping as industry and agriculture suffered unemployment and bankruptcies. A mercantilist system of protection developed, the traditional free trade was abandoned and the state began to control industry and introduce custom protection, even giving direct financial support to some industries. The aim was to make Norway as selfsufficient as possible. Norway joined the League of Nations in 1920 and the Treaty contained provisions for collective military and economic actions by the member states. Norwegian neutrality was seen to be compromised. The Norwegian Labour Party considered the League a victor’s alliance against Germany and Russia and its Parliamentary Group voted against membership. The vote in Parliament for membership was still convincing (100 to 20) and the hope was that the League would create a permanent peace organization. It was also felt that Norway could be politically, ideologically and even economically isolated and marginalized outside the organized cooperation between a majority of the world’s nations. After the signing of the Locarno agreement in 1925, German membership of the League and the humanitarian effort for war prisoners in Russia and Siberia, the League’s function as a peacekeeping organization came more to the fore. Fridtjof Nansen’s leadership in the refugee effort was given full support by the people of Norway and gained international recognition. Nansen also organized the exchange of citizens between Greece and Turkey. His work was continued by C.J. Hambro.

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The tests came with Japan’s attack on Mansjuria in 1931, Germany’s withdrawal from the League in 1933 and Italy’s attack on Ethiopia in 1935. Norway joined the sanctions against Italy but this experience led a group of smaller countries, including Norway, to declare that they would not be bound to introduce economic sanctions against an attacker in the future. During the years before the Second World War Norway supported the League’s efforts to continue disarmament negotiations and to seek peaceful solutions to conflicts but maintained the principle of neutrality and resisted any alliance with the major powers. It was argued unsuccessfully that only a collective security system could halt the advance of fascism and national-socialism. England and France had at this time decided on a reconciliatory policy towards Germany and Italy. The Norwegian parliament decided unanimously 31 May 1938 that Norway would keep out of armed conflicts and demanded absolute neutrality in any war that it did not recognize as a League of Nation intervention. Norway remained a member of the League. The period between the two world wars created, extended and renewed the political parties.The Labour Party was radicalised and began to support the communist ideology and revolutionary methods. This dictatorial approach led the moderate wing of the party to break out and create a separate party (Norway’s Social Democratic Labour Party) and a small minority formed Norway’s Communist Party. After some infighting between the three parties, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats united and became the greatest group in Parliament in 1927. The Communist Party lost support. A fascist party, Nasjonal Samling (National Unification), was created by Vidkunn Quisling in 1933 but gained very little support at the elections in 1933 and 1936 and was not represented in Parliament. Quisling had graduated from the Military Academy with the highest grades ever awarded, he was a major in the Norwegian army and had been Minister of Defence for the Centre party two years

INDEPENDENCE AND NEUTRALITY

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before he formed his own party. In 1935 a Labour government took over with Johan Nygaardsvold as prime minister and Halvdan Koht as foreign minister. Value added tax, old age pension, holiday with full pay and unemployment benefits were introduced. The government also accepted some, albeit modest, financing for the armed forces. Norwegian neutrality was the key concept but what did it mean in the light of reality? Norway had turned its back on the world, concentrated on the economy and the domestic policies and told the international society ‘we want to be left alone’. The lessons drawn from the First World War confirmed, so far, that the neutrality position had been the right foreign policy. The membership of the League of Nations nudged at neutrality but the idealism of Geneva and international law as the panacea was the main preoccupation. The idea of collective security emerged when the storm clouds gathered in the 1930s and the need for national security and preparedness was evident. The wisdom was that Norway’s neutrality had worked extremely well in the First World War and would do again if the worst came to the worst. A future war would again only affect trade and shipping. Norway did not seriously consider a threat from the Soviet Union and the conflicts with Germany during the war (Norway’s trade restrictions and Germany’s submarine warfare) had been solved politically. The Norwegian Prime Minister said in 1908 that ‘we trust in the British nation’. It was believed that Britannia ruled the waves, not only the North Sea, and that British naval power was invincible. The Norwegian coast was safe. The importance and strategic advantage of Norway in a new conflict between Germany and Great Britain was put on the back burner in Norway. Norway was preparing for the last war but Germany and Great Britain had learned from the last war to prepare differently for any future war. The building of a new German navy and air force had been set in motion.

Chapter 5

The German Occupation Y I dag står flaggstangen naken blant Eidsvolls grønnende trær. Men nettopp i denne timen Vet vi hva frihet er.6

The German Emperor, Wilhelm II, loved to sail along the Norwegian coast before the First World War, but he did not recommend occupation as Hitler did, later. He just loved our mountains and when he came ashore with a gun it was only for grouse-shooting. Germany planned the occupation of the Norwegian coast in order to establish airports and submarine bases against Britain and to control the important export of iron ore from Sweden through Narvik. Grossadmiral Erich Raeder convinced Hitler of the need for this as a matter of urgency. Vidkun Quisling appeared in Berlin and warned that British forces would soon enter Norway. The German Nazi ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, had taken an interest in Quisling’s movement and invited him to Berlin in June 1939 and again 6

Nordahl Grieg, The first lines of the poem ‘17.mai 1940’. (The flagpole stands empty today among the green trees of Eidsvoll, but indeed at this very hour we know what freedom is.)

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in December when he met Raeder, General Jodl and then Hitler (on 14 and 18 December). The British Navy boarded the German ship Altmark in Norwegian territorial waters on 16 February 1940 and liberated the British sailors held prisoners on board.This episode gave more urgency to the planning of Weserübung, the attack on Norway, led by General Niklaus von Falkenhorst, and on 1 March 1940 Hitler issued the directive for the occupation of Norway and Denmark, the aims were to forestall British action in Scandinavia, to secure the Swedish iron ore for Germany and to give German naval and air forces a favourable attack position against Great Britain. As early as September 1939 Winston Churchill, then Minister for the Navy, had suggested mining part of the Norwegian coast, but no decision was taken. The Soviet Union’s attack on Finland in November complicated the strategic picture and it was not until the beginning of April 1940 that the British navy began to mine the Ofoten Fjord. The mobilization in North Norway only started after the Finnish-Russian conflict. Germany attacked Norway just after midnight on 9 April and quickly occupied Oslo, Bergen, Arendal, Kristiansand S., Egersund, Stavanger, Trondheim and Narvik. The German Embassy in Oslo handed the Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht the ultimatum demanding acceptance of German military and administrative occupation of Norway. The request was unanimously rejected by the government. King Haakon VII was informed and agreed. The King’s ‘No’ to the German ultimatum of surrender secured his place in Norwegian history.7 Norway was now at war with Germany and it was formally confirmed by Royal Decree at Hamar the same day. The King, the Royal family, members of the government and parliament travelled from Oslo to Hamar in a rescue 7

Kongens nei, film 2016.

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operation organized by the Speaker of the Parliament, C.J. Hambro. It was a move that prevented the King and the Government from being taken prisoner by the Germans and it was helped by the sinking of the German cruiser Blücher from Oscarsborg Fortress in the Oslo Fiord which delayed the German advance. Narvik was one of the first towns to be occupied to secure the iron ore export from Sweden. Ten German destroyers entered the Ofoten Fiord and the somewhat outdated Norwegian naval ships Norge and Eidsvold were quickly sunk. German forces took possession of Narvik. The next day five British destroyers entered Narvik harbour and a naval battle ensued which ended in a draw with the loss of two British and two German destroyers. In the 1960s, I had the opportunity of meeting one of the heroes of the battle of Narvik. Colonel and Mrs A. Borlase, the parents of my future wife, Jill, introduced me to their good friend Admiral John A. Micklethwait who had entered the Ofoten Fjord and the battle of Narvik as Captain of his Tribal class destroyer named Eskimo. He had first disabled the German destroyer Kunne on 13 April but Eskimo was then hit by a torpedo and the bow and forepart were blown off. He told me with a smile that he then had to go for immediate repair to Harstad, but in reverse, using the stern as the bow. My home town Harstad became an allied base during the campaign in North Norway, for the British 24 Guard’s Brigade, a Polish brigade, two French battalions and four naval vessels in need of repair. The German superiority in the air was visible and the Northern humour was never far away, evident in a popular saying of the time: ‘There are so many planes in the air that the seagulls have to walk.’ Towards the end of May 1940, about twenty-five thousand British, French and Polish forces together with ten thousand Norwegian infantry soldiers were concentrated

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION

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around Narvik. The town was recaptured on 28 May and the German forces were chased into the mountain of Bjørnefjell. This was in fact Germany’s first defeat in the Second World War. But the British government had decided 24 May to end the campaign in Norway mainly because of the developments in Dunkirk. The Norwegian Foreign Minister was informed of this on 1 June. The Norwegian forces still fought on until 8 June. The Norwegian government then had little choice but to give up the struggle in Norway. They had vowed on 9 April to continue the fight from abroad - and indeed they did. London became the seat for Norwegian leadership and foreign and defence policy. ‘The first part of our struggle for freedom is over’, said the Commander-in-Chief, General Otto Ruge. There would be a second struggle. The war in Norway, between 9 April and the German takeover on 9 June, led to a loss of eight thousand military and civilian personnel, many were wounded, seventy ships (thirty in Narvik harbour), three hundred and fifty aircraft and four thousand buildings were destroyed. New Norwegian armed forces (army, air force and navy) were created in Great Britain. The merchant fleet of about a thousand ships was organized into a large company, Nortraship, and controlled by the Norwegian London government during the war. The fleet became a very important part of the allied supply service; it gave foreign currency to Norway, but four thousand seamen and half the fleet were lost. The German armies, including their leaders in Norway, capitulated on 7 May 1945; 17 May became a special day of celebration and the King and the Royal Family returned to Oslo on 7 June. The rebuilding could start. The county of Finnmark, the size of Austria, had been burnt down and laid waste by the German army as the Soviet troops approached: This is an extract from the Nuremberg trials 1945/46:

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On or about 10 October 1944, the Commander-in-Chief of the 20th Mountain Army, the defendant Rendulic, issued an order, to troops under his command and jurisdiction, for the complete destruction of all shelter and means of existence in, and the total evacuation of the entire civilian population of, the northern Norwegian province of Finnmark. During the months of October and November 1944, this order was effectively and ruthlessly carried out. For no compelling military reasons, and in literal execution of instructions to show no sympathy to the civilian population, the evacuated residents were made to witness the burning of their homes and possessions and the destruction of churches, public buildings, food supplies, barns, livestock, bridges, transport facilities, and natural resources of an area in which they and their families had lived for generations. Relatives and friends were separated, many of the evacuees became ill from cold and disease, hundreds died from exposure or perished at sea in the small boats and fishing smacks used in the evacuation, while still others were summarily shot for refusing to leave their homeland - in all, the thoroughness and brutality of this evacuation left some 61,000 men, women, and children homeless, starving, and destitute.

About ten thousand Norwegians, including seamen and resistance fighters were killed, forty thousand (civil servants, teachers, lawyers and priests) were imprisoned and over three hundred were executed by the Gestapo. The Jewish population was deported and hardly anyone came back. Two resistance fighters in my home town, Alf Pettersen and Per Spilling, were betrayed, sentenced to death and executed in 1941. ‘Dead for Norway’, says the memorial plaque. Alf wrote a few lines to his mother the day before the execution about light and freedom. After liberation came the showdown with the collaborators, the active members of Nasjonal Samling (the National

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Union) and anyone else who had supported and assisted Quisling and the Nazi occupiers. The legal challenge comprised 92,000 cases but half of these were dismissed. About 20,000 received prison sentences, some got life imprisonment and 25 were accused of landssvik (treason), faced the death penalty and were executed. Quisling was tried for treason, sentenced to death and executed on 24 October 1945 at Akershus Fortress. Terboven took his own life. A Norwegian prison director of the Nazi regime killed his wife, his two children and himself. When his old father teacher heard this he and his wife also committed suicide. The legal process in Norway lasted until 1958 when the last lifetime prisoner was pardoned. In a film screened on 5 August, 2016 ‘The Swastika Profiteers’, the NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting System) examined the collaboration of Norwegian industry with the enemy. The focus was in particular on the company Norsk Hydro and its development of aluminium and magnesium in close cooperation with the German company IG Farben. BDS (Bergen Steamship Company) supported Norsk Hydro for the transport of building materials. The NSB (the Norwegian State Railway) continued the development of new railway lines, particularly the Northern link (Nordlandsbanen) and Statens Veivesen (the State Road Authority) added improvement to the road network. The industrial cooperation with the occupying power by these four institutions was extensive and looking at it from a human rights perspective German war prisoners allocated to Norway, particularly from the Soviet Union, were used as hard labour for Norwegian-led projects. The legal investigations in Norway after 1945 did not find any of the industrial leaders guilty of war crimes. 8 8

A film by Erling Borgen with the participation i.a. of K.G. Andersen Norsk Teknisk Museum.

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The German moral revolt against twelve years of Nazi rule continued. At the age of 18, Reinhold Hanning had joined the SS and became a guard at Auschwitz. After a fourmonth trial in Detmold in 2016 he was given a prison sentence. The last case? The far-right movement in Germany led to a renewal of Bundeswehr and any display of Wehrmacht memorabilia in an historical context will be discontinued. Some barracks still named after Field Marshal Erwin Rommel must abandon the name. A young Norwegian girl who had slept with a German soldier was not treated kindly by post-war society and referred to as tysketøs (German whore). Sleeping with the enemy is always punished by society but this union gave life to one of the Abba stars. Her mother was Norwegian but she settled in Sweden after the war because of her condemnation by Norwegian society. The Danish period in Norwegian history was also a German period connected to the political and commercial Hanseatic League of German towns. Norwegian writers, painters, philosophers, economists and scientists found their way to Germany. The Second World War and German occupation changed all that. Norway became an Atlantic nation with a new perspective but gradually our links with Berlin have been strengthened in the twentyfirst century, politically, diplomatically, commercially and culturally. I was a diplomat in Bonn when the Berlin Wall ‘fell’ in 1989. It was a good day and the German Father of Unification, Helmut Kohl (Chancellor 1982–98) achieved the reunion on 3 October 1990 and Berlin again became the capital. Kohl was instrumental in creating the euro but had wanted to go further and create a united Europe modelled on the Federal Republic of Germany. The powerful incentive for Kohl as for Bratteli was ‘never more wars in Europe’ but the European countries were never ready for the total integration.

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I sometimes wonder what it was in the Hitler hypocrisy that hypnotized so many very intelligent people, on the one hand the Nobel laureate, Knut Hamsun, and on the other the star from the military academy, Vidkun Quisling. It is hardly a great honour that Norway has given the ultimate word for traitor, i.e. quisling, to the world’s dictionaries. His Christian name,Vidkun, ironically, means wide knowledge.

Chapter 6

Political Parties Y The Liberal Party (Venstre) and the Conservative Party (Høire) were the big political players at independence from Sweden in 1905. Our first (and Liberal) Prime Minister, Christian Michelsen, told the Norwegian people in 1905 that ‘a new working day’ had begun. The breakthrough for the Labour Party, founded in 1887, came in 1927 when they obtained 59 seats. The Agrarian party (Centre) held power from 1931 to 1933 and appointed Vidkun Quisling as Minister of Defence. His fascist ideology began to emerge. At the election in 1933 Labour gained 69 seats (of 150).The Liberals (Mowinckel) led the government for two years until Labour’s Johan Nygaardsvold took over as Prime Minister and continued to represent Norway in exile in London during the war. Labour advanced in power between 1945 and 1965, only interrupted by a coalition for twenty-eight days in 1963. For sixteen years Einar Gerhardsen was Labour’s Prime Minister, honoured as the Landsfader (the nation’s father) of the recovery after the war. The prestige of the Soviet Union in 1945, being part of the liberation of Norway, influenced a swing to the political left in the first parliamentary election, not only giving Labour an absolute majority of 76 seats (of 150) but adding 11 seats to the Communist Party. In 1949, the Labour Party

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increased the majority to 85 seats but now the Communists lost all support, mainly as a consequence of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the year before. The electoral system was adjusted from the d’Hondt method of proportional representation to the Lagué system and Labour increased the share of the vote to 46.7 in 1953 and obtained 77 seats. At the 1957 election Labour obtained 78 seats and the Conservative Party (Høyre) 29. A new left-wing party, the Socialist People’s Party, was founded in 1961 and secured two seats in the election that year. The Labour party was now down to 74 seats and the parties to the right also had 74. This put the new Socialists in a controlling position. Several accidents in the coal-mines of the state-owned company King’s Bay at Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard with a total loss of sixty-four lives led to a very critical report and the opposition in Parliament accused the government of severe negligence. In an extraordinary session in August 1963 a vote of no confidence against the Labour government was carried by 76 votes to 74. The two Socialist members voted against the government. The government resigned and a few days later a coalition government led by the Conservative leader, John Lyng, took over. In September two policy statements, from Labour and the coalition respectively, were debated and the net result was that the Socialists now voted with Labour and Einar Gerhardsen was back as PM. At the 1965 election Labour defended 68 seats and the four former coalition partners (Conservatives, Liberals, Centre and Christian People’s Party) held 80 seats. Per Borten was Prime Minister. He belonged to the Agrarian Party which was established in 1920, but changed its name to the Centre Party in 1959. John Lyng took over as Foreign Minister. The Borten-government continued after the 1969 election and in the same year Europe entered Norwegian politics. De Gaulle left the helm in April and the Hague summit of

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the Six in December approved a plan for enlargement. The Norwegian parliament voted 132–17 to enter negotiations. The opponents of membership united in a Popular Front and the Centre Party and the Prime Minister were in opposition. Borten was accused of leaking a confidential report from the Norwegian Ambassador in Brussels to the press and his government fell in 1971 to be replaced by Labour and Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli who had the honour of signing the accession treaty and facing the disappointment of the referendum in 1972. He resigned and a narrow coalition of the Christian People’s Party, the Centre and the Liberals took office. The long period of political majority experienced after 1945 had come to an end. But it was again a Labour Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who tried, unsuccessfully, to add Norway to the EU as a full member in 1994. The result of the referendum was almost identical to the outcome in 1972. A libertarian, right-wing, populist protest party, Fremskrittspartiet (the Progress Party) was established in 1973. It had increased following in the new century and at the election in 2013 obtained more than 16 per cent of the vote, 29 parliamentary seats and joined a coalition government with Høyre. The extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, obsessed with immigration and multiculturalism, killed 77 people at the government quarter in Oslo and then at the Labour party youth organization (AUF) camp at Utøya. He created our 22/7. Breivik had been an active member of the party for ten years and had chaired one of its youth branches. More openness, insisted the Labour Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg. For the new leader of the Labour Party, Jonas Gahr Støre, the attack was a time schism in our history.9 Was this an aberration, a singular, distorted act, signifying nothing, or did it hint at darker currents of isolationism, insularity, rac9

I bevegelse, Cappelen Damm, 2014, 363–416.

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ism and xenophobia below the 17 May surface? The answer is blowing in the wind. A 22-July documentation centre was opened on 22 July 2015 in the Government Quarter. The progress of the party is part of the far right and populist trend in Europe (Le Front National, United Kingdom Independence Party, Pegida, Geert Wilders Party for Freedom, Sverigedemokraterna, The Finns Party). Høyre and Fremskrittspartiet are strange bedfellows. The electorate behind Høyre is traditionally the better educated and better off, Fremskrittspartiet attracts the less educated and the less well off; those often dependent on social benefits. However, the protection of the welfare state and the challenge of immigration facilitated an unholy alliance and coalition between them. The decline of asylum seekers to Norway in 2015, from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan, was highly popular. It was argued that immigrants have different religions and cultures and do not integrate easily into Norwegian society. The anti-Muslim sentiment is strong and Norway is regarded as Islamophobic, xenophobic and insular by many. It is only in Norway that a European far right, anti-immigration party succeeded in entering the government and holding the front bench position of Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Norway had the dubious honour of creating a new word, an eponym, for traitor. The only obvious similarities between Vidkun Quisling and Anders Breivik are the facts that they were both one of us, not immigrants or migrants but true Norwegians who held extreme racist views; Quisling against the Jews and Breivik, dressed in Islamophobia, against nonWestern immigrants to Norway.

Chapter 7

Before and After Ibsen Y Henrik Ibsen made his country known. Norway became ‘Ibsen’s land’. In his famous plays, he achieved the true greatness he had dreamed of. The first play, Kjæmpehøyen (The Burial Mound), was staged at the Christiania Theater in 1850. Apparently, at the opening night Ibsen was so terrified of the reception the play might receive that he hid away in a dark corner of the theatre.10 He need not have worried. Samfunnets støtter (Pillars of Society) was performed in Berlin in 1875 and marked his international breakthrough. Et Dukkehjem (A Doll’s House) appeared in Cairo in 1896, in Tokyo in 1912 and arrived in Shanghai in 1914.11 Since then Peer Gynt, Brand, Gengangere (Ghosts), En folkefiende (An Enemy of the People),12 Vilanden (The Wild Duck), Bygmester Solnes (The Master Builder),13 Fruen fra havet (The Lady from the Sea) and Hedda Gabler have spread to stages around the world, most notably in the USA, England, Germany and Japan. 10

11 12

13

Nævdal, Bodil, Sigurd Ibsen. Bak en gyllen fasade, Aschehoug, 1997, 254. Ellen Sofie Lauritzen, “Ibsens imperium”, Morgenbladet, 28/2015. Staged at Chichester Festival Theatre with Hugh Bonneville, May 2016. Staged at the Old Vic with Ralph Fiennes, February 2016.

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Ibsen’s plays give a strong image of societies in rapid change, including the advancement of women’s liberation. Many countries and societies (I won’t mention them all) might benefit from staging A Doll’s House today. The anecdote that Ibsen on his deathbed suddenly sat up and shouted Tvert imot! (On the contrary!) then fell back dead, is probably untrue, but a relevant laconism. Many writers and literary historians have seen these words, the idea of opposition and resistance, as the key feature of Ibsen’s creative writing. This feature of his work suggests a refusal to comply and implies a questioning of established truths, habits, conventions and institutions, the hypocrisy and suppression, the ghosts, that keep them alive. Arguably, this Ibsen spirit of non-acceptance, the courage to look at and into Norwegian society, might still be lacking and needed today? Great as he is, however, there is so much more in the literary landscape before and after Ibsen. For example, the first poem in the Edda (great grandmother) collection from the old Norse period is called ‘Voluspå’ (the Volva’s prophesy), a comprehensive account of mythology, the creation and the life of the gods, the origins of conflict, prophesies for the future and the promise of a new world. Another poem, ‘Håvamål’, has a wonderful line about the brevity of life and the golden word about you that never dies: Deyr fé, deyja frændr deyr sjalfr it sama, en orðstírr deyr aldregi hveim er sér góðan getr.14 Snorre Sturlasson (born in 1179) wrote an advisory book on skaldic verse in Prose Edda as a prelude to the momentous Heimskringla, the history of Norway and the Viking kings spanning seventeen sagas and four hundred years. Another monumental work, Speculum regale by an unknown author, appeared at this time, outlining exam14

Animals die, friends die and you also die, but the word about you never dies if you win an honourable name. (Stanza 76).

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ples and ideals of culture and education inspired by foreign impulses, possibly aimed at the heir apparent as preparation for royal leadership, but not exclusively so because in the preface the author insists that it is written for everybody. An early input to Arctic democracy, perhaps? The Black Death wiped out nearly seventy per cent of the Norwegian population and caused a fundamental social, political, economic and cultural crises. The proud Viking country lay broken. The union with Denmark which started in 1380 produced few literary highlights. The Reformation and the Renaissance left Norway behind, only the major work of the Northern Norwegian writer Petter Dass, Nordlands Trompet (written in the 1670s), added a spark of midnight sun to the desolate literary landscape. Ludvig Holberg was born and grew up in Bergen but later lived in Copenhagen. His most memorable comedies, Jeppe paa Bierget (1722), Erasmus Montanus and Den Stundesløse (The Restless One) are still performed. He encouraged Norwegian independence. Johan Herman Wessel wrote Kierlighed uden Strømper (Love without stockings), 1772, and the play is still performed today. On the official visit to Denmark of H.M. King Olav V, a gala performance, at the invitation and in the presence of the Queen of Denmark, was given in his honour at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, on 12 September 1974. I was there, in tails (and stockings) of course. The nineteenth century introduced a political and cultural renewal. After the dissolution of the union with Denmark and the creation of the Constitution in 1814 a new national Norwegian literature emerged inspired by the European Romantic movement and the poetic realism of Fichte, Schlegel, Novalis, Kleist, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Hugo. Inspiration also came from Homer, Horace, Snorre, Rousseau, Voltaire, Herder and Shakespeare.

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Henrik Wergeland was the new torchbearer, the patriot for a creative expansion of national literature. The central work is the extensive poem Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias (Creation, Man and Messiah), 1830, highlighting the power of nature as symbols of cosmic energy. It was completed on 17 May 1830. Wergeland believed literature had a national responsibility and held the power to define and advance the freedom of the new Norwegian society. His sister, Camilla, wrote about the state and fate of women in Norway and her main work, the novel Amtmandens Døtre (The Governor’s Daughters), is about women’s rights and their freedom to choose in love and life. It was no other than Henrik Ibsen who accompanied Camilla to her 80th birthday celebration dinner. She was in love with another writer of this period, the professor of philosophy, Johan Welhaven, a key opponent of Wergeland who had spent time in France, Germany and Italy and highlighted Norwegian literature as part of Danish and European culture. The contention between the Patriots and the Intelligentsia in the nineteenth century remains and makes intelligible the paradox that we said no to the EC and then to the EU but awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace to the EU. Wergeland and Welhaven share the limelight and Askeladden, the Mountain King and Peer Gynt are on the stage in supporting roles. Peer Gynt was premiered on 24 February 1876 with original music from Edvard Grieg. It was last staged at the Nationaltheater in September 2015. The fairy tales from Asbjørnsen and Moe were published in the 1840s. The Norwegian folk and fairy tales, seemingly so very national, are in fact very cosmopolitan and influenced by Arabic, Indian and Greek motives and by Grimm’s tales. The language debate was intimately linked with the independence movement and in 1885 the Storting proposed to

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make the ‘Norwegian people’s language’ known as nynorsk, equal to bokmål (derived from Danish). The new language was gradually introduced in schools and obtained equal status. Ivar Aasen and Aasmund Olafsson Vinje were writers in the forefront of the development of this new and second Norwegian language. Vinje introduced the concept tvisyn, duality, an ironic, ambivalent view of life, ‘to cry with one eye and laugh with the other’. A new realism inspired by Balzac, Flaubert, Dumas and Zola entered the literary scene. Georg Brandes argued that the proof of living literature was its ability to debate problems. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was in the vanguard of the new generation moving from romanticism to realism as were Alexander Kielland and Jonas Lie. ‘To lift reality from the realities - that is art’, said Lie. At school we were always reminded that de fire store (the big four) in Norwegian literature were Ibsen, Bjørnson, Kielland and Lie. Norway did not develop a theatrical history during the Danish period and Holberg had his plays performed in Copenhagen.The Christiania Theater developed as the main stage in the capital after 1837 but was in a constant conflict between Danish and the emerging Norwegian stage plays, which also demanded more Norwegian actors. A first performance of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt was staged in Oslo in 1876. Norway finally had its National Theatre in 1899 opposite the first University completed in1811. Allow me to quote a stanza from the poem ‘Metope’ by Olaf Bull: Jeg tenker paa kvelder som denne, jeg ikke faar lov til at leve – paa modne marker, som bruser av korn, uten mig! Paa rørende, lette smaating: Aks som knækkes, veier i sjøen, bleke seil derute, bølger, som strømmer mot stranden uten mig!

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Hverdagen, ven, som mildt blir ved bak graven, tænker jeg paa, og alle de dype, blaa, kommende kvelder her i sommerhaven, uten mitt sind mot dit, tænker jeg på.15

He simply recalls the eternal truth that what we hold most precious must end, perhaps not as brilliantly as Shakespeare’s, we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep, but his line the deep, blue, future evenings here in the summer garden, without my mind against yours, I think about is not unworthy of Shakespeare’s company. Den lange, lange Sti over Myrene og ind i Skogen hvem har trukket op den? Manden, Mennesket, den første som var her. Det var ingen sti før ham....Manden kommer gaaende mot Nord.16 The Northern Norwegian Knut Hamsun, perhaps the greatest Norwegian writer after Ibsen, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1920 for Markens Grøde (The Growth of the Soil). The list is long and contains the novels Sult, Mysterier, Pan, Victoria, Benoni og Rosa, Landstrykere, August, Ringen sluttet, and his apologia Paa gjengrodde stier (On overgrown paths) and a few plays. He developed an early admiration for Germany and a resentment of England,17 sided with the Nazi movement, 15

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17

I think of evenings like this when I am no longer permitted to live – on ripe fields full of corn, without me! On touching, light minor things: straws that break, sea-ways, white sails out there, waves, that move towards the beach without me! The normal day, friend, that mildly remains behind the grave, I think about, and all the deep blue future evenings here in the summer garden without my mind against yours, I think about. The long, long path across the moors and into the wood - who has lined it up? The Man, the Human Being, the first one who was here. There was no path before him....the Man comes walking towards the North. Knut Hamsun, Markens Grøde, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo,1944. Ellen Sofie Lauritzen, ‘Da Oscar Wilde nesten leste Hamsun’, Morgenbladet, 34/2015.

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met Hitler and even wrote a eulogy at his death. Hamsun’s political choice is both a paradox and a tragedy and led to his alienation from society, but a splendid literary centre has been dedicated to him at Oppeid north of the Arctic Circle. The first to translate one of his books Sult (Hunger) into English, Mary Chavelita Dunne, was a great admirer of his work and she had also fallen for him, but the early translations of his work were below par and his success in England and in the USA remain limited. Perhaps the big four should include Hamsun and become the big five? Indeed to be more accurate we should be referring to the big two, that is Ibsen and Hamsun in Norwegian literature? Sigrid Undset also obtained the Nobel Prize for literature eight years after Hamsun for her triology Kristin Lavransdatter. Her work focuses particularly on the problems for women in society. The work of Arnulf Øverland, Sigurd Hoel, Tarjei Vesaas, Haldis Moren Vesaas, Aksel Sandemose, Johan Borgen and Nordahl Grieg also belong to our literary canon. Grieg was (like the author) a scholar at Wadham College, Oxford. No comparison. Karl Ove Knausgård’s autobiographical novel, Min kamp, in several volumes, created wide interest and debate. It is an interesting paradox that modern Norwegian writers, more than their Nordic compatriots, have reached a large world readership in this century. The striking example is Jostein Gaarder’s Sofies verden (1991), translated into fifty languages, selling thirty million copies and creating an impressive number of stage performances. It is an introduction to the history of philosophy and ethics, a dialogue between Sophie and a teacher about the mysteries of life. Åsne Seierstad’s Bokhandleren i Kabul, (2002) became an international success. Jan Fosse, honoured as the new Ibsen, obtained great acclaim for his play Shadows (2006).

Chapter 8

The Other Arts Y Edvard Munch’s SKRIK (Scream), 1893, without the definite article in Norwegian, is arguably the most famous image left to the world by Norway. He gave it a German title Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature). He was our greatest painter and his reputation remains and grows. He created a synthesis of life, pessimistic and deterministic. Livsfrisen (the life frieze), the collection of twenty-two pictures, is seen as a poem of life, death and love, the life of the soul. The frieze centres around eroticism and death; the eternal pictures Skrik, Desire, Jealousy, Vampire and Madonna are found in this series. After Scream he let the Sun in and in other paintings moved away from such melancholy images to a brighter life and lighter landscapes. The central mural in the Aula at the University of Oslo, presents the Sun as the central motif and the lateral panels are called History and Alma Mater. In the treatment of the big and sensitive issues of life he apparently felt close to Henrik Ibsen, his preferred writer and inspiration, and he created outstanding portraits of him sitting in Grand Café.18 Norwegian painting had a revival in the 1820s beginning with Johan Christian Dahl who was appointed Pro18

Lars Roar Langslet, Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch, The National Library of Norway.

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fessor at the Academy of Art in Dresden in 1884. Painters like Thomas Fearnley, Peder Balke, Adolph Tidemand, Hans Gude, Christian Krohg, Lars Hertervig, Frits Thaulow, Erik Werenskiold (cf his outstanding portrait of Henrik Ibsen) and Nikolai Astrup,19 lead the way for Edvard Munch who had his international breakthrough at the 1892 Berlin exhibition. The abstract and non-figurative painter, Jacob Weidemann, was inspired by Norwegian nature, leaves, moss, heather, branches and stone, as his titles confirm. In sculpture the outstanding figure is Gustav Vigeland. He worked against the odds because he did not have a Norwegian sculptural tradition to build on. It was a struggle for existence but he believed in his own talent. Like Hamsun he wandered the streets of the capital, and, as he wrote in his notebook, waiting to be discovered, to be declared as a genius - and he was. He ‘stormed at life’ and created The Fountain, The Monolith, The Wheel of Life and the fifty-eight bronze figures and four dragon-groups sited in the Frogner Park in Oslo. He also made busts of Ibsen, Bjørnson and Munch and statues of Wergeland, Camilla Collett, Rikard Nordraak and the mathematician, Niels Henrik Abel. Arnold Haukeland’s abstract and non-figurative work has been highly appreciated. The stainless steel sculpture Air at the University of Oslo (at Blindern) is a fine example. Edvard Grieg belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century. His music is loved all over the world. Grieg’s international reputation was secured with a series of London concerts in 1888. He towers above the rest but Rikhard Nordraak, Ole Bull, Halfdan Kjerulf, Johan Svendsen, Johan Halvorsen, Fartein Valen and Harald Sæverud are not unworthy of his company. Kirsten Flagstad was our distinguished operatic soprano. Norwegian folk-music inspired the composers. 19

An exhibition of his work opened at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 5.ii.16

Chapter 9

The Nobel Peace Prize Y Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a dedicated student of chemistry who focused on the development of explosives. In his lifetime he established ninety armaments factories. A French obituary simply wrote le marchand de la mort est mort at his death in 1896. It is unfair and misunderstood. Nobel was a distinguished scientist who devoted himself to find safer ways of producing and applying nitroglycerine which had been discovered in 1847. He lost his young brother in a nitroglycerine explosion in 1864 and focused on improving the stability and safety of explosives. He succeeded with the introduction of dynamite in 1867. Perhaps paradoxically to many, Nobel was a believer in pacifism and in his will he dedicated the main part of his estate to the creation of five Nobel prizes, in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. Nobel’s friendship with the Austrian peace activist Bertha von Suttner may have influenced his decision to include peace. As the literary prize was to be given to work expressing an ideal philosophy the word ideal came to be interpreted as idealistic by the Swedish Academy and hence both Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy were excluded from the literary prize while Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson received it in 1903. Bjørnson was a peace campaigner and it is possible that he was one of the strong influences on Nobel’s decision to

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honour Norway with the administration of the Peace Price, given to a Committee of five members chosen by Parliament. The Norwegian Parliament was active in the InterParliamentary Union in the attempt to suggest mediation and arbitration in conflict situations. It was also a gesture to the union partner, perhaps less burdened by military traditions and armament than Sweden. Norway received an unexpected and challenging gift which would enhance her international standing and prestige. The Times editorial of 15 March 2015 referred to the granting of the Nobel peace prize to President Obama in 2009 as ‘patently absurd only a few months after he had taken office, a piece of political grandstanding in opposition to George W. Bush’.20 It was argued that a more selective approach, not routinely every year, would help to restore lost prestige for the prize. The prize had been given previously to three American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, one Vice President, Al Gore, and to two US Secretaries of State, Cordell Hull and Henry Kissinger. It is fair to say that the United States together with the United Kingdom, France and Germany are well represented among laureates and on the whole European countries were in the lead until the 1970s when winners from Argentina, North Vietnam, Japan, the Soviet Union, Egypt, Israel, India, Mexico, South Africa, Costa Rica, Burma, Guatemala, Palestine, East Timor, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Ghana, Iran, Kenya, Bangladesh, China, Liberia, Yemen and Pakistan entered the stage. The EU received the honour in 2012. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Nations, the UN and the Secretary General, Kofi Annan and organizations under the UN, have all been included. On the list of laureates we find Fridtjof Nansen, Carl von Ossietzky, Martin Luther King, Albert Schweitzer, Mother 20

See also Geir Lundestad, Fredens sekretær, Kagge, 2015.

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Theresa, Dag Hammarskjöld, Nelson Mandela and Willy Brandt.The inclusion of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin,Yasser Arafat, Lê Duc Tho, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Liu Xiaobo was very controversial. They did not accept the prize, responding that peace had not been achieved in Vietnam. Mahatma Gandhi, Elanor Roosevelt, U Thant, Václav Havel, and Pope John Paul did not receive the honour and the omission of Mahatma Gandhi has been deeply regretted. The Secretary of The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad, said in 2006: ‘The greatest omission in our 106year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace Prize, whether the Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question.’ When the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that it was ‘in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi’. More than one hundred laureates later, I would argue that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has mastered an often explosive political challenge and decision with great insight, independence and courage and enhanced the reputation of Norway as a global player for peace in the process. Great credit for this must go to Geir Lundestad, the Secretary of the Committee and Director of the Nobel Institute, 1990– 2014. Alfred Nobel could hardly have foreseen that this prize, compared with the other four, would reach such high attention level and prestige. How Sweden would love to be in charge of this prize as well!

Chapter 10

Defence in Nato Y A strong defence was seen as a key policy for Norway after the Second World War, together with support for the United Nations established in 1945, electing the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, as its first Secretary General. During the war Lie had begun a re-evaluation of our foreign policy, turning away from the neutrality position of former Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht to a policy of close cooperation with Great Britain and the USA. The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 made Stalin an ally in the war and Norway was determined to continue a good relationship with Moscow in a bridge building role between East and West. A superpower conflict would inevitably involve the northern areas, not least North Norway. Soviet forces had liberated the northern counties in 1945 but had withdrawn. In 1945 the Soviet Union opened a KGB office in their embassy in Oslo and the aim was to develop contacts with politicians, Foreign Ministry employees, press and media and recruit agents in a secret war. Vasilij Mikrokhin’s handwritten archive indicates that they had some success. Oslo was interesting for Moscow as a window to Washington, London, Bonn and Brussels and the KGB succeeded in securing at least five agents during the Cold

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War, two in the government and three in the Foreign Ministry.21 Halvard Lange replaced Trygve Lie as Foreign Minister and it soon became clear that Norway could no longer simply play the role of mediator and arbitrator. East Europe had fallen to the Soviet Union in domestic and foreign policy and become communist regimes.The fate of Czechoslovakia in 1948 made a deep impression in Norway. Western countries formed a defence alliance, the Western Union (absorbed into NATO), in the same year and the idea of creating a Scandinavian Defence Alliance was discussed, but it soon became clear that it would not be powerful enough. Sweden remained neutral, Norway and Denmark then started defence negotiations with the western powers at the beginning of 1949. Immediately, the Soviet Union warned the Norwegian Government against the Atlantic Treaty, referred to their common border in the north and demanded to know if Norway intended to join and establish military bases for allied forces. Norway replied that it was investigating the matter, but confirmed that it would not allow the establishment of foreign bases and storage of atomic weapons. In a new Note, Moscow suggested a non-aggression pact but Norway turned this down as superfluous and repeated the non-base policy. The Labour Party recommended membership in NATO, it was accepted by the Storting and Norway became a member in 1949. The spending per capita on the military in Norway had been the highest in Europe, and the seventh highest in the world during the Cold War, but is Norway’s defensive power adequate today? Are we motivated for armed conflict? Our 21

Mitrokhin was the chief archivist of KGB, responsible for moving 300,000 secret files to a new site near Moscow. In the process he copied some of the information by hand and it was later given to MI6. See Dagbladet, 11. and 23.8.14

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defence expenditure did not meet the NATO requirement of two percent of GDP in 2017. The initial military service of sixteen months during the Cold War is no longer compulsory. Is the restructuring of the armed forces leading to a better system and improved reaction time? Such questions occupy our politicians and military leaders. NATO and the EU are only as good as the defensive capability of each member state. Norway’s former Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, was appointed Secretary General of NATO in 2014. Norwegian armed forces were attached to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, military units have been deployed in Iraq and to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. Norway’s is not among the 113 signatories to the Vienna declaration of 2014 to prohibit nuclear weapons. The essential political argument is that atomic weapons are part of the strategy and security guarantee of the NATO alliance. Norway as a member cannot on the one hand support the nuclear strategy and at the same time work against it. It would weaken Norway’s credibility inside and outside the organization and would seem unwise, considering the security situation. The early Norwegian reservation not to have NATO nuclear weapons placed inside its territory remains however. Norway is an atomic power only by NATO association. Seventy years after the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August), 1945, the world has about 16,000 nuclear weapons divided between nine atomic powers, USA, UK, France (maintains the independence of NATO of its nuclear deterrent), Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea. The USA and Russia maintain over ninety per cent of the total. It is believed that about two thousand of these weapons are at the highest preparedness at all times.22 The nightmare scenario is nuclear weapons in the 22

Elida Høeg, ‘Farligst, men ikke forbudt’, Morgenbladet, 30/15.

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hands of terrorist organizations, signifying nothing except a death culture. Russia has held military exercises explicitly occupying North Norway as one of the front-line states23and is set to defend its interests in the near abroad, cf. Ukraine. A rehearsal for the invasion of North Norway was part of the big Russian military exercise (33,000 troops) in March 2015. A status report in 2017 by Brigadier-General Aril Brandvik indicates the weakness of our land forces. Russia has military superiority in the Arctic and spends more than four percent of GDP on defence. The new Jason-class and Borej-class submarines of the Northern Fleet demonstrate superior Russian military power, for good measure Borej (Boreas) means North Wind. Norway has responded by increasing its own submarine patrols to monitor the Russian presence. The strategic development makes Norway and particularly Svalbard vulnerable and isolated. The statues of Lenin in Pyramiden and Barentsburg and the Russian Consulate demonstrate staying power. Svalbard Airport, opened in 1975, also benefits Russia. The NATO summit in Warsaw in July 2016 decided to send 4000 extra troops to Poland and the Baltic states. NATO has established small headquarters, mobilizing units, in the former East block countries, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Rumania and generally NATO has increased its rapid reaction forces.The first part of a new NATO-operated missile defence shield has been opened at bases in Romania and Poland. Britain has increased the naval capacity and deployment of NATO in the Baltic and the North Atlantic to face Russian expansionism. The threat from ISIS, the war in Ukraine and the immigration crisis imply a different security situation for NATO and the EU. Terrorists also migrate. The digital world is a new challenge for the secret intelligence services and MI6 is being reinforced. 23

Reported by Cepa (Center for European Policy Analysis)

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It came to light in 2015 that less than half of the populations of the NATO countries would be prepared to support military action against Russia to defend an ally, Poland or the Baltic States, should Russia be tempted to do a Ukraine on them. The support for military intervention, as opposed to economic countermeasures, is lowest in Germany. Polls indicate that Germans would be reluctant to come to the aid of one of the Baltic states if it came under Russian aggression. The head of the Norwegian armed forces, General Odin Johannessen, has made plain that the challenges have come closer, ‘we have to be prepared to fight with words and actions and if necessary with arms to defend the country and the values we have in common’.24 Britain has confirmed that security will be indivisibly linked with the European Defence Agency after Brexit. A closer NATO-EU strategic relationship may be evolving and Norway seeks to draw the attention of security cooperation to the northern flank. Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty concerns the security of the North Atlantic area and states that ‘the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all’. Would a Russian occupation of Svalbard/Bjørnøya release NATO’s Article V when the islands are Norwegian only by international treaty although they are in the North Atlantic? The Secretary General of NATO would not say if an attack on the US territory of Guam would trigger the article.25 Membership of the EU would strengthen our defence of the Cold Rim, Svalbard. Military leaders argue that NATO lacks an effective plan to defend Europe from a surprise Russian attack. The Cold War has been replaced by a more 24 25

Speech at the Oslo Militære Samfund, 1.ii.16 BBC, Marr Show, 10.9.17

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complex security pattern and a divided, unprepared, NATO and Europe?26 Putin has become the four elements of Russia and compensated the inevitable economic and social decline of his country after the oil boom with spending on defence. He has 330,000 troops stationed on his western flank, placing nuclear weapons at the Russian enclave Kaliningrad, between Lithuania and Poland. The new Russian RS-28 Sarmat nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile is the Leader’s pride and joy. Investment in defence would advance different industries and technologies he believes. NATO had been slow to react but decided to support the south-eastern flank in a defensive and proportionate way adding an air, land and naval presence and deployment to all three Baltic states and Poland. US troops were to be stationed in Norway. At the NATO-summit in Brussels on 25 May 2017 President Trump highlighted that only five of the twenty-eight NATO members were paying the agreed two per cent of GNP on defence. Norway is not one of the five. He failed to endorse the mutual commitment of Article V.

26

See statements of General Sir Richard Barrons, The Times, 19.9.16, General Sir Richard Shirreff and Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, The Times 20.9.16.

Chapter 11

The Eternal Half European? Y In his state-of-the-union address on 13 September 2017 the President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, reflected on the future status of the EU, a merging of the President of the European Council and the President of the Commission towards a unitary state with a single president and currency. But the challenge of terrorism made France and Germany suggest passport border controls, to restrict free movement and suspend the Schengen area, for a period of years, for security reasons. As a fresh-faced diplomat in Brussels in 1972 I worked enthusiastically for Norwegian membership in the European Community (EC), arguably a more appropriate and realistic name than European Union. The concept conveyed what I understood the European future to be, a better integrated Community of nations and not a union of states like the US. ‘Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.’27 The union dimension so soon introduced, a federalist and euro-perspective, led to a counter-revolution in Europe, made explicit in 2014–17. It created Brexit. The French National Front founded in 1972 27

The Schuman Plan, 1950.

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(by Jean-Marie Le Pen and taken forward by his daughter Marine) won the French poll in the European election in May 2014. Anti-EU parties in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, gained ground. The referendum in the UK was held on 23 June 2016 and gave a majority for leaving the union. Britain had promoted the enlargement of the EU after the fall of the Berlin Wall but was leaving the EU because of immigration, the border free Europe seemed no longer free. In all the member nations a clear anti-EU voice was heard and a strong opposition was in place inside the EU-Parliament. It is a warning shot, indeed a deep humiliation, that the splendid European idea can be so demonstrably challenged even in France, the very founding nation, and lead to a British departure after forty-three years as a leading member. Brexit ‘was caused by the impatience, highhandedness and inflexibility of European imperial ambition’.28 At the EU-summit in Bratislava on 16 September 2016 the Visegrad Group (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia) argued that Brexit was a new point of departure to reform and change the perception and reality of the Union, a new process to preserve the national cultures and identities in European integration. Albion’s exit from the EU means that Norway’s continued relationship with Britain and Europe has to be redefined. Brexit is seen as a test and a warning of a lack of European political identity, a time of crises for the European community idea. In her Brexit speech of 17 January 2017 the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, made clear that she did not even seek (a Norwegian type) part-membership solution in the EU but a departure from the single market. However, the elections in France and Germany in 2017 gave support for the European idea and halted the disintegration.The new French President, 28

Nigel Biggar, ‘Europe’s imperial ambitions led to Brexit’, The Times, 4.9.17.

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Emmanuel Macron, is a determined European and the reelection of Angela Merkel in Germany strengthened the central axis. The new course for Europe, a revival and re-launch, the ‘historic reconstruction’ of a stable union against the populist surge, depended on a strong Franco-German alliance. In a speech in Bavaria on 28 May 2017 Angela Merkel made plain that the traditional links with the US and Britain had changed, ‘we must fight for our own future, as Europeans, for our destiny’. The disastrous general election for Theresa May perhaps modified her focus on a hard Brexit. In an interview John le Carré made plain that ‘I despise the whole Brexit operation…one government after another blamed Europe for its own failures because they never invested in the concept of a united Europe.’29 Russia’s strategic goal is to weaken the EU and the anti-European articles published by Russian media before the Brexit vote had a strong impact. In a 1981 study I argued for the concept of neo-pluralism, as a political-institutional definition for the Community, promoting the individual nation state as the permanent factor, what Margaret Thatcher called ‘a partnership of nations’ enhancing ‘a lively and energetic Europe’. The federalist extravaganza was not understood, in time. Let it be renamed, reformed and rebuilt as The European Community. I would suggest that we must renew, recreate the idea of community and in that process also rename, recall and restore the concept. Then we would have historic reconstruction. The individual nation state must have the prominent place in the integrated system and be the key political element.30 Then we encourage liberal values, without it we get narrow nationalism and populism. Language and name matter. Branding 29

30

Bryan Appleyard, ‘In from the cold war’, The Sunday Times, Culture, 3.9. 2017. Nils-Johan Jørgensen, Norge mot Europa? EF’s utvikling og norsk Europapolitikk etter folkeavstemningen, forlaget europa, 1982, 99–159.

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matters, language shapes how a concept, idea or belief is seen and understood. Both the brand and the language of the EU lacked credibility. It lost the sense of European community in a race for federal union and created a crisis of legitimacy. The cultural identity and institutions of the sovereign nation must remain. Why not take the idea forward? Germany may not support it, at first, but other member nations, including France, may, and, Norway might, finally, fully connect? The Paris Summit of 1972 introduced the concept European Union. Leo Tindemans was given the task of defining the meaning of union and he submitted the report of 29 December 1975: Vous m’avez confié la tâche de définir ce qu’il y avait lieu d’entendre par le concept d’Union Européenne. It was the fundamental mistake to accept the federal word Union because it unwittingly created an image, a perspective, of a future United States of Europe. The point, often conveniently forgotten or ignored, is that European Union from the beginning was a neutral and flexible idea for European integration. Edward Heath called it ‘the community of the peoples and for the peoples of Europe’, Margaret Thatcher insisted that Great Britain could play a role in developing Europe and Tony Blair said it was ‘a union of values, of solidarity between nations and people’. The Single European Act of 1987 amended the Treaty of Rome and the aim was to create the single internal market. The common economic and monetary union was confirmed by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. The Constitutional Treaty of 2004 was rejected and not ratified. It was followed by the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, mainly amendments to the original Rome Treaty and Maastricht Treaty. A security and defence document, based on the Lisbon Treaty, was discussed at the EU-Summit on 28 June 2016. The federalists and neo-functionalists continued to conceptualise a state model end product but the pluralists and functionalists still envisaged a community model where

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the individual nation is au premier rang. The temptation was to highlight the line ‘an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’ from the Rome Treaty to mean political union between the member states. But unity within Europe is not the same as a federal Europe. It seemed in 2017 that Europe did not wish to continue along that road. The sense that an unelected elite in Brussels gained too much power was against the very idea of European democracy. Indeed, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, made clear in the negotiations with the EU in 2016 that the union perspective was rejected by Britain: ‘I want to end Britain’s obligation to work towards an “ever closer union” as set out in the Treaty. It is very important to make clear that this commitment will no longer apply to the United Kingdom. I want to do this in a formal, legallybinding and irreversible way.’ Cameron wanted Britain to stay in a reformed EU, but the referendum capsized the process. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk gave his reply to Cameron on 2 February 2016: References in the Treaties and their preambles to the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe are primarily intended to signal that the Union’s aim is to promote trust and understanding among peoples living in open and democratic societies sharing a common heritage of universal values. They are not an equivalent to the objective of political integration. Therefore, the references to an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe do not offer a basis for extending the scope of any provision of the Treaties or of EU secondary legislation. They should not be used either to support an extensive interpretation of the competences of the Union or of the powers of its institutions as set out in the Treaties.

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He came very close to interpreting and accepting a pluralist spirit of community as a guiding ideal and he reflects Tindemans’ definition of 1972. We need a Community of shared democratic values and not an erosion of national parliamentary sovereignty. In that process Cameron wished to lead, not leave. The so-called Brexit campaign in Britain before the referendum made the point that the members of the EU had not been able to reform the European Union as Britain had wished and instead the policy had been deeper integration. The invitation to Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Turkey to become members of the EU added to the European confusion. Mischievously, President Putin asked on 17 June if Cameron had initiated the referendum to blackmail and scare the EU. Indeed, Cameron wanted a reassessment. The leading article in The Times five days before the referendum, entitled ‘Remaking Europe’, argued that the best outcome ‘would be a new alliance of sovereign EU nations dedicated to free trade and reform, led by Britain’. The European Community had created peace after two world wars and added democracy to Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and communism. The EU must be open to change and take control of its destiny. The British Commissioner, Lord Hill, made plain that the idea that the European project is always more integration had been widely abandoned. Even the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, had to admit that there was no support for further integration. The referendum in the United Kingdom was a warning sign confirming a growing opposition to the federal perspective in many member states. The so-called five presidents’ report last year set out longterm euro zone plans for a single treasury and binding rules on economic convergence. It is time to bury that idea and with it the whole concept of a European superstate. The relentless conveyor belt of treaties pushing Europe inch by

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inch in this direction – from Maastricht and Amsterdam to Nice and Lisbon – has to be switched off….Britain is best placed to stop a federalist lurch by remaining within the union. 31

The leader of SPD, Martin Schulz, suggested on 7 December 2017 to revive the idea of a constitution to create a federal EU, ‘to establish the United States of Europe’. The conflict between the desire for sovereignty, an open, flexible partnership, and closer economic integration and political union, remains. Norway would welcome and support a reform movement, an alliance and process of remaking the union as a community. But is renewal possible without Britain? It started well. The Roman left-wing politician, Altiero Spinelli, imprisoned by the Nazis, wrote the Ventotene Manifesto, Per un’Europa libera e unita, on cigarette paper in 1941 and got it smuggled out of prison. Norway joined NATO in 1949, the same year the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, like Spinelli, asked the fundamental question:What can we do about Germany? Jean Monnet answered with the word integration and he inspired and was the co-author of The Schuman declaration presented on 9 May 1950. Two years later, the Paris Agreement founded the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the beginning of the journey towards European Union. But where would Norway be in this process? The security question had been settled resolutely and quickly through NATO but would a European community idea find the same goodwill with the people, and if not why not? I met Monnet at a reception given by my ambassador, Jahn Halvorsen, in Brussels in 1972, just before the Norwegian referendum. Jean Monnet had backed the idea in the 1950s of a European Defence Community, as an alternative to NATO. 31

The Times, leading article, 21 June 2016.

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Faced with Brexit the EU has taken steps towards deeper military integration. The idea to create a common defence structure with headquarters in Brussels, to counter Russia, was relaunched and, ironically, the word Community is now maintained. Britain is opposed to the idea of replacing NATO as Europe’s primary security organization, but after Brexit the mood in France, and Germany, seems to be for more integration, including defence,32 in spite of Euroscepticism. The Messina Declaration of 3 June 1955 (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) believed that the establishment of a united Europe could be achieved through the development of common institutions, the fusion of national economies and the creation of a common market.This development seemed indispensable if Europe was to restore and preserve her standing, influence and prestige in the world. The Treaty of Rome was duly signed in 1957 and the European Economic Community (EEC) created seemed very attractive when Stortinget (Parliament), 113 to 37, authorized the Government to start negotiations for Norwegian membership in the EEC on 28 April 1962; the application was speedily delivered to Brussels. The clear parliamentary majority for this may perhaps at first seem surprising in the light of Norway’s recent independence of 1905 and our national pride after the Second World War, but it was linked to the Second World War, the Cold War, to NATO and the Atlantic bridge. Norway had joined the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) with Great Britain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark in 1960, but then Great Britain had decided to apply for membership in the EEC in July 1961. The idea of an Atlantic partnership seen from Washington was linked to a more united Europe, an EEC that would open the door to fuller Atlantic cooperation. Iacta 32

Cf. Jean-Claude Juncker’s speech to the European parliament, 14.9.16.

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alea est. Great Britain had pointed the way. Norway wished to be part of the European integration together with Britain. The single-minded focus on the nation state and nationbuilding gained a wider European perspective. Demonstrations against this policy appeared immediately. Foreign Minister Halvard Lange delivered the Norwegian application in Brussels in 1962, but President Charles de Gaulle stalled the approach to European enlargement in 1963 and again in 1967. Norway had a first and only contact meeting with the Council of Ministers of the EEC on 4 July 1962 and negotiations had not started when de Gaulle at his Press Conference of 14 January 1963 said Non to negotiations with Great Britain and by association also with Norway. Lord Privy Seal, Edward Heath, the British negotiator passionately declared: ‘We in Britain are not going to turn our backs on the mainland of Europe or on the countries of the Community. We are a part of Europe by geography, tradition, history, culture and civilization.’ This was not a unanimous decision of the six EEC countries, only a unilateral Gallic reaction, and formally the negotiations for membership had only been put on hold. But it probably ended Norway’s chance of membership as the political mood and priorities in Norway had changed by the time of our referendum in 1972. In the early 1960s it was part of security policy, NATO and the Atlantic Pact, in the early 1970s it was the economy, the protection of our agriculture and fisheries. Cod all. European cooperation had continued through the OEEC (1948), the Council of Europe (1949) and the ECSC (1952). The advisory Nordic Council for all five Nordic countries (1952) made important recommendations like passport union, a common labour-market and equal social rights. A separate Nordic Cultural Commission was attached to the Council. It set up regular meetings between the Nordic foreign ministers and between the defence ministers and

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other contacts. The Danish Prime Minister, Hilmar Baunsgaard, then (1968) suggested negotiations for a comprehensive Nordic economic cooperation (NORDØK), but de Gaulle’s departure from the political scene in 1969 opened the opportunity for our new application, submitted in Luxembourg on 30 June 1970. Negotiations for membership could finally start and the accession treaty was signed in Palais d’Egmont in Brussels on 22 January 1972 by Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli. I was First Secretary at the Norwegian Embassy in Brussels in 1972, involved in the negotiations and sitting behind my Foreign Minister Andreas Cappelen when he signed trade agreements with Austria, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland on behalf of Norway, indeed as a prospective new member of the EC, on 22 July in Palais d’Egmont. The recommendation for membership from our Foreign Affairs Committee to Parliament on 6 June 1972 argued that membership would be a natural continuation of the line of cooperation introduced after the Second World War. It would be both the right decision from a historic perspective and the necessary decision from a future perspective. It was essential for Norway’s foreign and security policy position. However, membership was rejected at the referendum held on 25 September 1972. ‘The battle is splitting families and breaking friendships. Whatever happens, the wounds will take a long time to heal.’33 The drama of the European debate and referendum in Norway in 1972 had been registered in Europe. Trygve Bratteli admitted to Willy Brandt before the referendum that he had never experienced a more incomprehensible political situation. The political compromise culture was broken by conflict. The real problems lay in a genuine sense of bewilderment; a feeling that this issue, while it would profoundly affect people’s future, was out of their hands and could 33

The Sunday Times, 10.9.1972

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not really be put back there any more than so much else of this modern trans-national, technocratic world could be brought back into manageable packages under visible democratic control.34 Willy Brandt revealed to Bratteli that President Pompidou had preferred it if Norway had followed the Swedish line in 1972 and stayed out, but he would not put spanners in the works and reject the Norwegian application. Brandt admitted that the fishery marketing system introduced by Brussels as part of the negotiation with Oslo was a serious mistake.35 The local communities in the north followed the cod, not the European community. They voted seventy per cent against membership. Pompidou was happy that they did. In his speech at the signing of the follow-up trade agreement between Norway and the European Communities in Brussels on 14 May 1973, Mr Hallvard Eika, Minister of Trade and Shipping, made the point that the decision taken by the Norwegian people in the referendum should not be interpreted as a rejection of European cooperation which had been and remained a cornerstone of Norwegian foreign policy. ‘Norway is pre-eminently a European country through the strong political, economic and cultural ties which link her to her European partners.’ Bratteli stated the day after the referendum in 1972 that the debate had given the population a political maturity that could be of benefit in the future. In 1972 a lot was made of the fact that Denmark held its referendum after Norway. If Denmark had gone first and secured a Yes as it did, it would be more likely, it was argued, that Norway, influenced by Denmark, would also have obtained a majority for membership. Perhaps, but it did not help to vote after Sweden and Finland had said yes in 1994. The process was repeated in 34 35

Gunnar Garbo, Til venstre for Venstre, Cultura, 1997, 160–91. Willy Brandt, Begegnungen und Einsichten, 1976, XI

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1994 and membership was again turned down in a referendum. Maturity? Norway became part of the sixteen-nation free-trade area, the internal market and then the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Schengen Area.This compromise, keeps Norway inside the single market, but outside the fish and farm policies and customs union.The EU influence on Norway is strong and the country has to pay about 26 billion Norwegian Kroner (approx. £2,400,000; €2,700,000) for 2014–21 to stay in the inner market. After the referendum in 1972 it was asked if Norway had come adrift in its foreign policy, departing from the European commitment and seeking to be a neutral intermediary and bridge builder between east and West, back to a kind of neutrality because we had no political voice in Europe, unlike Denmark, Sweden and Finland? The British Labour Party’s Nestor, Roy Hattersley, made the comment that the Norwegian EEA solution (half in and half out of the EU) may be appropriate for Norway but it would not be acceptable to the UK: ‘Half in and half out of Europe is a status for small countries happy to remain on the margin of big decisions.’ However, applying to be a member and negotiating twice surely do not indicate an eternal wish to be outside Europe? Moreover, is Norway a small country? True, the population is less than five million but the native landmass is close to four hundred thousand square kilometres and the surrounding sea, continental shelf and the Arctic region add a new influence and responsibility. Norway is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, the third largest gas exporter and the second largest fish exporter. Norway also has the world’s second largest State Pension Fund (SPU), an investment in over ten thousand companies in more than fifty countries. Is it appropriate then to be only half in Europe? The negotiations between the European Union and the USA to establish a transatlantic free-trade and investment

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agreement and partnership to further liberalize global trade by 2017 (TTIP) also affects Norway. The perspective may open positive possibilities for Norwegian seafood export but what would the new competition rules look like and how could Norwegian agriculture (traditional subsidies) and food industry fit in? Again, the problem and reality is that Norway does not have a seat at the table in these deliberations.36 The Norwegian Nobel-committee awarded the Peace Prize for 2012 to the European Union lest we forget the Rome Treaty of 1957, the reconciliation between France and Germany, peace in Europe, the victory over communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, German unification, democracy and extension to all of Europe.The hyperbole by Boris Johnson of 15 May 2016 that the European Union aimed to achieve the same as Hitler, only ‘by different methods’ is at best jingoistic. The European Union is arguably the most successful political cooperation ever constituted. From the original six countries, France,West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, it has grown to contain twenty-eight members, linking 450 million Europeans and creating the world’s greatest internal market. It has seen four enlargements and has been challenged to institutional rethinking. The German concepts Wiederherstellung and Wiederversöhnung together with Wiederaufbau and Wiedervereinigung used by Adenauer in his first government statement on 20 September 1949 indicate the new beginning for Germany and Europe, reflecting the renewal theme (apokatastasis) in European civilization. But in a key note speech of the Out of EU (Brexit) campaign, of 20 April 2016, the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, stated that Britain voting to leave the EU would be the beginning of ‘the democratic liberation of the whole continent’. Dangerous words. 36

See interview with the Norwegian minister for Europe, Vidar Helgesen, in Aftenoposten (Magasinet) 19.7.2014.

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A few years earlier, the Committee granted the Nobel peace prize to the UN to reflect Norway’s fundamental support for the global system, the international legal order, the strengthening of international legal concepts and rules, for International Law, again appropriately formulated by a Norwegian word, Folkerett (people’s right). Norway was a founding member of the UN in San Francisco.The legitimacy and legality of Norway’s extensive sea territories, of her wealth and international position, are anchored in the Law of the Sea and the UN Law of the Sea Convention. The irony of the Norwegian No, No endures. In 1973, the pro-Europeans warned the patriots in all parties against a new, obscure neutrality foreign policy, a drift away from Europe. The chance of political participation with Europe had been lost. I think the irony escaped the Norwegian patriots when the German Chancellor and the Danish Prime Minister in particular spoke up for Norway at the EC Summit in Paris in 1972. Denmark was now the voice of the Nordic countries in Europe and the voice of Europe in Norden. The Danish Prime Minister stressed the new Nordic responsibility for Denmark and considered it a particular duty to assist Norway outside the EC by a Danish Nordic and European foreign policy. Denmark would be the bridge, a continuation of its historic role, no less. Denmark established a separate division for Nordic cooperation in the Foreign Ministry and offered Norway and Sweden the opportunity of appointing a special contact at their respective embassies in Copenhagen for close contact with this office to look over the Danish shoulders into the EC. I was appointed to this position by my Foreign Minister, Knut Frydenlund. The Guardian (London) argued that Norway had indeed said no to membership, except to the Danes. Their sympathy and understanding for the plight of their Nordic neighbours was beginning to try the patience of the other EC partners and the new position in Copen-

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hagen was a perfect arrangement for Euro-watching (spying). The Community fears were that the Danes would go further than just keeping their neighbours in the picture and give away economic secrets and information on policy making within the EEC. Which could be, perhaps, too helpful to Norway in a renegotiation of entry, if and when that took place. Norway held an extra telephone receiver when Copenhagen spoke to Brussels. The historic humour is that the patriots who had said no to membership now had to accept Copenhagen as the link to Europe. It would take twelve years before we said no again, Gorbachev and Jeltsin entered, the cold war appeared to be over and the EEA solution for Norway seemed perfectly satisfactory. A lack of support for the EU was widespread not just in Norway but in the membership communities too.The patriots were delighted. But the Gorbachev spirit (glasnost and perestroika) and his Nobel Peace Prize suddenly seemed like a long time ago and along came Putin, Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. The Arctic became an even more central Russian priority. Perhaps Norway’s equally central High North foreign policy needed the EU more than ever? Security policy in the north would be the decisive factor in a future approach to EU membership: ‘The challenge which led to the creation of our Community was internal to Europe, but I believe that the challenges to which we will have to respond in the future will increasingly be external ones.’37 Prophetic. It seems that a majority of the Norwegian population stubbornly overlooks, disregards, the strategic and geo-political imperative for membership of a reformed Community in the twenty-first century, the added national security in an unpredictable and dangerous world. But a third EU application seemed very remote. The Progress Party is open to a future referendum on the EU but at least seventy per cent of 37

Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, Hamburg, 17.11. 1980.

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its voters are against membership anyway.The youth wing of the party took a definite and defiant stand against membership in 2014 and described the union as a political colossus, destroying values, growth and trade. We do not venerate our past history. We did not have a proud Middle Ages, Renaissance and ensuing centuries until 1905. The exception inside the diaspora was in 1814 when we successfully created the Constitution so revered today. Our proud history is rooted in the independent Viking past. The powerful and victorious word in the anti-EC alliance in 1972 and 1994 was selråderetten (the freedom of self-determination). It implied national independence and self-government as a defence of Norwegian values and traditions, evoking the ancient spirit of the Vikings. But the concept was as elusive as neutrality before 1940. The European Economic Area (EEA) agreement granted to us by a willing EU after 1994 implied acceptance and incorporation of seventy five percent of EU laws and regulations - without real influence. ‘It is therefore a paradox that selråderetten has become illusory under the very EEA-regime set to prevent that it would be lost in an EU membership.’38 Norway has a far higher level of EU immigration than Great Britain as a proportion of the population. The EU has with insight and determination added a foreign and security policy to its agenda in relation to Ukraine and Russia but Norway is not part of the decision-making process and can only accept the EU position. Considering where we are today in the EU, the lacklustre attitudes even in France, the old fear is now even stronger. It is the loss of autonomy: ‘Such a fear is quite realistic – how could the section of any nation-state’s population which senses a lack of real influence in the national political system possibly hope to prevent a still further decrease of its 38

Tore Grønlie, ‘EØS-EU-medlem uten medlemskap’, in Norges Historie, Universtetsforlaget, 2013, 451.

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influence in a supranational organisation?’39 The editorials in The Times 27 and 28 May 2014 make the important point that Europe must do less, that the European election was a vote against a remote union and a drift towards more federal power, leading to a lack of legitimacy. It is an argument for change. What the Europeans wanted to prevent, a weaker Europe, the federalist insistence and insensitivity has created. ‘Bossy, flabby, broken-backed and pompous, the European Union has a big yellow streak running right through it.’40 As previously mentioned, a readjustment, a renewal in spirit, renamed The European Community, a pluralist community model, is perhaps the way forward. In his Berlin speech of 3 November 2015, George Osborne referred to the EU as a Wertegemeischaft (a community of values). A good name. 12 million Syrians were displaced by civil war and the Islamic State but giving unlimited access to the EU countries had become a threat to the union itself, maintaining deep splits and recriminations.The immigration pressures on the EU from 2015 exposed institutional shortcomings, arguments and chaos in defining and separating refugees from economic migrants. The open door policy of Germany was seen as a dramatic pull factor for migrants and Germany was accused of moral imperialism in pursuing this policy for the union. The original integration idea was free movement of labour, not of people. Norway accepted 1000 Syrian refugees for resettlement in Norway in addition to Norway’s annual UNHCR resettlement quota of approximately 1200 refugees. More importantly, Norway provided a total of NOK 850 million in humanitarian contribution to the refugees in Syria’s nearest countries, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. After the EU emer39

40

Robert J. Shepherd, Public Opinion and European Integration, Saxon House, 1975, 219. “The EU is doomed, whether we stay or go”, The Times, 27.6.15.

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gency summit on 23 September 2015 a deeply split Europe began to see the wisdom of the Norwegian approach of upgrading the centres for the Syrian refugees in the region rather than accepting an uncontrolled stampede of immigrants to Europe and the EU. The Norwegian Government then took the initiative to convene a new international donor conference for Syria, in London on 4 February 2016. Norway, the UK, Germany, Kuwait and the UN were joint hosts. Norway was the key player at this 70-nation Conference and the top donor (10 billion NOK). It is a support for the countries close to Syria to master the refugee impact. This is what the Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, said to NRK, 4 February: ‘The most important thing is for the [Syrian] opposition and the government to find a transitional agreement and form a government that can fight IS and secure a safe Syria. But we can’t allow children to lose their education and let people die of hunger on the way.’ The deal with Turkey at the EU-summit in Brussels on 7 March 2016 to stop the flow of migrants from Turkey to Greece was perhaps the beginning of a coherent response to the refugee crises? The refuge and terror crises in 2015 have created record support for the critics of massive immigration and inevitably for the dark blue political parties, the blue-blue as some commentators call them. It may be significant that the Norwegian Labour Party obtained just 30 per cent support in December 2015, having argued for an intake of ten thousand Syrians, while the two right wing parties, Høyre and Fremskrittspartiet (in government), recorded a ten per cent higher popularity than Labour. The dark blue parties had increased their share in fourteen European countries in 2015; apart from Norway also in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. It is an illiberal trend

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that hits at the very foundation of European democracy and unity. It may be argued that the rush for Union damaged the fundamental foundation of the European Community, not learning to walk before one could run. For France as the key founding member it is a fundamental humiliation. This is where Norway is: ‘Without a seat at the table, it is difficult to play a real part in decision-making...we are very closely integrated. Norway has incorporated more than 10,000 EU rules. But we do not have the right to vote in Europe.’41 Norway must apply the same free movement rules as the EU member states but without a vote on the rules. However, the EEA agreement states that Norway may take ‘appropriate measures’ for example to limit EU migration. Nearly eighty per cent of the total population is still Norwegian in 2017, defined as both parents being born in Norway, but the immigrant population has increased from just over four per cent in the early1990’s to more than sixteen per cent in 2017 and the largest group is from Poland. When Norway signed the trade agreement with the EC on 14 May 1973, having been beaten on the finishing line by Ola og Kari Nordmann to join the EC, the European Commissioner for External Relations, Winston Churchill’s sonin-law, Sir Christopher Soames, made this comment: The Norwegian referendum has perhaps served to remind us that Europe is still an imprecise idea and that as long as this is so public opinion can be expected to treat it on occasion with reservations.The Community exists to change the course of events and to establish the foundations for future peace and prosperity; and perhaps the very size of this undertaking has made it difficult to project the image of the Europe we are building as clearly as we would like. 41

Vidar Helgesen, Minister of EEA and EU affairs, 4.2.15.

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Is it still an imprecise idea? The forces of entropy in the EU, the decline into disorder and the lack of predictability, is a fundamental challenge to European leadership in Berlin, Paris and London. No country fears this state of affairs more than Norway. Paradoxically, Norway was perhaps in 2016 the most pro-European country. Prime Minister Cameron sought a reformed EU and warned against a Norwegian EEA solution. The highly respected German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, cautioned against an ‘arrangement’ outside the EU as Britain would be unable to negotiate a better trade agreement than the one granted to Norway. It was not such a good idea simply to pay to the EU and accept freedom of movement but not sit at the table when decisions are taken.‘That will not be a reasonable position for the UK.’42 Why is it for Norway? The Norwegian political elite and many of the newspapers are in favour of membership, but it has not (yet) gained popular support. It was asked during the referendum debate in 2016 if Great Britain would risk to challenge its forty-three year success story in Europe, to cut the links with the European project, close the bridge to the continent and abandon the leading role in the EU, perhaps to face economic and diplomatic eclipse. President Obama was exuberant when he stated that the EU did not moderate British influence, it magnified it. He made an essential point. The United Kingdom is Europe’s second largest economy, the fifth largest in the world, Europe’s biggest defence power, the fifth biggest in the world, the second most powerful member of NATO after the USA and has one of the five permanent seats in the UN Security Council. A British exit would be an abdication of strategic responsibility and demonstrate a divided and disunited Europe. Wolfgang Schäuble also gave notice 42

Speech at the annual conference of the British Chamber of Commerce, London, 3.3.16.

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that without Britain Europe would be less stable and more volatile. It was argued by former top British military leaders, including chiefs of the defence staff, that Britain would be safer from the grave security threats and challenges facing the world, the instability in the Middle East, the rise of Daesh and the resurgent Russian nationalism and aggression, to remain as a member of the EU. It supported Cameron’s statement that in a difficult and dangerous world Great Britain would be more prosperous and secure in a reformed EU, to be part of a collective voice in foreign and security policy added influence on the global stage.This is also true for Norway. We would be stronger as a member of the EU - and the future Community would be stronger with Norway as a fully participating member. The EU and Norway would both be different today if Norway had become a member in1972. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli both saw the wisdom of Norwegian membership in the new European Community. The Norwegian Government’s work programme for cooperation with the EU in 2016 is a confirmation of our dependence on Europe in foreign and security policy: In recent years, the EU has consolidated its position as a key security policy actor, in part through its response to Russia’s violations of international law in Ukraine and in its role in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, the mutual defence clause (Article 42.7 of the EU treaty) was invoked for the first time. Dialogue with the EU on foreign and security policy is becoming more and more important for Norway, and the European dimension will be a priority area in the new white paper on foreign and security policy that the Government is planning to present in the Autumn of 2016.The Government is also seeking to contribute Norwegian perspectives to the

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work on an EU global strategy on foreign and security policy, which is due to be completed in the Summer of 2016. Norway’s input will focus on the EU’s Arctic policy, cooperation with Russia and cooperation between the EU and NATO. Norway’s efforts are designed to promote close and effective defence and security cooperation, in which the EU and NATO complement reinforce each other. The Government will therefore continue its cooperation with the EU on the development of defence-related products, with the aim of enabling the EU to become a more independent and strategically relevant actor.We also want to participate in the EU’s programme on defence-related research and development. For Norway, it is particularly important that the EU emphasises the importance of the Law of the Sea as the binding legal framework for the Arctic, and that priority is given to finding a good balance between conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

The terrorist threat was highlighted in the programme as an essential topic for closer coordination: The Government will intensify cooperation with EU institutions and individual member states to address the threats posed by terrorism and transnational organised crime. This ranges from measures to combat the recruitment of foreign terrorist fighters and efforts to improve border checks of people entering the Schengen area to measures to improve internet security and combat cyber crime. It also includes the exchange of information between the police and prosecuting authorities in different countries. The terrorist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen last year and the significant number of thwarted terrorist attacks in several European countries have further highlighted the importance of this cooperation. We will follow the EU’s revision of the framework decision on combating terrorism closely.

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The brutal attack at Brussels Zaventem international airport and Maelbeek metro station on 22 March 2016 simply confirmed this priority policy. The Minister for Europe, Elisabeth Aspaker, stated immediately on 22 March that the attacks in Brussels would have a definite influence on Norwegian policy. The threat of terror was coming closer and closer to the High North. Isis is a terrorist network that does not rely on a hierarchical structure. It is argued that it takes a network like the EU to defeat a network of Islamist extremism.43 The former heads of MI5 and MI6 have warned that Britain leaving the EU would upset the geopolitical stability of the European continent, reduce the protection against terrorism and the resurgent, unpredictable, Russia. Putin supported Brexit. Data sharing is essential. The EU and NATO play interwoven roles in security.44 In a major speech on security 9 May Cameron asked if we can be sure that peace and stability are assured on the European continent and in leaving the EU Britain added to that uncertainty. Former US secretaries of state and defence and secretaries-general of NATO came out in strong support of continued British membership of the EU. Britain’s EU departure letter, allowed under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, signed by Prime Minister Theresa May, was handed to the President of the European Council on 29 March 2017. Alea iacta est. One challenge is that Britain may be marginalized on the world stage after the Brexit decision and the special relationship with the USA, the role of the Atlantic bridge to Europe is reduced. This has consequences 43

44

Niall Ferguson, ‘It takes a network to defeat a network, so our best weapon against Isis is the EU’, The Sunday Times, 27.03.16. ‘The EU can’t dictate to us on security but staying in it can keep us safer’, The Sunday Times, 8 May, 2016; John Scarlett, ‘Leaving the EU puts our security at risk’, The Times, 11 June 2016.

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for Norwegian foreign and security policy. Brexit was an emotional and irrational alternative. Even the question of Britain’s status and leading position in NATO came up as a result of Brexit. The rank of deputy supreme allied commander in NATO, held by Britain since 1951, it was argued, should go to a NATO and EU member: France sensed an opportunity. The good arguments for Norwegian membership in 1972 and the good arguments for continued British membership in 2016 were lost in referenda. Launching her presidential campaign on 5 February 2017 the National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, called the EU a failure, but the pro-European, Emmanuel Macron, won the election convincingly. The party programme of the Norwegian Labour Party has stated that membership in the EU would be an advantage for Norway but this sentence is omitted in the new programme of 2017. Has the belief in Europe so eloquently expressed by Bratteli evaporated and been replaced by - nothing? Churchill, like Bratteli, was a pro-European. The former British deputy prime minister, Lord Heseltine, warned that Britain had abandoned the opportunity to influence Europe and handing more power and influence to Germany. Germany lost the war but Britain had given Germany the opportunity to win the peace. The eurozone grew faster than the US economy in 2016. Tony Blair, back on the stage, argued in his speech on 17 February 2017 that leaving the EU was not inevitable for Britain. This issue was the single most important decision the country had taken since the Second World War and it would be wrong to shut down the debate. It was the British people’s right to change their mind. Do the Norwegians have the same right? If, as argued, the negotiations between Britain and the EU are the major diplomatic challenge in modern British history what did two Norwegian negotiations and referenda do to our identity and identification with Europe?

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The EU needs renewal and reform to become (again) a European Community and not a federalist union à la JeanClaude Juncker: If Europe fails to rise to the challenge, it is hard to have any confidence that the EU will be around to mark the Treaty of Rome in another 60 years, or even 20. The lessons to be drawn from this year’s elections in Europe is that popular discontent persists and is largely justified. And unless the EU reforms, it will die.45

Britain and Norway as members would be key players in a new community reform process, as we were in 1972, but Britain is leaving and the support for membership in Norway seems less than twenty per cent in 2017. Still, it has become apparent that there is a generational divide over Brexit and British Youth are in favour of maintaining the membership link with Europe. It is also possible to detect a generational gap in Norway relating to political questions, including Europe.

45

Editorial, The Sunday Times, 19.iii.17.

Chapter 12

The Sea Y The International Lawyer, Jens Evensen, was handpicked by the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Halvard Lange (arguably the most internationally respected leader of our foreign service to date), to be the new head of the Ministry’s Legal Department in 1961. He had distinguished himself ten years earlier, in the case brought by Great Britain against Norway at the International Court of Justice concerning a disputed sea territory in the North Sea. Norway won the case and Evensen was rewarded with the St Olav’s Order by the King. His name started to grow. Norway proclaimed supremacy over the Continental shelf by Royal Decree on 31 May 1963 and a Law of 21 June confirmed the Norwegian state as the rightful owner of any natural resources within 200 nautical miles based on the middle line principle between the North Sea countries. Norway was the new sea owner and could give Norwegian and foreign companies access to exploration in the future. The Norwegian Vikings had occupied new, rich, submarine land as big as Norway itself in a daring raid, using a new and untried weapon in international law. During the hard discussions with Great Britain about the rights to the new riches The Observer wrote about this

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special Norwegian negotiator who descended from a long line of pirates. Jens enjoyed that. Norway had gained an advantage by measuring the middle line, not just from the coastline, but from the outer islands, rocks and skerries and getting acceptance for this ‘piracy’. It meant that Norway just secured Ekofisk and an important future field, Statfjord. The agreements with Great Britain and Denmark were completed in 1965 and a comprehensive Petroleum Law was introduced by Royal Decree on 25 September 1967, regulating the gathering storm of concessions and production. Then just before Christmas in 1969 the oil rig Ocean Viking hit the first jackpot in the Ekofisk field. Some Christmas present. The first, and by no means the last, oil. We had become the blue eyed Arabs of the North and the new sea imperialists, but Russia was waiting for us as we sailed against an easterly wind into the Barents Sea, holding rigs. After the No to membership in the EC in 1972, Evensen, as a known sceptic to Norwegian membership, was asked to lead the delegation to secure a trade agreement. As head of the Legal department he was given the rank of Ambassador and completed a satisfactory, but not very complicated, negotiation in Brussels. He was promoted to Trade Minister in the next two governments and appointed Law of the Sea Minister in 1974. He then negotiated the so called Grey Zone Agreement in the Barents Sea with the Soviet Union in 1978. Evensen was soon back in the Foreign Ministry as Special Adviser in International Law and held strong opinions about atomic weapons and atomic free zones. The new conservative government of 1981 clipped his wings. Then Arne Treholt, his personal secretary and close friend who had been part of Evensen’s delegation in Brussels, promoted as his deputy minister and a key participant in the Grey Zone negotiations with the Soviet Union, was unmasked as a Russian spy in 1984, a blow that

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Evensen never fully recovered from. Like Willy Brandt he had a spy as a close colleague. But that is another story. The Conservative Foreign Minister, Svenn Stray, wanted to get rid of Evensen and one way was to get him elected to the International Court of Justice. He succeeded. Evensen became a Judge in 1985. When we consider our massive wealth today we ought to remember the outstanding pirate of the 1960s. The early monastics wrote about the cunning Norwegian Vikings. He was one of them. Evensen was Wergeland and Welhaven, the anti-EU patriot and the international intellectual, Askeladden par excellence. Norway is the size of Japan, has less than five million citizens but the sea territory today is seven times larger than the land. As rich oilfields, Statfjord, Oseberg, Gullfaks, Troll, were discovered a new company, Statoil, was founded to monitor and master the black gold found not just in the North Sea, but, even more promising in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The oil and gas industry has played the vital role in the strong growth in the Norwegian economy since 1971 as Norway became a wealthy nation measured in GDP. For a period of fifteen years the oil price was over 100 USD per barrel. In 2014, the oil output amounted to 730 million barrels and the gas production was on the fast track. The discovery of an estimated billion barrels of crude oil in the Barents Sea and ninety billion barrels in the Arctic added to the optimism. Oil and gas created over fifty per cent of the value of our total exports and Norway became the biggest oil and gas producer in Western Europe, 1.8 million barrels a day. Lower oil prices after 2014 is a challenge to the adventure. The economy had become (too) dependent on oil? To control the revenue and the economy a special Oil Fund, Statens pensjonsfond, Utland (the Government Pension

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Fund, Global), was created to become the largest sovereign wealth fund of its kind in the world. The fund had reached nearly 400 billion GBP in 2014 because Norway spends only four per cent of the petroleum revenue domestically and instead invests in 8000 different companies world wide for future generations. An article in The New York Times of 17 June 2017 refers to the Norwegian paradox that Norway is both a climate leader and an oil giant. In 2017 the fund decided to abandon the holding in oil and gas companies, about six per cent of the overall portfolio. Oil is foreign affairs and a long affair with Russia. Norway is an Arctic nation and has developed an ambitious Arctic policy as a key foreign policy priority. Eighty per cent of the Norwegian sea territory lies north of the Arctic Circle and the same high percentage of maritime traffic in the Arctic passes through Norwegian waters. The Arctic may be icefree in a not too distant future. Ninety per cent of Norwegian export revenues come from offshore economic activities and Norway’s Arctic has obtained the highest economic growth. The region can even look forward to a seven per cent future export growth. The Law of the Sea is the key legal framework and the Arctic Council is the central institution. The Chairmanship of the Arctic Council rotates every two years between the eight member states: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the USA. A ninth member, China, joined in 2015. The permanent secretariat for the Arctic Council is located in Tromsø. The history of constructive cooperation with Russia has been derailed: ‘Russia’s violations of international law in Ukraine have … affected our relations. Norway has implemented the same restrictive measures against Russia as the EU.’46 Norway and Russia share the responsibility 46

Vidar Helgesen, ‘Norway’s Arctic Policy’, Brussels Speech, 15.6.15

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for resource management of the world’s largest cod stock in the Barents Sea, producing an annual quota of one million tonnes and an export value of one billion USD. The high latitude of the High North, including Svalbard, lends itself to space research and technology. Norway’s political aim is ‘to make the Norwegian Arctic one of the most innovative regions in the world, driving growth and prosperity on the basis of knowledge and science.’47 Norway as a Sea Nation is not a small country and the strategy beyond or in addition to oil is to maintain and develop the possibilities, traditional and new, for a strong future sea economy. The Northern Norwegian poet, Per Bronken, gave this honour to ‘Ma mère la mer’: Smykket med erindringens tangblomster kommer hun mot meg, ser på meg med milde øyne som bærer med seg havets hele hemmelighet. Hjertet gripes av vindens hender, løfter seg som en morgen ved havet. Blikket sløres av tårer, og ansiktet hennes blir disig som synsranden en varm dag. Smilende strekker hun hendene mot meg og rører blidt ved mitt hår. Hendene er slitte og grove etter å ha verget mot herjende stormer. Uvær har fått hennes hår til å gråne. Jeg kaster meg villig i armene dine. La meg hvile i disse bølger. Svøp armene rundt meg og la meg bysses i søvn nær hjertet som rommer havets uendelighet. Bøy deg over meg, slik stjernene hvelver sin tindrende krets over ditt furete ansikt. La meg synke; dine dybder er fulle av fred. Morgenen stiger. Ditt kjærlige smil er en soloppgang over ditt ansikt. Øynene fylles av dag. Brystet hever og senker seg i rolige pust. Beskyttende brer du armene rundt vår jord. Du 47

Ibid.

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er evig og uendelig. Du favner vår verden og vugger den i armene dine som i en veldig vugge.48

48

Adorned with the memories of seaweed flowers she comes towards me, looks at me with gentle eyes that carry the whole secret of the sea. The heart is seized by the hands of the wind and lifts like a morning by the sea. The eyes fill with tears, and her face turns hazy like the horizon on a warm day. With a smile she opens her arms to me and gently touches my hair. The hands are worn and coarse after defending against ravaging storms. Rough weather has made her hair turn grey. I willingly throw myself into your arms. Let me rest in these waves. Wrap the arms around me and let me be lulled to sleep close to the heart that holds the endlessness of the sea. Bend over me like the stars arch their sparkling circle over your wrinkled face. Let me sink; your depths are full of peace. The morning ascends.Your loving smile is a sunrise on your face. The eyes are filled with day. The breast rises and sinks in quiet breaths. You spread the arms protectively around our earth. You are eternal and endless. You embrace our world and rocks it in your arms as in a mighty cradle. (My translation).

Chapter 13

Bordering the Bear Y A small group of Northern Norwegians visited the location of the former prison camp for captured Russian soldiers near the medieval Trondenes Church on 4 February 2017 in order to pay their respects to the Russians and remember the inhuman treatment they received from the Germans seventy-five years earlier. More than two hundred camps were located in North Norway. The prisoners’ main task had been to support the upkeep of the four coastal artillery cannons at Trondenes, part of Germany’s coastal fortification of Norway in 1940–45, referred to as the Adolf Guns by the local population. One cannon is still maintained as a reminder of times past. The barrel diameter is 40.6 cm and it had a range of 56 kilometres.49 The German occupational power introduced a comprehensive extension of coastal artillery in Norway, reaching two hundred and eighty batteries in five years, seen as an essential defence measure. Harstad became the centre for this rearmament in the North. Today, China explores the seabed in a quest for mineral wealth and has laid claims to the world’s greatest deposits of 49

World War Wings placed an article about the cannon on their website. A TV programme Hitler’s Arctic Fortress has been broadcast by National Geographic.

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deep-sea minerals. She now has the largest number of deepsea mines in the world and has secured access to 86,000 sq. km of the international seabed. One manned submersible can dive over 7 km.Thus, China turns to the ocean to secure resources for its high-tech electronics industry, laying sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. The Spratly islands have been fortified. It is part of national security. What does Russia do? In 2007, two Russian submarines touched the seabed two and a half miles beneath the North Pole and planted a titanium Russian flag on the Lomonosov ridge. Samples were collected from the seabed to prove that the ridge is connected to the Russian continental shelf and is a part of Russia.Who will own the Arctic in the future, asked Putin. He answered in Greek, arktos (the Bear). Russia has renewed the claim on the North Pole to the UN Continental Shelf Commission and the Vice-Prime Minister Dmitrij Rogozin had a stop over at Svalbard on a visit to the North Pole in 2015. The Arctic region is seen as a future economic lifeline for Russia and the Arctic presence is part of an extensive security strategy and extended military capacity. The Arctic would ensure the future of Russia. In his parliamentary statement on 1 March 2016 the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Børge Brende, warned that we experience a more self-assertive and unpredictable Russia where the willpower to catch us by surprise and take foreign policy chances are increasing. The British GCHQ has Russia as the priority. It would take from four to eight weeks to mobilize a NATO force of sufficient strength to assist Norway in a crises or war situation.50 President Obama held a multilateral meeting with the five Nordic prime ministers at the White House on 13 May 2016 and they presented a united front against Russia’s destabilizing, aggressive military presence in Europe. ‘Putin frightens Norway and the fear is greatest in 50

Harstad Tidende, 5.4.16.

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the North.’ This was the headline of a two-page article in the Oslo Newspaper Dagbladet on 2 August 2016 based on an opinion poll by Ipsos for the paper. It revealed that forty five percent of the population, even fifty three percent in the three Northern counties, Finnmark, Troms and Nordland, see Putin and Russia as a real security threat. Norway shares a 196 km border with Russia in the North and the Russian annexation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014, thus occupying territory from a neighbouring country, added to the deep distrust of Russia. Kirkenes in Finnmark continues to be a popular border town for trade and shopping ties between Norway and Russia. The Baltic States expect and prepare for an invasion by Russia.51 In the Balkans, Serbia is a particular target. The Kremlin attempts to put spanners in the works for any cooperation between non-aligned Sweden and NATO. The Norwegian Security Service (PST), in a constant evaluation, detects Russian spying in Norway as both extensive and aggressive. A programme on NRK 2 on 3 August 2016 had focus on the increasing brutality and human rights violations in Russia.The press release from the Russian Embassy in Oslo on 17 February 2017 referred to the anti-Russian language used by Norway. Alexandra Land (Zemlya Alexandra) is the western island in the Russian Franz Josef 11 May 2017 Archipelago in the Arctic, close to Svalbard. The Kremlin published pictures of the new comprehensive Arctic military base on the island: on 17 April 2017, two Russian Arctic brigades were being trained and plans were in place to station Su-34 and Mig-31 aircraft there. It forms an important part of Putin’s geopolitical, expansionist, philosophy and conduct. In this context the US Defence Secretary has admitted that the Arctic is a key strategic terrain for Russia, taking aggressive steps to increase 51

Mark Porter and Ana Pouvreau, ‘The Russians are coming’, The Sunday Times, 8.i.17.

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her presence. Before a meeting of the Arctic Council on 11 May 2017 (USA, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway) in Fairbanks,Alaska, Russia highlighted her vast economic agenda in the Arctic, where virtually all aspects of its national security were concentrated. According to Norwegian and NATO defence sources Russian forces had practised occupation of Svalbard during the Russian military exercise Zapad from the 14 to the 20 September 2017. This Russian military manoeuvre is held every four years and in 2017 it ran from the Norwegian border to the Black Sea. A heightening of tension between Norway and Russia could encourage a Russian cyberattack against our infrastructure. NATO is dealing with a significant increase in Russian submarine activity and the underwater prowess contains the development of a nuclear torpedo. The flagship of the Russian Northern Fleet is named Peter the Great. The fleet has 35 submarines, 50 surface warships and 40 ice-breakers including the new nuclear-powered Arktika. The research ship Yantar, carrying mini-submarines, is resourced to attack and sever vital transatlantic internet cables. The militarization of the Arctic means that the Russian force is larger than the combined strength of the other Arctic states. Russia is looking north as an assertive maritime power. Russian military exercises are not pre-announced. The transport of goods from Asia to Europe is a developing possibility in line with the melting of the Arctic ice. It opens the northern sea lanes for China and advances the Sino-Russian cooperation. Thus, the new Arctic sea route advances global trade as it challenges and changes geopolitics. Indeed, Russia talks about colonizing the Arctic and is restoring the infrastructure between Magadan in the Sea of Okhotsk and Murmansk in the Barents Sea. Putin has offered free land to settlers in the Far East region of Russia between Vladivostok and the Arctic Ocean. A new oil field was discovered under the

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Laptev Sea by Rosneft, the state owned oil company. Peter I extended his Czardom into a great Russian empire. Inspiration for Putin I? On the very day, 30 March 2017, the Arctic International Summit opened in Arkangelsk, Putin visited Franz Josef Land just to reaffirm that the Archipelago is Russian. NATO warned and accused Russia of staging and exploiting the migrant crises to intensify the tension and weaken Europe and the EU. Russia and the Assad regime were deliberately using migration as a weapon, pursuing an aggressive strategy in an attempt to destabilize and undermine the European continent, to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve. In addition to the legitimate refugees, criminals, extremists and terrorists were hidden in the massive flow of migration.52 The British exit from the EU has weakened Europe as a strategic counterweight to Russia. ‘We have a Cold War but this time with a criminal dictatorship not a communist dictatorship.’53 In 2017 Putin announced that he would run for a forth term and stay in power until 2024. The Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938 between Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain gave the green light for German annexation of Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia, home to three million people of German origin. Neville Chamberlain called it ‘peace with honour’, but Churchill warned ‘you chose dishonour and you will have war’.The Munich Pact highlighted the concept Appeasement, to prevent armed conflict through political and diplomatic concessions. In a review of the BBC2 TV film World War Three; Inside the War Room, A.A. Gill suggested (ironically) ‘a fund to raise a statue for the most misunderstood and wilfully misjudged hero of our country: Neville Chamberlain’.

52 53

NATO General Philip Breedlove, BBC 2.3.16, The Times 3.3.16. Bill Browder, The Times, April 1, 2017.

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Postponement of the war meant that England was then in a better position to fight the war.54 True? On 11 February 2015, the term ‘appeasement’ re-entered the international discourse after the Russian annexation of Crimea, the intrusion into Eastern Ukraine and the GermanFrench effort for a peace settlement in Minsk. Putin’s Russia seeks to cross borders on land and at sea when the opportunity seems favourable. Russia did in the Barents Sea in 2010 and Norway chose appeasement. In the referendum debate in Britain in 2016 it was argued that the EU would be weakened without Britain and exposed to accept appeasement in future conflicts with Russia. Putin has declared that no one will ever gain military superiority over Russia. In spite of the falling oil price, the shrinking economy and rising unemployment the population supports and approves his leadership. A Stalinist personality cult controls the police, security service, courts and media. It is a double sycophancy – accusation and control by the state of any opposition and adoration, flattery and obedience from the people.The nuclear terrorism against Alexander Litvinenko in London was, arguably, approved by Putin.55 Norway’s military strategy in the 1950s was set to abandon and sacrifice the county of Finnmark if the Soviet Union attacked Norway, to pull back and draw the defence line further south at Lyngen. John Lyng, Norway’s distinguished Prime Minister and Foreign Minister in the 1960s, is recorded to have said: ‘When the telephone rings at night I always think of Svalbard.’ He admitted that the East-West conflict had an impact on Norway similar to strong magnetic fields on iron filings, pulling and dominating everything on the foreign policy stage.56 The Arctic archipelago of 191 islands, Franz Josef Land, was first spotted (but not reported) 54 55 56

The Sunday Times, Culture, 7.2. 2016, 14–5. Official inquiry by Sir Robert Owen, 21.1. 2016. Jon Lyng, Mellom øst og vest - erindringer 1965–68, Cappelen, 1976.

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by the Norwegian sealing vessel Spidsbergen in 1865 but it was an Austro/Hungarian expedition in 1873 that added the Emperor’s name to the islands. Norway aimed for possession but the territory was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1926 and remains strategically significant for Russia today. 1973/74 was a peak period for Soviet demands to upgrade, influence and control Svalbard and Bear Island. In a speech in Tromsø on 16 June 1977, Foreign Minister Knut Frydenlund outlined the strategic significance of the Northern territories and the key to our future foreign policy. The new economic zones had created extensive borders with Russia in the Arctic region. The presence of the Russians and their mining activity in Svalbard were linked to a strategic dimension. The same can be argued, even more forcefully, today. The Arctic region is a Norwegian political priority. Increasingly, it is also a key to Russia’s national, geo-political and strategic interests and economic future. Article 15 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), concerning the delimitation of the territorial sea between States with opposite or adjacent coasts, states that where the coasts of two States are opposite or adjacent to each other, neither of the two States is entitled, failing agreement between them to the contrary, to extend its territorial sea beyond the median line every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial seas of each of the two States is measured. The provision does not apply, however, where it is necessary by reason of historic title or other special circumstances to delimit the territorial seas of the two States in a way which is at variance therewith. UNCLOS superseded the UN Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zones of 1964 but Article 15 corresponds to Article 6 in UNCTSC. On 15 September 2010, in the presence of the Russian President, Dimitrij Medvedjev (Putin had a constitutional

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break as Prime Minister) and the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, the Foreign Ministers, Sergej Lavrov and Jonas Gahr Støre, signed the Treaty on maritime delimitation and cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean in Murmansk. It replaced the temporary Grey Zone Agreement negotiated by Jens Evensen in 1978. The Norwegian Prime Minister called it, perhaps with constructive ambiguity in a spirit of lavspenning (low tension), ‘one of the most important days ever in Norwegian-Russian relations’ and he added that it was a confirmation that these two large polar nations upheld a policy of cooperation.The disputed sea territory of 175,000 square kilometres from the Varanger Fjord towards the North Pole was divided in half. It was a compromise between Norway’s Median Line principle according to UNCLOS and the entrenched Sector Line position of Moscow, conveniently arguing the ‘special circumstances’ cryptically added to Article 15 of UNCLOS. The special circumstance invented by Moscow was a decree of 1926 introducing a sector line from the then border with Finland along the meridian line to the North Pole. It was introduced to decide ownership of certain islands in the Barents Sea, not as a maritime delimitation; Russia however insisted on its relevance under the ambiguity of Article 15.The median line, halfway between Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya, would seem the logical solution as conventional practice had been to position maritime borders at the midpoint between opposing land masses. This principle was used by Norway in agreeing the maritime boundaries in the North Sea and Russia had also claimed the median line principle concerning boundaries in the Caspian Sea. But Norway defended the sector compromise as ‘a modern solution that divided the (disputed) area 50/50 and drew the border according to the most modern principles of the law of the sea’.57 Really? It was 57

Jonas Gahr Støre, I bevegelse, Cappelen Damm, 2014, 356.

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a new solution of appeasement just as the earlier Grey Zone negotiations had been. Norway was entitled to an exclusive economic zone jurisdiction under international law but Russia obtained sovereign rights in an area east of the new delimitation line. Norway has in fact transferred some sovereign rights to Russia. The Special Area of Article 3 did create a new Grey Area. A large share of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources is expected to be found in the Arctic areas. When Norway (in 2013) discovered large oil and gas reserves in the Barents Sea an article in Pravda (reflecting as always an official view) was quick to argue that they ‘were found in the section of the bottom of the Barents Sea, which Russia had passed over to Norway’ (sic). It was argued that Norway is very similar to Russia in terms of its dependence on oil and gas export, but the fields in the North Sea had been depleted and Norway was now rolling down into a poor future. The reserves in the south-east in the Barents Sea therefore came as a rescue to Norway from Russia. The article goes on to say that the oil production for Norway had been declining for years after a peak in 2000 when it reached 3.12 million barrels a day. In 2012, it had dropped to 1.53 million barrels. After the seismic sounding of the territory ‘they received from Russia’ Norway found reserves of about 1.9 billion barrels of oil.58 This is perfect KGB-speak after the successful Russian penetration of the Median Line, obtaining a maritime advantage of 87,000 square kilometres, and a new Grey Zone, not dissimilar to the land grab, occupation and partition of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia - just more peaceful. Russia is moving west again, by land and by sea. 58

Vitaly Salnik, “Barents Sea of discord for Russia and Norway, Pravda Ru, 7.3. 2013

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But the article was not happy just to enrich Norway from the apparent sector concession but turned sharply to Svalbard. Russia had reservations about Norway’s possession of Svalbard per se and the sea territory around the archipelago. In an agreement of 1872 the right for Svalbard had been granted to Russia and Sweden (with Norway as a dependent) but in 1920 during the Civil War in Russia eight countries (Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA) gave the now independent Norway sovereignty over Svalbard without the approval of Russia. ‘It was a splendid gift’, but Norway was only entitled to own and develop the land. The sea around the archipelago and the continental shelf would remain a free zone. ‘The 1920 Agreement did not allow Norway to consider the waters around the archipelago as its territorial waters, but Oslo does its best to demonstrate that it owns this territory.’ Russia did not accept the 200 nautical miles exclusive fishing zone around Svalbard of 1977, the economic zone around Jan Mayen of 1980, including full fishing rights. Norway termed it illegal fishing by Russia. The article confirms that Russia began the Arctic race in 2007 when the flag was planted under the North Pole. The Russian town, Barentsburg was the fastest growing settlement in Svalbard. Russia planned to create a multi-functional research centre on the island and extract minerals, as part of the Russian presence on Svalbard. A new political reality was needed, the approval of free fishing and the existence of a Russian part of Svalbard. It is all about natural resources. The Arctic may contain ninety billion barrels of oil, a third of the world’s known gas reserves, nickel, gold, coal, diamonds, platinum, titanium, cobalt, copper, other minerals and huge fish stocks. As chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson made deals with Russia to drill the Arctic floor. He was appointed US Foreign Secretary in 2017.The Arctic may be the foundation for Norway’s wealth this century but also for Russia and Russian

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power. Russia highlights the central strategic importance of the region. FSB has established a separate Arctic directorate. Russian illegal cod-fishing amounts to about 100,000 tons per annum. If a Russian trawler is intercepted by the Norwegian Coast Guard, fishing illegally in the fishery protection zone for Svalbard, Russia accepts inspection but not that Norway has the authority to bring the vessel to a Norwegian harbour for legal proceedings and insists that the matter has to be referred to a Russian port. In fact, it is a way of hinting that Russia does not accept the unilateral Norwegian declaration of a fishery protection zone. The fisheries sector is Norway’s second largest export industry after oil and gas. Integrated marine management aims to safeguard resources in sea areas that are home to some of the world’s most abundant fish stocks, cod, haddock and capelin. Geopolitics for a new age is being played out in the middle of Norway’s immediate sea territories. Norway adheres to the principles of the Law of the Sea and the outer limits of the continental shelf has been clarified in accordance with the law. Norway knows the full extent of the geographical scope of the Kingdom, on land, at sea and on the seabed. Norway is responsible for a marine area seven times larger than its total land. A new Russia is advancing and Norway does not fully know what her aims are in relation to the essential natural resources in the region. It makes the Northern Area Policy the most important strategic priority for the Norwegian government. It does not detract from Norway’s broader global commitment, but outside the EU perhaps we feel a bit lonely facing the Bear. ‘For us, North will and must be most important.’59 When a vice-president of the European Parliament, Diana Wallis, in a report argued that the Svalbard Treaty should be renegotiated, the Norwegian Foreign Min59

Jonas Gahr Støre, Å gjøre en forskjell. Refleksjoner fra en norsk utenriksminister, Cappelen Damm, 2008, 301.

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ister leaped in his chair and issued an immediate and impressive hyperbole: ‘Svalbard is just as much a part of Norway as Østfold.’ (Of course it isn’t.) The Svalbard treaty was signed in Paris on 9 February 1920 during the Versailles negotiations after the First World War. The Svalbard Act of 1925 makes Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway, but it still limits Norway’s sovereignty over the archipelago. It is not to be militarised and the contracting countries have economic access, compare the Russian presence and mining operations today. The Svalbard treaty was obtained without Soviet participation, Moscow would correctly argue, but they signed the Treaty in 1924 and ratified it in 1935. During the Second World War the Soviet Union as our ally against Germany suggested an Anglo-Soviet defence of Svalbard and, not surprisingly, offered to provide the ground forces. Norway did not sanction this plan but at the end of 1944 the Soviet Union demanded secession of Bear Island, which according to Moscow had been Russian in the past, and proposed a Norwegian-Soviet militarised condominium for Svalbard. The validity of the Treaty was now questioned and Moscow referred to the fact that two of the signatories, Italy and Japan, were enemy powers. Norway rejected these demands, referred to Article 9 of the Treaty, and suggested that a possible arming of the archipelago could only take place under the auspices of the new United Nations. The Norwegian parliament was opposed to any defence agreement with the Soviet Union over Svalbard. Norway joined NATO. Moscow relented but the issue remained unresolved. Ideas of spheres of influence for the great powers had been considered during the war without Norwegian knowledge, Soviet influence over Svalbard and USA over Iceland and Greenland. The Norwegian bridge-building policy was to encourage cooperation and collective security between Washington and Moscow and to limit the tension in the

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High North. Foreign Minister Molotov again introduced the Bear Island demand in 1946 but then dropped it. The small Norwegian military unit held in Svalbard during the war was withdrawn in 1947. The Soviet Union continued to populate the archipelago for mining and built separate towns, Pyramiden and Barentsburg. In a speech at Akershus Castle on 9 February 1995, to mark the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Spitzbergen Treaty, Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland stated: Norway’s sovereignty provides the basis for measures of a purely national character. This was clearly recognized at the Peace Conference. Norway’s sovereignty was confirmed by some of the early legislative measures passed after we took possession of the territory in 1925. Firstly, it was decided that Svalbard would not be given the status of a colony or a dependency; it would be an integral part of the Kingdom. Secondly, any land for which no prior claims for private ownership had been made was to be owned by the State. Neither of these legislative measures has given rise to objections from any Party to the Treaty in the seventy years since they were adopted.

The key words are sovereignty and authority as an integral part of Norway and the political focus is to maintain stability and calm. What has been done by Norway since the 1990s? A determined but traditional softly, softly approach to the Bear is the polite policy. In 1977, the Norwegian Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli stated that Norway’s relation with Europe is always the most important in our foreign policy. A white paper The High North. Visions and Strategies, of 2011, sets out the new priorities. In the Introduction the Foreign Minister makes clear that the High North is Norway’s number one foreign policy priority. The political ambition is to

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strengthen Norwegian activity and presence in the High North. There is no obvious contradiction between the two statements but the latter highlights the new focus. Membership of the EU would strengthen this essential foreign policy. It is a paradox that the population gives so little support for the strategic connection today. Russia had confirmed its Arctic policy in two key documents, one dealing with the maritime doctrine (2001) and the other with the fundamentals of state policy in the Arctic (2008). The objective was to transform the Arctic into a ‘leading strategic base for natural resources’. The Norwegian strategies for the High North point the way forward and outline the overall objectives until 2030. The aim is to expand knowledge, activity and presence and the predictability of international law in the High North. The Law of the Sea constitutes the overall legal framework for the Arctic Ocean. New initiatives and priorities are outlined in a future based promotion. The High North is seen as a new energy province in Europe and the energy dimension will increase the interest in the region. Norway has extensive experience and knowledge of energy production at sea. Gas from the Barents Sea may become an important European energy resource. A new border station is established at Storskog. Our diplomatic presence in Russia has been strengthened. A new industrial age is foreseen in the High North. The development of the oil and gas resources open new opportunities for local development and new aquaculture opportunities are expected to emerge. Sustainable management of fisheries resources is a key element of industrial development in the region. In the not too distant future ice may not be a barrier for transportation between Asia, North America and Europe through the Arctic Ocean. The average temperature at the North Pole is Minus 31 C but before Christmas 2015 it was

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20 C warmer. The warming of the sea creates a changing ecosystem. The melting Arctic ice means that big trawlers can fish closer to the North Pole and more than a hundred of these may be seen and may be using destructive bottom trawling. The dramatic pace of climate change and the melting of the ice provide greater access to the resources in the High North and have opened new opportunities for ships carrying goods along the Northeast Passage between Asia and Europe. The volume of shipping will increase, creating new risks but also demand for maritime services. The development has geopolitical consequences as China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore show interest in using the Arctic sea route. It also means new opportunities for cooperation with these countries and opens new access to Asian markets for Norway. The Arctic seaway increases the importance of Norway’s coastline and port capacity. It is important to ensure that the economic and industrial activity is within safe ecological limits and that its purpose is to gain new knowledge of the environment and climate in the High North. Centres of expertise have been established at the Fram Centre (High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment) in Tromsø, the Universities of Nordland and Tromsø, the University Centre of Svalbard (UNIS), in Ny-Ålesund and at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) in Oslo. The vision is for the knowledge networks of the Arctic Council, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and the Northern Dimension to be developed and strengthened. Norway aims to play a leading role in deepening and expanding the cooperation and keep open channels to partners outside the region. The High North continues to be an area of strategic military interest. A large proportion of Russia’s nuclear forces are located there and the region is a site for regular military exercises. Norway has argued for a renewed focus on

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the core areas of NATO, including the northern areas. The Norwegian National Joint Headquarters has been moved to Bodø, the Coast Guard located at Sortland and the fleet structure has been upgraded. The helicopter base at Bardufoss has been given new capacity for maritime operations. The Coastal Squadron in the north has obtained new vessels. The Norwegian armed forces focus increasingly in the north. The key is diplomacy, High North, but low tension. Is it possible? The distinguished polar explorer and parliamentarian, Artur Chilingarov, the special envoy for the Arctic appointed by President Putin has made waves. In 2007, he and his team went down over four thousand metres under the ice at the North Pole for six hours in a Mir submarine and planted a Russian titanium flag on the seafloor.The reception in Moscow was ecstatic, with medals for everyone onboard. The main aim of the mission was to reinforce the idea that the 1800 km long underwater mountain, the Lomonosov ridge, an area of 1.2 million square metres, that extends close to the North Pole, is simply a geological extension of Russian territory, a position argued by Moscow from 2001. Chilingarov did not mince his nationalism and patriotic words. ‘If in a thousand years someone goes down to where we were, they will see the Russian flag.’ In his view, the North Pole and the million square miles around it belonged to Russia: ‘The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass.’ As a celebration of Russian Arctic exploration he had wished to raise the wreck of SS Chelyuskin, the ship navigating the North East Passage in 1934, but was forced down by the ice. The crew managed to prepare a strip on the ice for an aircraft to land and rescue them. Stalin turned the event into a publicity coup. Chilingarov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1986 and Hero of the Russian Federation in 2008.

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Why did Chilingarov say that the most active country in the Artic was China and pointed to the emerging fleet of Chinese icebreakers, reinforced cargo ships and a new Chinese capacity for deep sea drilling? Did he warn or welcome such cooperation? Beijing could be tempted together with Moscow to fill the strategic power vacuum in the north Atlantic. The scene was set for two autocratic actors against the democratic players claiming rights in the same theatre. A new power axis, a global approach between Russia and China and the ties between the two are developing through the Bric association (Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Bric-countries agreed to establish a development bank at their summit in Ufa in Russia. The aim is to create a centre of power to challenge the G7, the World Bank and the IMF. Putin looks East to the big economies in Asia and seeks closer cooperation with China on world issues. Is there even a new Russia-China political axis, a strategic alliance as a challenge to the USA’s still dominant global position? They are permanent members of the UN Security Council and often see eye to eye. They held a combined naval exercise in the South China Sea in 2014.The sale of the advanced Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system to China is a sign of a stronger partnership. The elaborate Chinese celebration on 3 September 2015 of the victory over Japan seventy years earlier had President Putin as the guest of honour in Beijing, a return for the same honour given to President Xi Jinping in Moscow in May to mark the end of the Second World War in Europe. Thirty per cent of global trade passes through the South China Sea. China increasingly claims the whole of the South China Sea as its territory. Japan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam contest the Chinese dominance of these mineral rich islands. China trades with South Korea

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but is allied to North Korea. The Chinese navy and air force are given priority to strengthen the territorial claims. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, stated on 8 March 2016 that ‘China was the earliest to explore, name, develop and administer various South China Sea islands. Our ancestors worked diligently here for generations.’ The Beijing argument is that history and one thousand years of Chinese fishing justify the demand. The islands had become an integral part of China’s territory. It is a claim not dissimilar to Russia’s historic and present assumed right to Svalbard, the Barents Sea, the Arctic and the North Pole? It may be tempting for Russia to look at the Arctic the way China assesses the South China Sea? The North East passage, the Northern Sea Route, and Svalbard, the sharp-peaked mountains, are keys to Russian vital interests and China is appearing out of the Arctic fog too. In fact the most important trade route for China is the Arctic Ocean. The Svalbard Treaty has been signed by 43 countries. North Korea signed on 25 January 2016 - an interesting newcomer. China seeks expansion of defence spending and a stronger global role. To counter Chinese expansion and militarisation the USA has introduced a credible combat power in the region at bases in Darwin and Tindal, including B-1 strike bombers. Submersible drones may be used to track enemy submarines in the Barents Sea and the South China Sea. Defence Secretary James Mattis confirmed on 4 February 2017 the US commitment to defend the Senkaku Islands under the US-Japan defence treaty. A new US Marine Corps Air Station is being established at Henoko on the island of Okinawa. The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, has indicated that Japanese forces in the future may be prepared to act offensively outside the country in cooperation with allies under a banner of collective selfdefence. The advanced Soryu-class attack submarine and the Kawasaki P-1 and P-2 military aircraft may be opened

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for export, reinforcing the signs of a revaluation of postwar Japanese pacifism. It is essential to avoid a Thucydides Trap between the established power, the USA and the rising power, China. In the light of the Russian chess games with international law, escaping the medium line by arguing ‘special circumstances’ of questionable historic relevance to assert a meridian solution and in addition turning the whole argument around as if Russia had sacrificed its sector position and generously bearing Barents gifts to Norway, it is then interesting how Norway just rolled over: This is a historic milestone. The treaty resolves what for several decades remained the most important outstanding issue between Norway and Russia. The treaty will strengthen our neighbourly relations with Russia and will enhance predictability and stability in the area. It sends an important signal to the rest of the world – the Arctic is a peaceful region where any issues that arise are resolved in accordance with international law.

A panegyric conclusion from Prime Minister Stoltenberg, but did Norway not give away half of an area that rightly belonged to her under international law? Russia appointed an Ambassador for Arctic cooperation in 2008 and the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, announced on 14 February 2014 that he aimed to elevate Arctic issues in the State department and appointed a special US Ambassador to the Arctic before the US took over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council in 2015: ‘The Arctic region is the last global frontier and a region with enormous and growing geostrategic, economic, climate, environment, and national security implications for the United States and the world.’ He stressed that the USA must ‘keep up with the opportunities and consequences presented by the Arctic’s rapid trans-

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formation, a very rare convergence of almost every national priority in the most rapidly-changing region on the face of the earth. The great challenges of the Arctic matter enormously to the United States.’ But then Putin went one better and declared at a Russian Security Council meeting 22 April that a separate state agency would be created to coordinate, safeguard and implement the activities in the Arctic. The main base of the Russian Northern Fleet is at Severomorsk north of Murmansk but a new Northern Fleet radioelectronic base has been relocated about fifty kilometres from the Finnish border at Alakurtti, a former base on the Kola Peninsula, as part of extended Russian activity in the Arctic. The new base has a contingent of about three thousand.The former military base on Kotelnyy Island (in the Novosibirsk Islands) is being reopened. The Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, argued that Russia’s actions in Ukraine could cause problems for international cooperation in the Arctic: This has a ripple effect, even though the actual events are far from the Arctic. Clearly, it has made many players in the Arctic quite worried about developments and whether they might be a sign of what is to come. It makes other governments more worried about what might happen in the future, so it creates a sense of insecurity and maybe lack of trust. If what we see in Ukraine turns out to be an exception and Russia goes back to friendly relations with its neighbours, then it shouldn’t have an effect. But if it is a sign of what is to come, it is quite worrying.60

In his Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in 2005 President Vladimir Putin said this to the citizens of Russia: ‘Above all, we should acknowledge that 60

Said during an interview in Edmonton, Alberta, 7.3.14

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the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.’ The contrast between Gorbachev and Putin is significant: Much of the energy of Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1980s perestroika generation was spent looking for that crucial point where the Soviet Union had set itself on the wrong course. For the communist reformers, that happened in 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. (In 1968, however, it was Stalin’s “great leap forward” of 1929 that was seen as the mistake; Russia had to go all the way back to Lenin’s roots, it was argued, in order to advance).When communism collapsed in 1990, historians went even further back, fixing their sights on the short-lived era of Russian capitalism in the 1900s as the point from which they had to pick up again, as if 70 years of Soviet rule could simply be ignored. For Vladimir Putin and his intimates the wrong turn was perestroika itself, and the Soviet Union’s subsequent collapse. It is fitting that for much of Mr Putin’s time in office the Russian railway monopoly was headed by a former KGB colleague,Vladimir Yakunin, one of the regime’s ideologues, who has ardently proclaimed Russia’s ‘special way’ and the damage globalization can do to national identity. As a result, Mr Putin’s men have traced their way back to the late Soviet period of isolation. After nearly twenty seven hours the train arrives in Archangelsk, a city in the delta of the Northern Dvina River through which the first European traders entered ‘Muscovy’, and to which British ships delivered food as part of the northern convoys during the Second World War. In the city’s elegant 17th-century merchants’ yard, overlooking the steely waters of the Dvina, an exhibition is dedicated to the

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70th anniversary of the Soviet victory against the fascists. It bristles with Stalinist posters and slogans and makes no mention of the Allies. One prominent poster shows a Soviet rocket striking an ‘imperialist’ in the face and declares that ‘Our borders are untouchable.’ Underneath is a quote from Stalin: ‘Those who try to attack our country will be dealt a deadly blow, to stop them sticking their snouts into our Soviet backyard.’ The city that was meant to open Russia to the world now marks the frontier of an increasingly isolated country.61

Russia’s economic strength is natural resources, oil and gas, and is equal to NATO in nuclear power. The Russian leader is on a spiritual quest to save Mother Russia, to denounce the post-Cold War settlements and revive the loss of empire. The illegitimate election in Donetsk of 2 November 2014 was part of the strategy. He was contesting international frontiers in Abkhazia in Georgia, South Ossetia, Moldova, Armenia, Crimea, Ukraine, NagornoKarabakh and even getting a toehold in Syria. He became President at the end of 1999 after a crisis period for the Russian economy. But then the oil price and Putin’s popularity joined hands and the state TV-monopoly maintained the control and success of the authoritarian regime. The Russian Bear ‘is the master of the taiga (the subarctic forest); it is not going to give up its taiga to anyone’.62 The aim is at least to partition Ukraine, to hold on to the Eastern part and prevent the country joining the EU and NATO. The Dutch government felt compelled to hold a Referendum on 7 April 2016 to win national support for ratification of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU but the voters rejected the treaty and thus gave a propa61 62

“The Gauge of History”, The Economist, December, 2015. Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club, Sochi, 24.10.14.

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ganda victory to President Putin. It certainly delayed the ratification process needed by all EU member states. This is what a pessimistic Francis Fukuyama has said: Back in 1989, there was really a hope that a liberal Russia would emerge that would be European and would integrate. That didn’t happen. Russians associate democracy with the gangster capitalism they had in the 1990’s. Unfortunately you have this whole generation of Russians thinking that’s what democracy is. So they want to go back to something like the Soviet form of authoritarianism their parents lived under. Putin has basically told Russian populations (outside Russia): If you don’t like your situation we will help you. He started with the Crimea and, basically, the Baltics, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, all those places are potentially under threat. Revive NATO as a real military alliance.63

An essential part of Finland’s defence system is the quarter of a million reservist army and the Russian insertions into Crimea and Ukraine have reinforced the key position and preparedness of this mobilizing army. The leader of the Norwegian Labour Party, Jonas Gahr Støre, a former Foreign Minister, has stressed geography and resources as the essence of all security policy. The cold war is over but Norway remains the neighbour to a big, complex and not always predictable Russia. We remain the nearest dweller to one of the world’s biggest concentrations of nuclear striking power, not directed against us, but still close to us. We live in a region and own natural resources of interest to the whole world.64 Putin’s popularity increased after the annexation of Crimea and in June 2015 he was supported by eighty nine per cent of the Russian population 63 64

Interview in The Sunday Times, 28.9.14 Jonas Gahr Støre, I bevegelse, Cappelen Damm, 2014, 250.

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and his support to date remains near ninety per cent. Putin announced that Russia would add 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles to its vast nuclear arsenal in 2015 and highlights the full power of the Russian armed forces. He plays on the threat to Russia to distract from the economic difficulties and the 70th anniversary and celebrations marking the victory over Germany together with a special Patriot Park aim to enhance the spirit of patriotism. The war in Eastern Ukraine with the loss of more than 6000 lives has increased the fear of war with the West in the Russian population. In 2016 NATO introduced an enhanced forward presence of four thousand troops in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), members of NATO from 2004. It is believed that a stronger NATO presence along the Eastern flank would have stopped Putin’s design on Crimea and Ukraine. President Obama had used the G7 meeting in June 2015 to warn President Putin of the situation in Ukraine, a policy that aimed to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire, but only continued to isolate and wreck the Russian economy. But Russia’s new military intervention in favour of Assad in Syria has gained support from Israel and it is known that among British generals there is a view that it would be preferable to support Assad than any other faction in Syria against IS.The intensive Russian bombing of Aleppo and other parts of Syria in 2016, supported by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, led to accusations of war crimes by the US and Britain in the UN Security Council on 25 September. The US had been caught between a rock and a hard place after a failed Syrian policy. Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev are identified as the favourite Russian leaders today, not Gorbachev, who received the Nobel peace prize in Oslo in 1990. He was the last leader of the Soviet Union. It ended on 25 December 1991 and he resigned. But he still today deeply regrets the collapse of the union. He had wanted to create a democratic union, free

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elections and a free press: glasnost (openness) and perestroika (political/economic reforms). ‘I regret that a great country vanished. My intention was to reform it, never to destroy it.’ He strongly blames the USA for supporting Jeltsin. Ironically, Gorbachev makes the point that ‘had I still been in power, the Soviet Union would still exist and Crimea would be part of it’.65 Calendars featuring Stalin are popular and for sale in Russian bookshops. Putin served for sixteen years in the KGB, was appointed director of the FSB (Federal Security Service) and then elected President. He is preparing a new, coordinating, ministry of state security, MGB, reflecting the name of Stalin’s former intelligence agency. He tells the world that his favourite writer is Leo Tolstoy; the patriot, admired by Gandhi and Mandela. It is important to welcome Russia into the international order without being crushed by its embrace, Henry Kissinger has warned.66 Would Putin be seriously tempted to embrace and incorporate the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), once part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, but then part of the EU and NATO? They maintain a considerable Russian population and the Russian language. The continued Russian aggression against Ukraine, the build-up of defence systems in Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) and in the Baltic Sea is argued by the Kremlin as a response to the deployment of NATO battalions in the Baltic States and Poland from 2017, including the new F-35A fighter yet which will also be stationed in Suffolk. The Russian Arctic embrace of Norway is firm. Is it perhaps part of the ceaseless longing of the Russian people67 65

66 67

Mark Franchetti, Interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, The Sunday Times Magazine, 22.5.16. World Order, Penguin Press, 2014, 57–9. Fydor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary.

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and of the taiga, as Putin sees it?68 The European Union, not NATO, is perhaps the main actor in relation to Russia, including foreign and security policy, and, by implication, it partly defines Norway’s Russian diplomacy. ‘It is a new situation for Norway not to have a seat at the table when important security policy issues concerning our immediate territories, with considerable consequences, are being debated. We do not have an EEA agreement for the foreign and security policy.’69 The four-hour separate and private meeting between Merkel and Putin during the G20 summit in Brisbane (2014) confirms Germany and the EU as key elements in the security dialogue with Russia about Ukraine. ‘The German Chancellor is the only undisputed leader with the legitimacy to take the lead in dealing with Russia, which is becoming a threat to Europe.’70 The annual trade between Germany and Russia amounts to £700 billion and Angela Merkel has concluded that only an EU containment policy is effective against the Russian challenge. The idea of two centres for defence, the creation of a European army in addition to NATO, came to new light in 2016 in a leaked German white paper. The problem is that the EU front is not united and countries like Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and even Italy have strong ties with Russia and have been uneasy about further sanctions. In addition, Putin has succeeded in building relations with Right Wing political parties in Europe, Marine Le Pen’s National Front is a prime example. Putin has strong views on the decadence and decay of the West and such views may find support from ultra conservative circles in Europe. Breivik admired Putin. 68

69 70

In a speech in Sochi 24.10.14 Putin warned against trying to oust the Russian bear from its role as the master of the taiga (the boreal forest). Vidar Helgesen (Minister for Europe), Aftenposten, 9.8.14. Joerg Forbrig, GMF. (The German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.)

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The hidden offshore, the tax havens used by political leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping and their network of cronies, reveal an ironic and embarrassing truth: London is the moneylaundering capital of the world and many tax-havens come under UK-jurisdiction. The strategic Russian nuclear submarine, K-51, tested a Sineva intercontinental rocket, which can carry four nuclear missiles, in the Barents Sea on 12 December 2015. According to the Russian Ministry of Defence this was a most successful launch. It landed as planned in the test field on the volcanic peninsula Kamchatka bordering the Sea of Okhotsk, not far from the Kurile Islands. Putin’s New Russia is restoring its military power and the strategic nuclear capability is the key deterrence, it is constantly renewed and tested but the conventional defence system is also being upgraded and extended. In a new military operation room at the Ministry of Defence by the Moskva River, opened in 2014, a mile from the Kremlin, more than one hundred officers and military advisors monitor and control all Russian defence activity, in Syria as well as in the Barents Sea. Promising fourteen year olds begin a military-patriotic education as spies and spy catchers at special schools supported by FSB (Federal Security Service). We witness a clandestine and calumnious Russian policy. Russia organized a comprehensive military exercise in Belarus in September 2017. Increased Norwegian-Russia competence is a key and continuous policy.71 The threat of the Soviet Union was the deciding factor when Norway joined NATO. It would be the threat from Russia that leads us to apply for full membership in the EU, however weary, selfish, opulent, indifferent, aloof, inhumane and decadent Pope Francis has found the union.72 71 72

Interview with the UD Permanent Secretary, UD-posten, 4/2015. Speech in Strasbourg, 25.11.14.

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Russia has introduced a renewal of its military forces including nuclear missile trains, bombers and submarines. Russia is rebuilding and enhancing its submarine capacity, capability and activity including nuclear torpedoes, aiming to control the underwater domain. Ironically, two hundred years after the 17 May freedom constitution seemed the natural time for Norway to join the EU but it was not to be. The people think vi har det sa godt som det er (we are so comfortable as we are), but: We now face the most serious security situation in Europe since the Second World War: Russia has annexed another country’s territory and is using military force to destabilise its neighbour. This is old-fashioned power politics that must not be allowed to succeed in Europe. We have seen the EU, long known for a lack of strength in foreign policy, acting with remarkable resolve. Norway has aligned itself with the EU position. This situation is very different from the Cold War, when NATO was the one organisation that mattered for our security. It still matters, but today, European policy towards Russia and Ukraine is primarily shaped within an EU framework. Never has the EU played such an important role in an international crises.73

It is an important statement. Who is listening? Certainly not the Norwegian population. Eighty per cent were against EU-membership in 2015. At the same time the popularity and positive image of the EU were on the increase in the member states in spite of the setbacks over the Syrian policies. The European economy was on the mend and the Crimea/Ukraine crises had proved that the EU could take a firm stand against Russia. The Russian economy was gradually in deep crises in 2016, exhausting the national reserves. 73

Vidar Helgesen, Minister for the EU at the Prime Minister’s Office, 4.2.15

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The Norwegian Government’s work programme for cooperation with the EU in 2016 again highlights the security aspect: The EU has in recent years consolidated its position as a major security policy actor, confer the management of Russia’s violation of international law in Ukraine and the participation in the nuclear talks with Iran. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 the solidarity commitment of the EU Treaty’s Article 42 (7) was applied for the first time.The dialogue with the EU in the foreign and security policy field is becoming increasingly important for Norway and the European dimension will remain central when the government in the Autumn, 2016, submits a report to Parliament on the foreign and security policy. In that context, the government wishes to contribute Norwegian perspectives to the work on the EU’s global foreign and security policy strategy, due to be completed in the Summer of 2016. Key themes in a Norwegian input would be the EU’s Arctic policy, the cooperation with Russia and the cooperation between the EU and NATO. Given Norway’s contribution to European security and defence policy, the government wishes to further develop the political dialogue with the EU in this policy area.74

The Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the Intelligence Service and The Labour Party were targeted in a cyber attack in January 2017, linked to Russia. Norway does not feel separate from Europe. The EU is an essential counterweight to Russia for Norway’s number one foreign policy strategy and priority, to meet the icefree Arctic geopolitical games. Can Norway create an active policy North of the North Cape, to counter an unpredict74

Regjeringens arbeidsprogram og samarbeidet med EU 2016. 4.2.16.

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able Russian leader, without membership in the EU? Prime Minister Erna Solberg made a point of interpreting president Trump’s continued and full support for NATO and accepting his demand that the member states must share the bill to maintain the organization at a higher level to face the present security issues. The main focus for Norway is the need for a clear US security policy as Russia intensifies military activity in the Northern areas. At the meeting and press conference between President Trump and Prime Minister May on 27 January 2017, the first foreign leader invited to meet the President, she confirmed that the President had given a one-hundred per cent commitment to NATO. It was a renewal of the deep US bond with Britain, culturally, financially, politically, strategically and militarily. The following day Trump and Putin had their first telephone conversation about terrorism and the Islamic State and agreed to continue regular personal contacts.

Chapter 14

Self-Image and Reality Y In 1969, four years before he was appointed Foreign Minister, Knut Frydenlund argued: ‘The smaller countries may in my opinion play an important part. It is the small countries that first recognize their own inadequacy.’ Policy-makers, historians and political scientists are all looking through the status seeking lens to enhance, defend and explain Norwegian foreign and international policies, the diplomatic influence and standing of a small but still significant power like Norway. In a sense Norway obtained the best of both international worlds, on the one hand the traditional strong links and strategic alliance with Great Britain and the United States, continued in NATO, and on the other a central global policy, emphasizing peace, cooperation and development strategies. In my day as Norwegian Ambassador in Dar es Salaam I had more staff than our Embassy in Washington. I also held the highest Norwegian development budget and Tanzania has been the main recipient since 1962.75 Our presence supported our status as a global facilitator, proud peace nation and extended the sense of national honour. The Norwegian initiatives for the Syrian donor 75

UD-Historier, Bind 4, UD, 2015, 194–204; Trygve Bendiksby, “55 år I Tanzania”, Udposten, 2/16.

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conferences must be seen in this light. ‘A country of just five million maintains a formidable humanitarian reputation.’76 Soft power. Is NATO membership sufficient for our security as we face Russia’s destabilizing policies, transnational terrorist groups, the evolution of cyber weapons and more fragile states? Norway is not irrelevant outside the EU but would gain political relevance and security inside. We would be stronger with a seat at the European top table. I have briefly introduced contemporary Norway through key elements of our history and culture, leading to a foreign policy perspective, focusing on European integration, the challenges and opportunities in the High North and the relationship with Russia. It creates a natural link to our past, to the economy and society today and the perspectives and possibilities for the future. If we look at the development of Norwegian society against a backdrop of the successful oil adventure, old insights and new challenges appear. Behind the newspapers and media debate and the apparent frank exchange of views, a shyness and modesty is hidden, as if an invisible poster appears for the inner eye warning that too much frankness would be inappropriate and could be punished: no Channel 4 News or BBC Newsnight equivalents emerge. The concentration of power in the public sector, media, academia and culture limits a fundamental debate about the oil fund, education, research, health, infrastructure and EU-membership. An open debate about public and civil power, state and society, the union of state and church, immigration, the multicultural society and the egalitarian society, set against an increasing difference of class, wealth and inheritance, does not happen. It is immediately subdued. The writer Lars Saabye Christensen argues that the free Norwegian literature, the creative cul76

David Charter, The Times, 16.6.16

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ture, is under pressure and freedom of speech is restrained.77 Vi har det så godt i Norge (we are so comfortable in Norway); no need to rock the boat unnecessarily. It is significant that recent critical approaches to the Norwegian dream and national identity were written by two foreigners living in Norway. We don’t see the Norwegian wood for all the trees. I made a serious point of opening up a debate about the ongoing politicisation of the Norwegian diplomatic service (the wandering between politics and diplomacy) and I began in Norway’s oldest and most distinguished cultural journal,78 but somehow it was killed by silence. No debate. Jante in the corner? Don’t think you are smarter than we are. In Norway, society is too often understood as the state. The word stat is used as a prefix to all official institutions and activities, cf. Statfjord, Statoil, Statens vegvesen and Statens pensjonsfond. The Prime Minister is Statsministeren and the ministries have an additional Royal as an adjectival distinction in front; my Ministry was the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the nationality is always added, just in case we forget. There is reduced respect for knowledge and culture today, the classical languages and history have faded.The early years at the University of Oslo were distinguished by Latin and the classics and Alma Mater continued to set and expect a certain standard for aspiring students. If you wished to enter the Faculty of History and Philosophy at Universitas Osloensis, which contained the study of both ancient and modern lan77 78

Aftenposten, 15.v.17. Nils-Johan Jørgensen, “Preposisjon, Om diplomater og politikere i UD”, Samtiden, 3, 2005; editor Knut Olav Åmås, later cultural editor of Aftenposten and then director of Fritt Ord (The Freedom of Expression). See also Nils-Johan Jørgensen, Kastevind. Gatelangs i verdens eldste yrke, Solum, 2011, 9–40.The (rare) political appointment of Ed Llewellyn as British Ambassador to France 23.9.16 created strong reactions in the Foreign Office.

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guages, it was compulsory first to pass a preliminary public examination in Latin, a full Grammar test and 140 pages of text. If the Latin Grammar does not suit you, you’d better try something else, it seemed to warn. Latin was the entry to the promised land of culture. This tent and test do no longer exist. Latin would give students a tremendous advantage. It is the foundation for ancient learning and a deeper understanding of culture and languages. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which examines the level of essential knowledge of fifteen year olds, found that Norwegian pupils were about European average in mathematics, but below in science and further behind compared with the top regions in the Far East. Investment in research and development is surprisingly low in Norway. Norway is a rich country, so rich in fact that it does not dare to use its considerable wealth. Why not use some of the expanding Oil Fund to improve education, it is argued, and in fact the Erna Solberg government did open the fund. It is ironic, but significant, that the exported TV thriller from Norway in 2014 was called Mammon. Still, in defence, the oil price in 2017 is not what it was, the oil sector has to readjust, the currency, Norwegian Kroner, is weaker and unemployment is increasing. A superficial populism and career focus pervades politics, not the honour and service as core values still visible during and after the Second World War. The new wealth, the gold beneath the ocean, challenges the traditional egalitarian society and new social differences and inequalities are set to develop. Norway has not integrated significantly as a multicultural and multifarious country. Position and power are held by ethnic Norwegians, socially and culturally it is a white country and the self-image is both confident and static. There is a debate about political, social and cultural issues, locally and nationally, but it shies

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away from opening up on serious conflict issues because power is increasingly concentrated in the public sector, in academia, culture and media. Norway has only been free and independent since 1905 and rich since the end of the cold war. The population has accepted the Gold Medal from the United Nations’ Human Development Index, the myth that Norway is now the best country in the world to live in and that it is typically Norwegian to be good. This is a dangerous delusion. The Scottish independence movement has used Norway as the golden example. The Mercer Quality of Life Survey, evaluating and ranking world cities on political and economic factors, relegate Oslo to a thirty first place. Copenhagen and Stockholm are ahead and Vienna is on top. The two countries, Norway and Sweden, are not just different nationalities, but also convey different temperaments linked to historic experiences. Swedish history has created a dynamic nation, technological and industrial progress, a longing for everything new, but Norway was under foreign rule for centuries after centuries. Life was strict and modest and created an identity from below, from the grass roots. Foreigners had represented a threat against the security and independence of the nation since the thirteenth century and the difference between Norwegian and Non-Norwegian, between good and evil, Norwegian values and foreign barbarism, had been in focus. A Norwegian novel written in 1933 introduced the concept Janteloven (Jante’s law).79 It has become part of the language and remains a persistent concept to define the Norwegian soul at its nadir. It creates a conflict between meritocracy and mediocrity as Jante sets down ten commandments demanded of the citizen by society and the main 79

En flyktning krysser sitt spor (A fugitive crosses his tracks), 1933, by the Norwegian/Danish writer Axel Sandemose

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command is: You better not think that you are somebody, that you have any value, that you will amount to anything. The purpose is to destroy the belief in individual possibilities. But if the self-respect, self-confidence and spontaneity are broken the result is insecure, anxious, envious, aggressive and easily manipulated human beings, for example, too easily rejecting membership in the EU. The Norwegian writer, Agnar Mykle, maintained that ‘in his heart of hearts the Norwegian is full of uncertainty and terror’ and the philosopher Johan Galtung added that the line ‘thou shalt not display’ is the eleventh commandment for the Norwegians. Very conflicting images of Norway appear, the insecure self-confidence, the secure nationalism of Constitution Day, Hurtigruten, Fjords, the Midnight Sun, multiculturalism and the lack of it, the rise and rise of the populist Progress Party (from 2014 part of the Conservative Government, its very popular and competent Party Leader as deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister) and the horror of the Anders Behring Breivik massacre. Imprisoned he would see himself as the young Adolf Hitler in prison in the 1930’s.80 The sun does not always shine at midnight, but the state will look after you in the dark. Norway is in an interregnum between two ages and needs to move with the rhythm of its own time and create a new self-image of individualism, variety and diversity as a member of the EU. As it stands, the national, Norwegian consciousness can appear like a mixture of a minority complex and megalomania. The soul of the people seems to change between self-destruction and self-importance, between self-torture and arrogant pride. They often convey an ignorance of their own history and culture that is as huge as the focus on their Norwegianism. The ten, depressing, commandments of the Law of Jante state: 80

Aftenposten, 17.i.17 and 2.iii.17

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Du skal ikke tro at du er noe. (Don’t think you are anything; that you are anything special.) Du skal ikke tro du er like meget som oss. (Don’t think you are as good, of the same standing, as we are.) Du skal ikke tro du er klokere enn oss. (Don’t think you are smarter than we are.) Du skal ikke innbille deg du er bedre enn oss. (Don’t imagine that you’re better than we are.) Du skal ikke tro du vet mer enn oss. (Don’t think you know more than we do.) Du skal ikke tro du er mer enn oss. (Don’t think you are more important than we are.) Du skal ikke tro at du duger til noe. (Don’t think you are good at anything.) Du skal ikke le av oss. (Don’t laugh at us.) Du skal ikke tro at noen bryr seg om deg. (Don’t think anyone cares about you.) Du skal ikke tro du kan lære oss noe. (Don’t think you can teach us anything.)

For good measure, Sandemose added an eleventh commandment: Du tror kanskje ikke at jeg vet noe om deg? (Perhaps you don’t believe that I know something about you?) These dictates from a novel published the year Hitler came to power, may at one level be seen as a warning against Europe and subconsciously have contributed to the integration resistance and No to Europe in 1972 and 1994? Since our Constitution Year of 1814 individual earnings and taxation have been openly available for anyone to see and the tax transparency is also available online today. Does it add to the Jante dimension of entrenchment and the culture of envy? It may be surprising that these commandments, rules and principles, the importance of equality and egalitarianism, group behaviour, uniformity and conformity, as opposed to individuality and individualism, are (or seem) still part of

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our political culture.You may be exceptional, worthy, special, inventive, resourceful and proud but you are not supposed to display the distinctive talent, but subdue it to group ethics and behaviour. Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen even made Jante more respectable by stating that it is permitted to believe that you are something special, only as long as you believe you are on behalf of someone or something (like the Labour Party?). Not surprisingly, the young generation have begun to react against the controlling Jante: Norwegians are world champions in norms, rules. A study from 2011 confirms the myth of the mighty hands of The Law of Jante on the Norwegian society. It was conducted in thirty-three countries and revealed that we came first in the obedience classification. Research indicates that Norwegians hold each other in an iron grip, marked by strong sanction urges, if independent individuals cause asymmetry in the ranks. Individuals who are systematically exposed and then yield to external pressure and manipulation, gradually develop a chameleon like intellect. In the hundreds of the country’s hamlets, village animals are watching you wherever you go. We are, in other words, very keen not to be seen as different from the crowd, but how then is society developed? Individuals who stand up and dare to shout louder than the others, are the ones who create the Norway of tomorrow. Does the Law of Jante keep Norway back, economically and culturally? The strong and dominant post-war focus marked by modesty and uniformity still persists in the Norwegian national soul. If you promote yourself it is only a short time before you are stamped as a smartass. Growing up as different on the conformity throne is like hitting the wall every single day. In the hundreds of the country’s small towns the village animals sit and watch you wherever you go.

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Norwegians are arguably among the most envious people in the world. Looking for the income tax level of others is a very popular pastime, talented students are being neglected in the school system and wealth is not highly regarded. In Norway there are relatively small differences, and precisely because we are so similar, the envy becomes a bit stronger. When we in 1969 drew the winning ticket and found oil in the North Sea, it was as if a group of farmers were given a machine from the future. It gave us unlimited possibilities, and a seemingly successful management has made Norway a wealthy state.This, however, has also become a curse and can be our downfall if the Law of Jante does not disappear. A resting on our laurels mentality, to be satisfied with one’s past success and to consider further effort unnecessary, still prevails among Norwegian youth; everything is going to go well, we have oil! If the future of Norway is to be secured we Norwegians cannot remain provincial peasants, whose main goal is to maintain the equality society.We must accept inequality, that the neighbour may be a little richer than you. Once upon a time the Norwegians were a hardworking people. It is time that we show our ancestors respect. It must be typically Norwegian to be the best, not just good, as Gro Harlem Brundtland said. The very best do not take Monday off because of binge drinking on Saturday. And the very best dare to aim for and reach a goal regardless of the neighbour’s disapproval. In a country with embarrassing low monitoring of talent, lack of incentives for entrepreneurship in combination with taxes of envy to lessen the inequalities in society, we have a long way to go in order to survive after the oil age. We must get down from the conformity throne and let some individuals be louder than the rest of us. Only then can the oil taps be closed.81 81

Haagen Poppe, “Janteloven tar livet av Norge” (The Law of Jante kills Norway), Aftenposten, 25.4.14 (my translation).

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This is perhaps a sign that Norwegian Youth is beginning to react to the provincial conformity and reflect on the individuality in the community of Europe, even membership? When Geir Lundestad, after twenty-five years of service to the Nobel Peace Prize, gave an honest account of the personalities and pressures involved it was as if Jante crept in behind him and asked him to shut up and go away. He was not even honoured by the Nobel Institute to keep a guest office there to continue his writing and extend the theme: Don’t think you can teach us anything. How true and fair are such reflections on Norway; are they not narrow and limited, making Jante far too important? Has the traditional need for hard work against the unrelenting harsh nature that Prime Minister Gerhardsen emphasized after 1945 been replaced by a wealthy, welfare state, a lazy, social service paradise? It is argued that the egalitarian Norway is in fact a class society today, exposing a very distinct elite. Community can be divided into a traditional working class, middle class and upper class but on the top of the upper class is a fourth element, the elite class. In that sense Norway is no different from England or France. It is a myth that it is. The elite reproduces itself in law, economics, medicine, culture and politics. Inheritance is the key. But it would be disrespectful to Jante if this social hierarchy was not played down! The elites must not appear to be what they are. The wonderful word folkeliggjøring springs to mind. In that sense it is an elitism sui generis, a hidden, disguised, confidential social stratification very different from Albion’s. The Statoil global strategist has an annual income of nearly 17 million NOK and the company director receives 14 million. Paradoxes always appear in history. When Norway was beginning to look towards an integrated Europe a majority of the people took a step or two back, but it was Norway and Denmark that joined NATO in 1949 and negotiated for EC membership in 1972, not Sweden. This was

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still the Cold War and neutral Sweden and Finland waited until 1994. Norway was then the expanding international and European nation, emerging from the isolated, indolent, inward-looking and peripheral land. The referendum in 1972 said No, supported by French indifference and perhaps even a French political evaluation that it would be better to keep Norway out of the EC as a gesture to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a Nordic balance in Cartesian logic. France seemed to add the ancient French prayer, ‘From the wrath of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us’. We tried in 1994 but missed the boat, again, and had to settle for the indolent European Economic Area (EEA). Sweden and Finland sailed into the union. We had become the slippery outside oil country. At least that is the image and perhaps the reality because the Government coalition of Høyre, traditionally the most EU friendly party, and the anti-European Progressive Party make it in itself an impossibility to join the EU today. The support from the population which for forty years was at least close to fifty per cent has dwindled to twenty per cent. The fear of immigration plays a part, but the EEA means we are part of the borderless Schengen Area. The EU banner was still visible. A distinguished member of the elite class, the Labour Foreign Minister (and later Party leader) Jonas Gahr Støre, stated in 2009 that a country like Norway, closely integrated with its neighbours in a mutual dependency, must have a seat at the table when decisions are taken. The relationship with Europe is the red line through almost everything that counts as modern Norwegian foreign policy. The EU, the EU-countries and the EU-policy will always appear in the centre of our foreign relations. We must constantly invite to a wide debate about the development in Europe and our relationship with the EU. I am pleased, he added, that the other EU-countries did not choose as we did. Europe can sleep safer at night with the EU. But why would

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he then remove the EU membership perspective from the party program in 2017?82 Was this in association with Brexit? In other words, perhaps Norway cannot sleep at night? Indeed, some of us truly believe that the EU deserved the Nobel Prize. It was Norway holding out a hand to an idea for which we had a majority before we lost our way in spite of competent Labour Party Prime Ministers (Bratteli, Brundtland) and Foreign Ministers (Frydenlund, Støre) telling us that Norway was part of Europe and not enough in itself. Ibsen’s Peer Gynt was published one hundred years before our first application to the EEC. In the play, called a dramatic poem, Peer enters Dovregubbens kongshall (the Royal Hall of the Mountain King of the Dovre trolls) with a great assembly of troll-courtiers, gnomes and brownies. The Mountain King sits on his throne, his family and children next to him. Peer stands before him and the other trolls gather closer.The troll courtiers and the troll witches demand they kill Peer, but instead he is offered the King’s fairest daughter and half the Kingdom while the King is alive and the other half after his death. ‘I am happy with that,’ says Peer. ‘Wait a minute, my boy’, the King replies, ‘you also have promises to make. And if you break one, the deal is off and you will not leave here alive.’The King then tests Peer’s intelligence and morality with a riddle: ‘What is the difference between a troll and a man?’ Peer answers: ‘There is no difference that I can see.’ The King then says, oh yes, out there under the bright firmament people say to each other: “Mann vær deg selv!” (Man, be yourself; to thine own self be true) but in here among the trolls we say: Troll, vær deg selv nok!” (Troll be yourself, enough; to thine own self be all sufficient). The point is that Peer carries the egotism and character of the trolls and does not understand the King’s riddles. The trolls are basic forces in the human soul such as self-deception, mendacity, com82

Cf. Chapter X.

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promise and moral cowardice. We can’t escape Ibsen. Not surprisingly he escaped to Hotel Tramontano in Sorrento to write and tell the truth about the Norwegian Soul. Vær deg selv nok seemed to be the guiding line for the majority in the two referenda to join Europe. Immigrants represented ten per cent of the Norwegian population, but foreign citizens are three times more likely to remain unemployed than the native born. The immigration debate is often too prejudiced and intolerant. The integration and assimilation policies lack perspective and diversity. It is sometimes used as a proud mark of national uniqueness, separation and independence, a defence of the lonely places and the No to the EU, to point to our prime explorers Leif Eriksson, Fridtjof Nansen, Roald Amundsen and Thor Heyerdal. Let us pause for a minute and look at the evidence and what it means. They were not dominated by any Law of Jante! The Norsemen sailed to Vinland the Good. They sighted the land in 986 and Leif Eriksson made the first landing in the year 1000. It is argued that he had landed in Newfoundland and indeed grapes did grow there. The US Congress named 9 October as Leif Eriksson Day in 1964, ‘a longoverdue recognition of this courageous Norseman who first explored the North American continent’ in the words of Hubert Humphrey.83 It is true that Nansen asserted that ‘the first great thing is to find yourself and for that you need solitude and contemplation – at least sometimes. I tell you, deliverance will not come from the rushing noisy centres of civilization. It will come from the lonely places.’ Nansen certainly had a lonely skiing trip across Greenland. He was convinced that the Arctic ice drifted from Siberia to Svalbard and a strong boat could follow the current and then drift past the North 83

Cf. Chapter I

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Pole. Nansen set off with the ship Fram to prove the point, was trapped in the ice but emerged three years later near Svalbard as he had predicted. He continued on a long expedition on skis that brought him close to the North Pole in 1886. So far so good but Nansen was much more than an explorer and a scientist. He sought international support for the secession from Sweden, he served as Norway’s Ambassador in London, supported the formation of the League of Nations and led the Norwegian delegation to its meetings. He organized the repatriation of prisoners of war after the First World War and the settlement of Russian political refugees. He created a Nansen Passport as identity, led the famine relief operation in Russia and the exchange of people after the Greco-Turkish war. It was solitude only sometimes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 and the Nansen International Office for Refugees won it in 1938, eight years after his death. Roald Amundsen, a contemporary of Fritjof Nansen and an early student of medicine, is another distinguished polar explorer, famous for being the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. He was the first to sail the Northwest Passage from east to west and he also reached the North Pole. He set out to rescue the Italian explorer, Umberto Nobile, who had crashed near Svalbard and lost his life in the operation. Amundsen created a successful shipping business after his South Pole expedition. The first name Roald became very popular in Norway and he had places, ships, schools and even a crater on the moon named after him. He reached beyond the Norwegian borders to the undiscovered worlds from which he returned and could tell many stories. The zoologist and ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl started an early search for paradise when he and his wife spent a year on one of the Marquesas Islands. He developed the theory that the Polonaise originally came from South America and not from Asia. But it was argued against him that it would

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be impossible to sail that distance with the sort of boats then available. He set out to prove that it was possible with a crew of five on a raft made from balsa wood, Kon-Tiki. He sailed on 28 April 1947 from Callao in Peru, following the wind and the current for 8000 km to Tahiti, arriving on 7 August. His book about the adventure was translated into more than twenty languages and sold millions of copies, the film made on the journey won the Oscar in 1952. Different expeditions followed with Ra and Tigris. ‘Borders. I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.’ He lived in his family home, Colla Micheri, in Italy. A global adventurer and a European. The fifth member of my EU exploration is a politician, the former Norwegian Prime Minister, Trygve Bratteli. He was a committed European and stood on the barricades for membership. Bratteli was arrested by the Nazi regime in Norway, became a Nact und Nebel prisoner in Germany and was moved between Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, Dachau, Ottobrunn, Dautmergen, Vaihingen and Neugamme 1942– 45. How did he become a convinced supporter of the integration in Europe and recommend Norway’s place in this development? The answer is the war and the imprisonment. It was essential to create a political system that would integrate Germany and protect European civilization. We seem to have forgotten that in 2018; our sense of history is lost in a continental fog. When foreign observers ask about the emotion and drive, the conflict and risk, the sense of a life lived on the edge in Norway it must be permitted to mention these risk takers and the participation in the Second World War. The four explorers were all looking beyond the Norwegian borders to discover new worlds and test new theories. Bratteli did the same in recommending the new political theory of integration. They were the Yes people, the Vikings. What has happened to the resolute, mobile, indomitable and daring Nor-

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wegian explorers, proud, adventurous and heroic? Nearly a million Norwegians left for America between 1825 and the US Immigration Act of 1924. Perhaps we lost some of the adventurous Yes genes to Vinland? Two of my uncles emigrated from Indre Elgsnes, Hinnøy. The dichotomy between native life and culture and Europe is still apparent. Norway ranks highest in the cult of the national, a narrow introspection, holding on to an inveterate image of a special individuality. It is essential for the development of our national identity that the long-established, cemented Law of Jante is understood, challenged and abandoned. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson screamed ‘Out, I will! out! – oh, so far, far, far over the high mountains!’, but another poet, Rolf Jacobsen, insisted ‘Look more often towards the North….North is best…. It is long this country. Most of it is North.’ We sense the eternal, revolving, binary classification of the Norwegian spirit. But North is only best as part of Europe. I have always felt that we lost something important as a nation when we said Yes to Jante and No to Europe, when The United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark became members. Norway in particular needed a closer European dimension in the development of identity and temperament as a nation after foreign rule and occupation, to maintain and develop a respect for knowledge and culture beyond our borders, a commitment to Europe. Bratteli had understood that. In the 1830s, a group of young academics argued and warned that our entire Norwegian cultural development was in danger of being isolated from the European cultural life, indeed at the very time it ought to begin in earnest. They considered the endeavour of Henrik Wergeland and the other ‘immature heads’ as a coordinated plan ‘little by little to isolate the country’s intellectual development from all contact with foreign cultures’. They argued against the insanity of such views and insisted that only by participating in and

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adapting the general European development would a people be worthy of entering the line of enlightened nations. Johan Sebastian Welhaven insisted that we could not separate ourselves from Verdens-Livet (the world’s life). He represented and focused on a new Europeanism against the national isolation and searched for cultural inspiration in France, Germany and England. Wergeland and Welhaven, Patriots and Europeans, are at one level the fitting dichotomies and from the consequences of the double No to membership in the EU emerge an image of Ibsen’s Gengangere, literally those who walk again, ghosts, in the words of Mrs. Alving: I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts… It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines …. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.84

Wealth is our new idol, master and darkness - but - no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.85 We love and hold on to mammon but seem to despise the idea of playing a full part in the European adventure. We are not on the stage, only an EEA understudy that takes care of mammon and keeps Peer happy. It is enough.The mountain King rules and the dead belief that it is best to be on the outside is alive and prosperous. We are now sailing happily with the 84 85

Act II The Gospel according to St Matthew,VI, 24 and St Luke XVI, 13.

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EEA liket i lasten (skeleton onboard). On the runway at Fornebu airport an old newspaper appeared showing a No advertisement. A dead statement that had celebrated itself to death.86 The past of 1972 re-emerged in 1994. Wergeland won and we kept our trolls. From my early schooldays I can remember Wergeland as the dominant spirit in the Norwegian and History lessons and in the celebration of 17 May. Europe as common space, the liberalism and basic freedom of movement was questioned in 2016. Even to think of replacing the community of twenty-eight European states with the divided continent of a hundred years earlier, the irrational wish to leave, to break up the community in the face of an expansionist Russia and China and expanding armed jihadist international terrorism, is an imprecation. Perhaps Norway bordering Russia on land and at sea, paradoxically and ironically, is a firm supporter of the EU and looks askance at the moods of separation developing in France and in Great Britain. Brexit was a strange aberration. The Norwegians want the EU to be there, to lean on, but not to join, an absurd paradox. Splendid isolation? It is neither splendid nor isolated. ‘The only good government … is a bad one in a hell of a fright.’87 We need a bad one in Norway. John Ruskin said that ‘great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, ‘the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art’. Norway has written all three rather splendidly, but is still struggling to complete the chapter on Europe. Our history helps to explain why. We hide behind the mountains but we really long to fly above them. Yes, I think we make Jante far too important. The Viking spirit of adventure and discovery is 86

87

Jens Otto Krag, Dagbog 1971–72, Gyldendal, 1973, 266 (the words were written 30 September 1972) Arthur Joyce Lunel Carey

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challenged and held back by the laws of Jante. Membership in the EU would reduce this power. Langsomt ble landet vårt eget (slowly the country was our own).88 Would it not still be ours, and arguably even stronger, if we were fully part of a European community? Derom strides de lærde.89

88 89

Nordahl Grieg, “17. mai 1940”. On that point the learned disagree.

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Index Y Breivik, Anders 49 Brexit 66, 68–70, 73, 75, 80, 90– 92, 140, 146 Brezhnev 122 Bronken, Per 97

Abba 44 Alaska x, 102 Altmark 39 Andøy x Antarctic 35 Arendal xvii, 39 Aspaker, Elisabeth 90 Arctic region 79, 100, 105, 117 Attila x

Caesar, Julius x Carter, Jimmy 60, 61 Churchill, Winston xiv, 39, 86 Coleridge 52

BBC 3, 66, 103, 130, 150 Sea, Barents 34, 94, 95, 97, 102, 104, 106, 107, 112, 116, 125 Becket, Thomas x Bergen 8, 11, 13, 27, 39, 43, 52 Bergslien, Brynjulf xi Berlin wall 73 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne 27, 31, 32, 54, 59, 144 Bjørnøya xvi, 34, 66 Blair, Tony 71, 91 Blucher 40 Bodø 114 Bouvet Island 35 Borlase 40 Brandt, Willy 61, 77, 78, 95 Bratteli, Trygve 48, 77, 88, 111, 143, 150 Bratislava 69

155

Dagbladet xi, 23, 63, 101 Dahl, Johan Christian 57 Dass, Petter 52 Denmark ix, xiv–xviii, 2, 12–18, 20–25, 29, 30, 33, 34, 39, 52, 63, 69, 75, 78, 79, 81, 85, 94, 96, 102, 108, 138, 144 Edda 51, 153 Egersund 39 England xiii, xvi, 7, 9, 11, 15–17, 21, 24, 33, 34, 36, 50, 55, 56, 104, 138, 145 EC xiv, 53, 68, 77, 81, 83, 86, 94, 138, 139 ECSC 74, 76 EEA 79, 82, 83, 86, 87, 124, 139, 145, 146

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EEC 75, 76, 82, 140, 150 EFTA 75 EU xv, 48, 53, 60, 64–66, 68–75, 79, 80, 82–92, 95, 96, 103, 104, 109, 112, 120, 121, 123–128, 130, 134, 139–141, 143, 145– 147, 151 Evensen, Jens 93, 106 Finland xv, xvi, 15, 16, 21, 24, 28, 39, 78, 79, 96, 102, 106, 121, 139 Finnmark 24, 41, 42, 101, 104 Flagstad, Kirsten 58 France 9, 21, 23, 24, 33, 36, 53, 60, 64, 68, 69, 71, 75, 80, 83, 85, 86, 91, 103, 108, 131, 138, 139, 145, 146 Fremskrittspartiet 48, 49, 85 Frydenlund, Knut 81, 105, 129 Galtung, Johan 134 de Gaulle 76, 77 Geneva 37 Gerhardsen, Einar 46, 47, 136 Gestapo xii, 42 Germany vii, xv, xvi, xviii, 9, 33–39, 41, 44, 50, 53, 55, 60, 66, 68–71, 74, 75, 80, 84, 85, 91, 99, 103, 110, 122, 124, 143, 145, 151 Gove, Michael 80 Greece 35, 69, 85 Great Britain 37, 39, 41, 62, 71, 75, 76, 83, 85, 87, 88, 93, 94, 103, 129, 146 Greenland Sea 35 Grieg, Edvard 53, 58 Grieg, Nordahl 38, 56, 147 Gaarder, Jostein 56

Hamar 39 Hambro xii, 35, 40 Hamsun, Knut 45, 55 Harstad 27, 28, 40, 99, 100, 150 Harald V xi Haukeland, Arnold 58 Heath, Edward 71, 76 Herder 52 Heyerdahl, Thor 142 Holberg, Ludvig 52 Homer 52 Hungary xv, 69, 85, 124 Horace 52 Hugo 52 Hinnøy viii, ix Holberg xii, 52, 54 Haakon VII xi, 1, 30, 39 Ibsen xii, xiv, 8, 25, 50, 51, 53–59, 140, 141, 145, 150, 151, 152 Japan 28, 33, 36, 50, 60, 95, 108, 110, 113, 115–117, 151 Jerusalem x Jodl 39 Karl Johan xi, xii, 16, 17, 20, 21–23 Kleist 52 Kohl, Helmut 44 Koht, Halvdan 37, 39, 62 Lange, Halvard 63, 76, 93 Latin xiii, 10, 131, 132 Lavrov, Sergej 106 League of Nations 35, 37, 60, 142

INDEX

Lie, Trygve 62, 63 Lundestad, Geir 60, 61, 138 Lyng, John 47, 104 Macron, Emmanuel 69, 91 May, Theresa 69, 70, 90 Maud xi, 29, 30, 35 Medvedjev, Dimitrij 105 Messina 75 Merkel, Angela 70, 124 Michelsen, Christian 28, 46 Monnet, Jean 74 Munch, Edvard ii, 57, 58, 153 Mykle, Agnar 134 Nansen, Fridtjof ix, xv, 35, 60, 141 Nasjonal Samling 36, 42 Nato 62 Narvik 28, 38–41 Nobel, Alfred Bernhard 59 Nordic Council 76 Norwegian Labour Party 27, 35, 85, 91, 121 Norsk Hydro 43 North Sea x, 37, 93, 95, 106, 107, 137 Novalis 52 Nuremberg 41 Nygaardsvold, Johan 37, 46 Obama xiv, 60, 87, 100, 122 Ofoten Fjord 39, 40 Olav V xi, 1, 52 Oscarsborg 40 Oslo ix–xiii, 6, 10, 21, 25, 27, 39–41, 48, 54, 55, 57, 58, 62, 66, 78, 101, 108, 113, 122, 131, 133

157

Le Pen, Marine 91, 124 Pitt, William 32 Peer Gynt 50, 53, 54, 140 Poland 65–67, 69, 85, 86, 123 Pompidou 78 Vladimir Putin 118, 119, 150 Quisling 36, 38, 43, 45, 46, 49 Royal Palace xi, 23 Russia x, xv, xvi, 15, 16, 21, 24, 28, 33, 35, 39, 64–67, 70, 75, 82, 83, 88–90, 94, 96, 99–128, 130, 142, 146, 149, 150, 153 Roosevelt, Theodore 60 Rosenberg, Alfred 38 Rousseau 19, 52 Raeder, Erich 38 Ruskin, John 146 Schengen 68, 79, 89, 139 Schlegel 52 Schulz, Martin 74 Schuman, Robert 74 Shakespeare S xvi, 52, 55, 152 Sortland 114 South Pole 35, 142 Soviet Union 33, 34, 37, 39, 43, 46, 60, 62, 63, 92, 94, 104, 105, 110, , 111, 114, 119, 122, 123, 125, 139 Spinelli, Altiero 74 Spilling, Per 42 Stalin 33, 62, 104, 114, 119, 120, 122, 123 Statoil 95, 131, 138 Stavanger 23, 25, 39 Stray, Svenn 95 Store, Jonas Gahr 48, 106, 109, 121, 139, 153

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Svalbard Treaty 109, 110, 116 Sweden 109, 110, 116 Svalbard vii, x, xvi, 34, 47, 65, 66, 97, 100–102, 104–106, 108– 111, 116, 142, 150 Tindemans, Leo 71 Thatcher, Margaret xiv, 70, 71 Treholt, Arne 94 Trondenes Church 99 Trondheim 18, 27, 39 Turkey 4, 35, 73, 84, 85 Thatcher, Margaret xiv, 70, 71

Undset, Sigrid 56 Venstre 26–28, 46, 78, 150 Vigeland, Gustav 58, 153 Vinland xviii, 4, 5, 141, 144, 151 Voltaire 52 Wallis, Diana 109 Welhaven, Johan 53 Weserubung 39 Wessel, Johan Herman 52 Wilson, Tomas Woodrow 60 Wordsworth 52