The Rise of Little Big Norway

John F. L. Ross

Description

Chronicle of Norway’s unheralded rise from peripherality to global steward

“The Rise of Little Big Norway” delivers a wide-ranging topical exploration of the remarkable rise of Norway from poverty and Nordic peripherality to the global steward and Arctic frontliner of today. Drawing on an unusual range of scholarly and popular source material, it chronicles the developmental emergence of Norway while setting it variously in its Nordic, Arctic, European, transatlantic and global contexts. It astutely blends historical analysis and contemporary insight into a finely crafted study of a long-overlooked country that is now a quietly influential global force and an exemplar in areas as diverse as work-life balance, diplomacy and ethical investing.

Written by an experienced Scandinavianist, “The Rise of Little Big Norway” offers a textual mosaic befitting a geographically and historically fragmented land. It elaborates a connecting theme of mobility, which took Vikings across the Atlantic in open boats, created a worldwide diaspora, fueled an exploratory age, and makes today’s Norwegians the royalty of the skiing world and the most traveled people on the planet. It gives special attention to the overlooked northern dimension that makes Norway, with its front-row seat on the Arctic, an increasing touchstone for twenty-first-century debates over global warming and transitioning to a post-oil age. It posits Norwegians as grounded globalists and Norway as a country of unique elements, from its societal peculiarities to its polar identity and the Nobel Peace Prize, which contribute to its unique global profile.

“The Rise of Little Big Norway” is written in a lively, trenchant, essay-based style which can be appreciated by non-specialists, while its coverage of less familiar sides to the national story will be helpful to scholars seeking to extend their knowledge of Norway, Scandinavia and northern Europe. For all readers it delivers a wealth of specialized information, astute observation and comparative insight into the qualities that enabled Norway’s rise to prominence and which distinguish it from its Nordic neighbors. This book offers the kind of thoughtful, well-crafted, single-volume coverage that has long been missing and which fills an important gap in the English-language literature on Norway and northern Europe.

Preface; Part I Settings; 1. Little Big Country; 2. A Directional Puzzle; 3. Meanings of North; Part II Histories; 4. A Fractured Timeline; 5. Long Night’s Journey into Day; 6. Norway and the Dazzling Dutch; 7. The Union of Weights and Wings; 8. A Sporting Start; Part III Perennials and Currents; 9. Reluctant Unionists; 10. Well and Truly Oiled; 11. The Meaning of Nobel; 12. Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785271953
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Rise of Little Big Norway
The Rise of Little Big Norway
John F. L. Ross
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © John F. L. Ross 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Support for this project was provided by Det Faglitterære Fond and Fritt Ord.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-193-9 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-193-8 (Pbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For Rebecca
Contents
Preface
▄ ▄ ▄
Part I   Settings
 1 Little Big Country
 2 A Directional Puzzle
 3 Meanings of North
Part II   Histories
 4 A Fractured Timeline
 5 Long Night’s Journey into Day
 6 Norway and the Dazzling Dutch
 7 The Union of Weights and Wings
 8 A Sporting Start
Part III   Perennials and Currents
 9 The Reluctant Unionists
10 Well and Truly Oiled
11 The Meaning of Nobel
12 Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Preface
This is a broadly conceived work of exploration, which springs from two basic aims. One is to examine Norway’s national development via some less familiar angles; the other is to elaborate on the unorthodox characteristics of a country celebrated for its simple virtues yet marked by relentless complexity. At its heart lies the interplay of geography and history—the “basic grid of time and space” as Norman Davies astutely frames it in his prodigious history of Europe—applied to one, quite special national context and in terms that might engage nonspecialist readers with an interest in the north.
In keeping with this spirit of duality, the exploratory theme is pursued by two different but, I hope, complementary means.
The first involves a search—a long-running, open-ended and at times quite personal one—to find Norway: to unlock its mysteries, locate its cultural heart, grasp its world role and intuit its distinctiveness especially, but not only, as regards its Nordic neighbors. These linked essays are suggestive sallies in this direction. As such, they might lend perspective to ongoing debates, especially over a post-oil future that carries such immense consequences for the world and for Norway.
I’m setting out, secondly, to probe aspects of Norwegian life that highlight an insistent national motif, namely the search . Norway has always struck me as a society relentlessly but purposefully on the go, and data from a recent survey have indeed confirmed Norwegians as the most mobile people on the planet in terms of working life. Norway has been, and still is, a conveyor belt of inquisitive globe-trotters with a deep capacity for surprise and a surprising capacity for going deep. While many societies are mobile, few are so thoroughly characterized by mobility. This to me is intriguing. Perhaps rashly, I take it as a symptom of deeper processes. For there is something truly striking about a country that is so organized, so successful and so ancient, yet so evidently and earnestly seeking its rightful place in the world.
As a non-Norwegian writing (in English) about Norway, I enjoy a certain freedom of expression that might elude a native. But liberty isn’t license, and it is balanced by the caution required of anyone treading on sensitive ground. Fairly or not, outsider observations can easily get taken as a sort of litmus test of approval. Even the most cursory effort to convey a culture, especially one as intricate as Norway’s, requires tiptoeing, not trampling, through the fields of cliché that sprout from the national soil. Norway’s copious harvest ranges from knitted sweaters and sod-roofed mountain huts to blocks of brown cheese that, lo and behold, isn’t cheese at all.
Such icons of old-timey innocence have held their ground through a commodity boom that transformed a congenitally hard-luck country into a preternaturally blessed lykkeland (land of happiness) within the space of a generation. Their tenacity speaks volumes about Norwegian continuity in the face of change. It also reveals a native talent for meshing opposites: complication and simplicity, speed and due deliberation, risk-assumption and risk-aversion, softness and steel. This flair for symbiosis, pulled off with the casual aplomb of conjurers in a circus act, is far easier to admire than to explain.
Arguably understudied as a subject, Norway has been inarguably underestimated as a country. It rarely draws attention to itself, unlike its neighbors Sweden, renowned purveyor of the just society; Denmark, the dominant market force in hygge (cozy living); and Finland, innovators in mobile telephony, educational reform and untranslatably dry humor. Oddly for such a forthright, open society, there is a puzzling ambiguity surrounding Norway. Having long eschewed a self-conscious world role, it has almost self-consciously eschewed such a role. No wonder it gets misconstrued or mistaken for its neighbors by otherwise intelligent people. Norway stands out for not standing out, and its people seem remarkably unfazed by the fact.
That alone is quite the feat for a country which, in 2017, achieved two notable milestones in quick succession. Norway was tipped by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network as the “world’s happiest country” in a study more serious than it sounds (it measures social capital, not laughter). Around that time Norway’s sovereign oil fund—already the world’s biggest—surpassed the incomprehensible figure of a trillion (US) dollars. True to form, Norwegians reacted to the news with insouciant shrugs and cryptic smiles. Then they headed out to ski.
The seeming interpretation of this extraordinary double act—that money really buys happiness, as if verifying the hoariest of clichés—barely scratches the Norwegian surface. Its most basic national features, from the language and history to the lay of its land, defy every notion of straightforward. It brings to mind the famous knot of ancient Gordium, which stumped visitors until Alexander the Great came along, unsheathed his sword and chopped it into two.
Norway is a Gordian knot of our time, a tenacious holdout to facile explanation. The paucity of outside writings on Norway, and the poverty marking some that do appear, amply attest to this characteristic. Careful disentangling is in order. Fool’s errand it may be—and Norwegians don’t impress easily or suffer fools gladly—I’m seeking to explain how a country so physically scattered and historically truncated that it shouldn’t even be , has corralled its tinkering, inquiring and exploring impulses into the unprecedented twenty-first century national project that a half-comprehending world is only now waking up to in its midst.
It’s not surprising that Norway, with fewer than six million mostly well-mannered people, flies below the radar in a world of galloping globalization and tribalized braggadocio. Yet Norway’s catalog of accomplishment, and its burgeoning influence, can no longer be casually dismissed. Its oil savings, bound up in a pension fund, control upward of 1.5 percent of the world’s financial markets. That fund, meaning Norway’s people, has a guiding hand in the world economy and a direct stake in our future.
Norway has arrived as a world player, slipping in through the side door; just as typically, it has surpassed itself by summiting. It impels a fresh look at norskhet , “Norwegian-ness”: at how the country slaved or stumbled into a golden age that dares not speak its name. Even now—especially now—there’s a case for elaborating the Norwegian story from both sides of the national interface: as a unit with a certain mien and personality in the world, and as a set of inner works so finely tuned it could stump a master watchmaker in Neuchâtel.
Some readers might already sense that the book’s title can be read several ways. Norway does rank high on plenty of world performance charts, as do all the Nordics. The Economist Intelligence Unit rates Norway as the world’s most democratic country, while its work–life balance is the stuff of envy. Norway crowns its continent and reaches above the 80th parallel, while this famously hilly land’s highest point, Galdhøpiggen , is the tallest peak in northern Europe. We call Tibet the roof of the world, but Norway has a stronger, three-dimensional claim to the title of verdens tak , the top of the world literally and not just figuratively.
There’s also a touch of irony in my choice of phrase. If pushed, few observers would place Norway atop their list of world-beaters. Oslo, its monied but unpretentious capital, trails nearby Stockholm, Copenhagen and even Helsinki in the grandeur stakes. Few Norwegians would take such a haughty claim—that they’re absolute best at anything (apart, of course, from cross-country skiing)—at face value. A people accustomed to downplaying themselves, especially in their own neighborhood, are prone to turn the very idea into slapstick comedy or brush the evidence aside as so much inconvenient truth. Telling sighs of relief greeted the news in