NORWAY THE CONTENTED
By T. K. DERRY
IT has been a busy day at Molde. The hotel proprietor has hoisted and lowered his German, French and British flags, each at the appropriate moment ; a brisk trade in sealskin purses and miniature Viking ships has filled the quay ; and now the last of the " floating hotels," as the ingenuous Norwegian loves to style them, has disappeared down the fjord, leaving the Romsdalshom—five thousand feet of precipice—once More in command of the situation.
For this is pre-eminently a country where man, as viewed by the casual visitor at least, sinks into an appropriate insig- nificance. He has made the minimum impression on the landscape. Set a match to a few gaily-painted wooden houses, and every fjord will be what it was a few thousand years ago— or what Simodalen (where last year the mountain side slid into the water) is today. And that failure to master Nature finds its economic expression in the poverty of the rock- bound farms, where the bonde, who is the backbone of the nation, ekes out a precarious livelihood, with the help of the timber-felling, which occupies him in winter ; the fisheries— if he has his home within call of the sea ; and, most probably, the earnings of one or two stout sons afloat in that astonishing mercantle marine—astonishing, that is, in its narrow basis— which has made the red and blue flag a familiar sight on the trade-routes of two hemispheres.
The casual visitor, therefore, carries away with him from Norway a sentimentalised picture of the scenery but next to no knowledge of a political and social achievement which should be the envy of her wealthier neighbours. Yet Athens, after all, had a small population and a tolerably low standard of living : the value of the freights for which Demosthenes exercised his genius would have aroused a good deal of derision on Wall Street. The Norwegian Boule—an unimpressive senate-house built in the worst Victorian style—is closed for the summer recess : but faute de mieux a study of the Norwe- gian newspapers reveals some interesting points of contrast with our own habits of thought—and the loss is not always theirs.
Their foreign news service is not good. The Norwegian public is content to learn at second-hand what London has heard from Berlin or Paris from Moscow, and the commentary, like the story, is seldom original. Ask why, and you are told that Norwegian opinion counts for so little in the world outside that it is hardly worth while to express it. The only external issue in recent years about which they held decided views was the fate of the League, which Nansen had made a reality for Norway : the Oslo Powers now deem the League to be moribund : let their greater neighbours see to it. There can be little pacifism in one sense in a country where the principle of universal and compulsory military service reigns apparently unchallenged, but it is tolerably certain that the Norwegian youth of today will fight for nothing save the territorial integrity of the fatherland, who3e inhos- pitable shores Ahab will scarcely covet for an air-base.
But the pride which is not used up in vain strivings after a bold foreign policy finds expression in the social services. From the National Theatre to the National University, from the hospital and medical organisation to the provision of country holidays for the children of the urban proletariat —90 per cent. were enabled to leave Oslo last summer— a complete network of skilfully conceived arrangements knits rich and poor together in a single, essentially middle- class, community. That this must be so is clear when one reflects that, though the extremes of wealth and poverty are less than in England (there being no big agglomerations of real estate and no class of landless agricultural labourers), the incidence of taxation is about equally severe. An interest- ing concrete example of this levelling principle is to be found in the education of Norway's two princesses : as it is inconvenient for them to attend the village schcol, a selection of village children is despatched daily to the Palace to share their lessons and their play.
These are the topics which fill the papers, and there is the more room for them because of the entire absence of our Society gossip. Your Norwegian is a Rousseauite - to this extent at least, that his taste in gossip is based on the natural interest of the many : he would far rather hear what propor- tion of the population went bathing last Sunday—they are avid statisticians in Norway—than eavesdrop at the luncheon- tables of the great. As for politics in our sense of the word, Aftenposten and other organs of the Right gird- in a familiar fashion at municipal extravagance and the tyranny of the trade unions (the dominant force in Norwegian industry), but the foreigner can detect little disturbance of the tranquil waters after two years of Labour government, albeit public servants now get an extra holiday on May Day !
It is pleasant to add that the news service from London is an exception to the general rule : Norway knows all about Mr. Hore-Belisha and General Ironside, not to mention the transfer fee paid to hire Mr. Bryn Jones from Wolver- hampton to Highbury. This is, indeed, consistent with the general trend of Norwegian history, ever since Haakon the Good was baptised at the court of King Athelstan and the cathedral-builders carried their art overseas to Trondhjem. But the converse should also be true. As a democracy Norway is older than England, and the democratic spirit has its roots deeper in the social and economic habit; of the nation. Subtract the special problems created by over population and imperial commitments, and it can then be claimed that Norway is what England may be. At all events, Norwegian civilisation today has much to teach to those who recognise that, where the art of living is concerned, vota ponderantur, non- numerantur,
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