chapter 1
Equality Norway has been considered to be a country where egalitarian values have had greater success than elsewhere. This means that Norwegians have been receptive to trends emphasising factors such as codetermination, integration and economic equality. Visitors to Norway are often surprised by the relatively small differences in income between rich and poor, the generous grants from the state to students and families with children, and the extent to which children with special needs have been integrated in our schools, and these are just a few examples. Political scientist Bernt Hagtvet made this comment in Aftenposten in April 2004: ‘The quest for equality is distinctly Norwegian. If you go to Britain, you discover the immense amount of energy people use in order to create distance between one another.’ In Norway he finds an easy-going atmosphere between members of different classes in society, and between those who govern and those governed. Hagtvet elaborates, ‘I can send an email to our prime minister if I want to. Norway is the most transparent society in Europe. This is a triumph’. How, then, do historians explain this Norwegian preference for egalitarian values? Here are two explanations. First of all, in a very long-term historical perspective, Norway stands out in European history as a country where feudalism never had any real success. With certain exceptions (the expansive farmlands in the east and parts of Trøndelag) Norwegian rural society has been characterised by considerable social equality, and so differs from rural Europe as a whole. The Norwegian author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910) wrote that ‘Norway is a country of houses and cottages, but no castles’. This absence of an aristocratic upper class can be partially explained through its geography. In most parts of the country, the landscape does not support farming on a large scale. Flying over Norway, you will see mountains, lakes, fjords, glaciers, forests and small islands. The lack of arable land is striking. Today, less than 3% of Norway is cultivated. Consequently, in this long-term historical perspective, Norway was sparsely populated, and it was difficult for rich farmers to mobilise poor farmers to work in their fields and pay land taxes in ways characteristic of feudal societies elsewhere in Europe. The typical rural pattern in Norway 14
