The Norwegian Exception?: Norway's Liberal Democracy Since 1814

by Mathilde Fasting, Øystein Sørensen

How did Norway become a highly successful liberal democracy? Will its prosperity and stability last, or has modern history been an exception? Is the Norwegian experience based on luck, or has a part been played by clever politicians and sound institutions, including a well-functioning rule of law? How does Norway combine social democracy with a market economy, and extensive foreign trade? Since the 1970s, Norway has become an oil-producing giant in Northern Europe–how can that role be reconciled with the realities of climate change, and increasing awareness of that crisis?

This highly engaging book introduces Norwegian political and economic history to a broad audience, offering a deeper understanding of a country always looked upon with great interest, but perhaps not profoundly understood. The Norwegian Exception? takes the reader back through 200 years of state-building to explain Norway’s current position as a top- ranking nation, and to consider its chances of keeping that status in the twenty-first century. In particular, it unpacks how Norwegian politics and governance have shaped the country’s world-famous oil fund and unique relationship with the European Union. Leading historians Mathilde Fasting and Øystein Sørensen skilfully draw back the curtain on the inner workings of the Norwegian ‘utopia’.

Genres: Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

Published August 26, 2021

Reviews

[Anthony Santiago · Rating 2 out of 5]

[2.5 stars]

I've wanted to visit Norway for many years, and I enjoyed this book as an introduction to Norwegian culture and popular history. From koselig to King Harald Fairhair, and dugnad to Haugeanism, The Norwegian Exception? is at its best when introducing the cultural peculiarities of the namesake society. On the historical side, the dissolution of the civil servants' regime, followed by the disunion with Sweden twenty years later, was a thrilling series of chapters. As a succession of isolated events and facts—it's a good primer, no complaints.

But as a narrative? Readers should be skeptical. Fasting and Sørensen place a misleading, idealistic, and probably political emphasis on the role of "cooperation" and "collaboration" in resolving the various contentious episodes of Norwegian history. This mushy vernacular, plus "consensus," permeates the text and obscures the role of material interests as the principal force driving both conflict and resolution. In the authors' conception, the elites who crushed the Thrane labor movement and spent decades refusing to regulate work time simply had a change of heart and unanimously codified eight-hour workdays. The elections of 1918 were just unfair, so egalitarians throughout the Storting reached across the aisle(s), and everyone instituted proportional representation.

In reality, after the Bolshevik Revolution, Trotsky invited the Labour Party to Comintern. Social democrats or reformists in the Arbeiderpartiet lost influence as more radical strands of socialism took hold. International and domestic pressure for workers' rights was mounting, and Norwegian elites in business and government perceived that, without a viable counterstrategy, they could very well lose their status. Some repressive tactics were employed—there was illegal spying, strikebreaking battleships, and backup military divisions that curiously excepted lower-class soldiers. Yet the overarching counterstrategy was not repression but co-optation. Right wing parliamentarians elevated the social democrats and reluctantly instituted progressive reforms in an effort to integrate a few revolutionary demands back into the existing economic order. It was no idealistic "Kum ba ya" (read more: Reforming to Survive).

So I worry that Fasting and Sørensen have compiled something all too vague and sanitized to warrant the question mark in the title. The "Norwegian exceptions" or "exceptions in Norway" were really the tenant farmers (husmenn) outnumbered by freeholding bønder, or the Indigenous Sámi people, mentioned only thrice in this grand history, whose languages were banned at the culmination of centuries of maltreatment and Norwegianization. The Norwegian Exception? toes an exceptionalist line, and is hence strikingly unadventurous. Norway was never feudal, sure, so explore the complexities or class antagonisms entailed by Norway's former system. The language conflict, Bokmål versus Nynorsk, is very fascinating, sure, but attempts at Indigenous linguicide are just as pertinent, if not more, to discussions about forming national identity! But you'll only find that in the authors' memory hole.

Norway and the other Scandinavian countries are well-integrated into an "imperialist world system" (Riding the Wave: Sweden’s Integration into the Imperialist World System). Look at the Mapuche in Chile, resisting Norwegian state hydropower on ancestral lands. Look at the Norwegian depletion of Mauritanian, Senegalese, and Gambian fish stocks, boosting unsustainable tuna farms at the expense of traditional food sources. Fasting and Sørensen have reinforced a liberal nationalist mythos by obscuring Norway's similarity to more overtly imperialist polities.

I appreciate that the authors did not, however, obscure a major paradox in the Annerledeslandet: The wonderfully outdoorsy folk, with their hytter and their green energy, are world-renowned for their domestic environmentalism, yet combustion of their oil and natural gas exports accounts for around thirteen times the enviable territorial emissions. Add those approximately 500 million tons of emissions to the 40 or so million back home, and tiny Norway finds itself moored, in some metrics, to more annual greenhouse gas emissions than all of international aviation in 2023. This is an important discussion, and oil interests seem to be winning, so I'm glad the authors don't shy away from it.

Nevertheless, I found their discussion of immigration, another hot button issue, to be lacking, often due to questionable rigor. More than other chapters, "Peaceful Coexistence or Polarization?" suffered from the book's reference style, which I can only describe as... sparse footnotes, extensive bibliography. The Norwegian Exception? was written for Anglophones, and most of the sources are in Norwegian. This would, of course, not be a problem, if only there were more than two to twelve (usually closer to two) footnotes per chapter. It is immensely difficult to draw links between specific claims and sources thanks to the dearth of precise citations. The issue is compounded tenfold by the majority foreign-language bibliography; it's simply inaccessible to international readers. I'd rather not accuse the authors of being opaque intentionally, but I can't help but notice Fasting's affiliation with a center-right think tank called Civita. It is guaranteed that the authors' bias has in some capacity tainted their presentation of facts. As such, the lack of transparency in sourcing undermines my confidence in their entire narrative!

Further, immigration and climate change are presented as two important but isolated issues. Remember, reader: Norwegian fossil fuels comprise over one percent of global emissions, and it's thoroughly well-established that global warming has an outsized impact on the least responsible groups. In other words, Norway's population of a few million contributes immensely to a sharpening climate refugee crisis. How unfortunate that the authors instead focused on femonationalist qualms with Muslim immigrants.

In any case, The Norwegian Exception? is a pleasant little book. It's a journey through what I can only imagine would be a high school history class somewhere in Oslo. Just read it with a critical eye, okay?

[Anne Abelsæth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of politics in Norway the last 200 years. As a Norwegian, I'm sure I learned it all in school, but a repetition was great.

As for the exception: it all boils down to the fact that Norway is a homogeneous, trusting society with the will to compromise and cooperate. And yeah, we had a little luck now and then, but that wouldn't have gotten us far alone.