We are so few in this country

Norway’s war history sheds light on why so few Norwegians die from covid-19.

Chronicle
This is a chronicle. Opinions in the text are the responsibility of the writer.

The other day, in the middle of the second stop, I was having dinner with some French acquaintances in Provence. Meetings were, of course, forbidden, without anyone caring. The hostess was an elegant, correct and somewhat reserved psychoanalyst in her 50s.

After lunch, she whispered that we should go out with her. The dark streets were deserted, hardly a car could be heard. When we came to a suitable brick wall, he suddenly pulled a spray can out of the exclusive cardigan and started labeling slogans against President Macron, police checkpoints and the closure of the country.

There are also taggers in Norway. And this was a story of a country with 66 million inhabitants.

But a bottle of wine for those who find a more appropriate story about the difference between the Norwegian and French approach to the pandemic.

The French are a revolutionary people. If they follow the prohibitions, it is because the penalties for not doing so are strict. Serious warnings about “joint responsibility” and “collective contribution” are rarely heard.

While criticism of closed restaurants and police checkpoints are everywhere. In no European country is resistance to coronary vaccine greater.

Inner justice is so strong

This is not to say that the French are less moral. The social contract in Norway is simply different. In Norway, we do not need strict laws, and the rules of the Norwegian crown are not strict, because internal justice is very strong. Confidence in the authorities’ handling of the pandemic has been overwhelming since March.

Instead of tagging slogans against Espen Rostrup Nakstad and Bent Høie, we write angry messages on social media about people breaking the crown’s rules. We keep silent about the neighbor who has traded in Swedish, or we “blacklist” residents who supposedly have a crown, as in Alta.

Of good tone It is not. But if you want to understand why as many people die in 24 hours in France as the total number in Norway since March, you have to start here.

Some may say that the infection is also “out of control” in Norway. Perhaps in relation to Taiwan and New Zealand. But compared to almost all other European countries, Norway has little infection and very few coronary deaths.

Not just great powers like France, but also in relation to well-functioning welfare states like the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden. They have about ten times more deaths in relation to the population. Why? Yes, Norway is on the edge of Europe. The country is long and sparsely populated. Norwegians love themselves more.

Few Norwegians die in war

Could it be that the low death rates also reveal something deeper about Norway’s culture and history?

Many years ago I served in the Armed Forces abroad and later wrote a book about Norwegian foreign soldiers. Of the hundreds of thousands of Norwegians who have served in international operations, and many have been involved in very tough battles, a surprisingly small number have returned home in a wrapped coffin. The soldiers used to talk about “God is Norwegian”, as the book was called.

Even in Afghanistan, where thousands of Norwegians served for ten years and many participated in regular combat, we lost few.

When a roadside bomb killed four Norwegian soldiers in June 2010, I remember the commotion. It was almost a national duel in Norway. Everyone knew someone who knew the four soldiers. So different from the cynicism he had encountered in other countries.

The first day I was with US forces in Baghdad in 2007, the department I was in lost three men. It was a normal work day.

Unstoppable forces of nature

I think this difference has less to do with God and more to do with the point of view of losing fellow citizens.

A commander-in-chief of any country, of course, will do anything to protect his own soldiers. But fatalism is prevalent in many places.

You will never hear a French or American politician say that, but when soldiers die in war, or the old and sick in a plague, they are treated as forces of nature that cannot be stopped.

Responsibility is pulverized. There are always new human resources to take advantage of. Stalin, taking a leader who was not known for putting human dignity first, could lose millions of men during Operation Barbarossa and still win the Battle of the Eastern Front by reclaiming new divisions from Siberia.

The inviolability of human dignity

“The history of my country is surprisingly peaceful, even in war,” wrote Dag Solstad. Even during World War II, Norwegian losses were a fraction of those of other countries. More Soviets and Serbs than Norwegians died during the war, on Norwegian soil.

When the Allies bombed Rjukan and the Norwegian SOE agents under British command sank the ferry in Lake Tinnsjøen to stop the heavy water from the Germans, the government-in-exile in London was not proud of the achievement. They were in armor. Norwegian lives had been lost.

At worst, this turns into unsympathetic isolationism. At best, this is a vision of the inviolability of human dignity that we should be proud of.

As we are a small country with a peaceful history, we have developed an extreme aversion to losing compatriots. This shapes the mindset of all those responsible for life and death: the troop commander who sends soldiers on difficult missions, the engineer who secures the roads, the doctor responsible for covid-19 patients.

It is not a fact that other Europeans think in the same way. As a Dutchman whispered to me when I asked him why the country has such high mortality rates: We allow active euthanasia, maybe the idea of ​​the elderly and the sick reducing their lives by a year is not so terrible for us?

Open borders, even in times of crisis

We hear the echo of Norwegian history in the politics of the crown. A life is inviolable, we do everything possible to save ours.

We close the borders and rescue ourselves, as we always have. “Import infection” is not a word you hear in many other places.

The few times I have crossed the border during the pandemic, only in Norway have I had to show my passport. There is something beautiful about the Western European EU countries that insist on keeping their borders open, even in times of crisis.

But although the strict Norwegian policy affects me personally here in France, I must grudgingly admit that it works.

Because there is also something beautiful about a country that puts the lives of the elderly and the sick above the consideration of the football industry and the backyard capitalists who need cheap labor.

I think it tells an important story about solidarity and human dignity in Norway. “We are so few in this country,” wrote Nordahl Grieg, “each autumn is brother and friend.”