Hurtigruten is New Norway, unfortunately

FREE PEN: The Hurtigruten is the symbol of the new Norway: luxury on the upper deck, poverty and fear among those who operate the machinery.

The Norwegian sailor is in most cases Filipino. We named our most beautiful boats after Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen, but it is Chris, Sonny and Susi who make sure they sail. I mean, they actually have other names, but when four members of the “Roald Amundsen” team meet NRK, they don’t dare to say their names or be portrayed. If someone finds out that you have spoken to the press, they will not get a job, not on the Hurtigruten or on any other ship. “It’s safe,” they say.

Hurtigruten’s management claims the sailors can speak freely, but the Filipinos say they were told not to even look out the landside windows while they were in quarantine, because there were press people on the dock.

On August 3, Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam said it should be “infinitely honest.” Since then, it was virtually impossible to speak until the investigation report arrived on Thursday. Even when the Minister of Commerce and Industry openly accused the company of breaking the law, he was not fooled in front of the microphone. It’s a shame, because by getting to know Daniel Skjeldam better, we can more easily understand what kind of society Norway has become.

At the time when Kari Bremnes was a girl by a huge fjord and dreamed of getting a Hurtigruten where she once went, the ships were owned by shipping companies called as Troms Fylkes Dampskibsselskab. The ships on “National Highway 1” are now owned by Silk topco, which in turn is owned by the British fund TDR Capital via Silk holdings in the low-tax country of Luxembourg, where they don’t even have a coastline. The Norwegian co-owners are Trygve Hegnar and Petter Stordalen, who have never cleaned their fish fists off their fists as they look north towards the pier.

Hegnar and Stordalen, also not particularly eloquent in recent times, are the Amundsen and Nansen of our time. They are conquering new lands for a nation that should really be called Norway Capital Holding. In this country, director Skjeldam earns 14.5 million kronor a year, while “Sonny” and “Susi” drop to 29 kroner an hour for the effort.

In this country, communications manager Rune Thomas Ege does not boast of saying that “executive salaries at Hurtigruten are generally well below international industry standards, while international employee salaries on ships are generally well below international standards. generally above industry standards. ” An infinitely honest answer. There is no reason to be embarrassed that the director earns the same as 70 of the total employees.

The Obos and Coop examples

If CEOs are also bound by the rule that they can only borrow five times annual income, Skjeldam can still look far for the penthouse in the new housing complex Obos is building at Middelthuns Gate next to Frognerparken in Oslo.

For NOK 97 million, you get 395 square meters in present-day Norway, plus a spacious rooftop terrace. There is a visit this week, but this is a fixed price, so it is useless here to shake a long seniority in the housing association.

The prospectus images show that what was once called the Oslo Bolig og Sparelag and was an important tool in abolishing the housing crisis, has reserved a lot of space for both the grand piano and a freestanding gas fireplace the size of a old bank house.

From the Middelthuns Gate, you have to walk five minutes to Coop Marked Bogstadveien. The many cooperatives were once solidarity manifested in the shops that were owned by the customers themselves. But when Coop’s modern leadership wanted a sports hero as an ambassador, they chose Petter Northug and gave him $ 10 million a year to pretend the community was close to their heart. The deal made it possible for Northug to break away from the national team and stand alone. A little yours, mostly hers.

The example of the nursery industry

The Liberal Party has fought valiantly against all proposals to ban kindergarten owners from making a profit. “There are a lot of women entrepreneurs in the health and care sector. Now they will take away what they have invested and what they have spent their lives in, like building a kindergarten. I think very little is done with respect,” said Trine Skei Grande three years ago.

In November last year, the two brothers Roger and Kristian Adolfsen sold the company Pioneering public properties 170 kindergartens for the Australian Foundation Capital of Casco Blancoaccording to Klassekampen with a profit of 2.5 billion crowns. No single idealistic female entrepreneur could be detected in any part of the transaction. In a series of articles, the newspaper has revealed that many of the 170 kindergartens were covered by clauses against such sales. But what is a clause against a broad offer?

The Conservative ruling party has no plans to change any of this in the proposed program under consultation. However, there is a proposal that “the sum of social benefits does not exceed earned income.” This can be done by ensuring that earned income increases so that it is always above the highest social benefit, but the conservative solution is that social benefits are lowered enough so that they are always below the lowest earned income. .

To the heart of Norway, yeah

“I always had that dream”, sings Kari Bremnes, “of getting where I was going.” Unfortunately, we didn’t get there with Hurtigruten. It takes us into a modern, arid landscape of fat bonuses and shameful salaries, where the housing association sells penthouses for a hundred million, sports heroes are valuable brands, the sick and disabled have to cope with fewer and fewer, and kindergartens in parcels that were recently ‘public property’. ‘Suddenly owned by Australian investors.

Hurtigruten promises to take foreign passengers “straight to the heart of Norway.” Unfortunately, that is true.

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