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Sitting here like a Northerner to watch the club I’ve followed closely for almost 40 years get their first league gold, yes, it feels extremely special.
Therefore, I feel that I owe it to everyone else who is NOT from Northern Norway to explain why it means more to the people of the North than to everyone else.
Historically, there are good reasons Northerners love to beat the “southern ring” in soccer. It has been struck in the soul of the people in the north for generations that one is in opposition to the elite in the west and east.
Northerners live far from power and thus distance themselves from those who decide in the country that characterizes them how they define the reality where they live. It has always defined the lifestyle, humor and culture north of the Arctic Circle.
And it is not so strange that it is so. Northerners are the outsiders of Norway, and always have been.
When Norway received its constitution on May 17, 1814, Northern Norway was not represented. The Sørings did not bother to wait for the envoys from northern Norway, who were watertight over Dovre.
And it was even worse in football.
Until 1972, teams from northern Norway did not have a chance to qualify for what is now the Elite Series. They were not considered good enough or important enough.
Bodø / Glimt were the first team to break through the no-nonsense geographic wall after taking a gold cup with them in 1975 on the road.
In 1977, they played their first season at the highest level of the Norwegian league system. Led by Harald Berg, Glimt took silver on debut, an achievement that is just behind this year’s magnificent gold.
But the most important. Through the success of Glimt in the 1970s, the club restored a much-needed collective self-confidence to the region.
Speaking the dialect of Northern Norway was not considered a room rental in Oslo in the 50s / 60s / 70s. The housing ads in Aftenposten were marked with “bill. Do not mark Northerners”. Which led to them having to build a separate dormitory for students from northern Norway, popularly called simply Hotel Torsken, which is one step away from the Ullevaal stadium.
In this cultural climate, Glimt became a common pride that has turned the club into something much more than just a football team for all of northern Norway.
And although the team after the breakthrough became a rising team that has traveled between level one and three in Norwegian football, Glimt has always held a special place in the hearts of Northerners.
They have been a symbol of success, of difference, of optimism and of joy.
Glimt has given hundreds of thousands of Northerners an enormous amount to be proud of. Both on and off the field.
Kjetil Knutsen’s masterpiece is that he has managed to unite the best of the past and develop it in a future-oriented professional direction from which everyone at Glimt has benefited.
The club’s squad is a unique combination of old soccer heroes and honed soccer skills from across Europe.
If I am only going to highlight one thing that has been important, it is Knutsen’s vision that there must be a red thread of professional football in everything that is done and in everything that is decided at Bodø / Glimt.
This makes the resemblance between Eggens Rosenborg in the 1990s and today’s Glimt edition strikingly similar. Soccer comes first. Then everything else comes later.
Regardless.
I am convinced that this is why the club and the players have managed to stay focused on performance throughout the season, and not get carried away by experts and fans who doled out the gold when it was still double digits plus degrees on the grade suit. in Bodø.
In the midst of the crazy joy one feels, there is still a strange emptiness. A kind of unreality.
Is this really true? Or is it just one of those luscious dreams that you rarely have, and where you finally wake up just because you’re afraid the dream is over?
But it is not a dream.
Around me, in the stands, I hear the Bodø / Glimt sponsors who have sat in front of the press box planning a party “in secret” with lager brought to the hotel rooms in Gardermoen.
That’s true.
This was the year that nothing stopped the heroes of the north. Rosenborg, Molde, VIF, Brann – all the smoke. They were never close.
Even the pandemic had to give up.
And in the moonlight over Marienlyst, it feels almost devoted to write the words I never thought I would write.
The gold in the series is from Glimt.
Before forever.
