Norway, with 0.07% of the world's population, has the world's best chess player ever. Two of the top ten bridge players. One of the very best soccer players under 25. And so on.
Basically, it's a very oil-rich country that uses its wealth to invest in its people. And we see the results in every field of endeavor.
Many other "rich" countries, whatever the source of their wealth, do not have the same people-investment attitude.
Funny: I learned recently that Norway's Ekofisk oil field almost ended up with Denmark. It came down to a negotiation that went Norway's way - against a drunk Danish minister.
It's a common myth, but he wasn't drunk, and the deal didn't happen that day. Several meetings later with several more officials and the deal went through 2 years after that negotiation. They basically placed the line in the middle, and the norwegians got lucky.
It fits so well with the Norwegian stereotyping of Danish people, which is likely the reason why so many believe in it. It's also worth noting that Denmark also have quite a large oil industry.
Another myth seems to be that Norway was a very poor nation before the discovery of oil. According to Jan Eivind Myhre[0], professor emeritus in history at the University of Oslo, this isn't true. Norway has been one of the wealthiest countries in Europe for hundreds of years. We had, and to some degree still have, a huge merchant fleet. We've always been big in shipping insurance, probably a by-product of the merchant fleet. The fishing industry has always been a huge part of the economy, same with raw materials.
It's an interesting read, but perhaps a bit more debatable than the myth about a drunk danish minister.
The Logic of Political Survival predicts that any country with an already strong and healthy democracy which later discovers enormous natural resources will have a much better shot at overcoming the curse of resources than those where these trends are weaker. Selectorate theory is the real key here, and it's why Norway is probably going to knock it out of the park with its newly discovered phosphate deposits as well, which dwarf the oil profits several times over. The pre-discovery takeaway is to get that democratic process alive and healthy well ahead of time, no matter the circumstances.
On a totally unrelated note, if anyone wants to help me land my first gig over in Oslo, I'm conviniently next-next door in Finland. Have EU passport, likes keeping a good thing going, willing to learn Norwegian (Fosse's plays are great) -- will travel.
>if anyone wants to help me land my first gig over in Oslo, I'm conviniently next-next door in Finland
I made a website to help non-norwegian speakers find a tech/it/software job in Norway. All the job posts should be in English and only a few jobs require some Norwegian knowledge.
If you know Java, .NET or JavaScript/Typescript there are a lot of well(-enough) paid jobs in Norway.
We can throw this 'logic of political survival' theory straight into the thrash. Because this is strictly the logic of n=1. Humans trying to see patterns where none exist. Norwegians did very well, because they did. Maybe they're special or lucky or blessed by Odin or whatever. Or because of some other more legitimate reason.
But in any case it's not because it's an inevitable result of strong democracy.
Counterexample: us Netherlanders didn't do very well with our once plentiful gas reserves. Which is why the resource curse is called Dutch disease. In spite of having at the time a century of democratic tradition, our prime minister chose to pump the wealth straight into the social system and not build a national wealth fund. Causing a decade of economic decline.
Even better than EU, you're part of the Nordic Passport Union. Which I believe means you can naturalize as Norwegian with just two years residency there.
When I saw the title, what instantly flashed in my mind was Ibsen and Hamsun. Only then, as I clicked through, did I think about Fosse or Knausgård. Long before Norway became a wealthy oil nation, it had authors known on an international level. Indeed, Ibsen is referenced enough in early and mid 20th-century anglophone culture that you can see that he was a pretty popular figure, not just a concern of a tiny literary elite.
Not OP but the Nordic model is social democratic: inherited from the social democrats that fenced off the communists around the turn of the last century with the promise of delivering socialism through reforms, not through revolution. Early adoption of this model from the capitalists kept class warfare in Scandinavian countries at a minimum, and a prevailing sense of the state as "for the people" has taken root. Which means that the state in Norway was expected to invest the oil revenue to benefit the people, not for the benefit of foreign oil interest in an alliance with a wealthy few as is often the case.
This backdrop explains for example why Musk may find that Tesla needs to withdraw from Sweden unless they sign the deal with the trade unions. Or, as some will have it: Musk and some others will succeed in delivering a coup de grâce to the Nordic model, it has admittedly been withering for some time.
I don't think this analysis is any better and at least the article tries to tell a story.
Sweden, a country next door with not that many people and no oil has someone named Ibrahimovic who is a bit more than a talent. They also produced some of the most hyped novels of the last decade and some of the worst furniture and probably a few other cherry picked examples.
The point is they're just as talented as the Norwegians yet 'no oil'.
My comment points out that Norway has done something amazing that other countries have not come close to doing.
Look at what the US (I am American) has done with our wealth: highest healthcare expenditure per capita (50% more than #2), 47th in life expectancy, fifth-highest incarceration rate.
What is served by reflexively trying to diminish Norway's accomplishments with a "BUT Singapore is more impressive"? Why not instead try to learn from Norway?
What does it even mean to be a literary powerhouse in 2023? Of the Norwegian authors they listed, the only name I recognized was Knausgård. His most famous books came out like 10 years ago, and while they were a sensation for a while, I believe they still sold best in Norway. And I think that even the most successful literary novelists of today are selling fewer copies than the moderately successful literary novelists of 30 years ago. Their novels are surely enjoyed by far fewer people than an only-relatively successful niche Youtube or TikTok content creator. Literary novels don't make money, and don't shape the culture, so what does it even mean to be a 'powerhouse'?
I do think this is a crudely banausic perspective.
> Their novels are surely enjoyed by far fewer people than an only-relatively successful niche Youtube or TikTok content creator. Literary novels don't make money, and don't shape the culture, so what does it even mean to be a 'powerhouse'?
Mere numerical impressions is a poor standard of influence or staying power. Very many great works of culture, philosophy and history are little read by the standards of social media. I have no idea why you think that means they 'don't shape the culture'. I doubt that, each year, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is read even one hundredth the number of times that Mr Beast's videos are watched. I very much doubt that the future historian will take the Philosophical Investigations - by consensus the most influential work of philosophy in the twentieth century, whose effects on our intellectual culture are deep and pervasive - to be an incidental footnote when compared to Mr Beast.
But cultural value isn't just a function of influence, clearly. Knausgaard's books are to many people, myself included, simply great works of art, and should be celebrated for that fact. They show a level of cultural excellence, ingenuity and craft that the average trending YouTube video doesn't, whatever merit it might have besides.
Definitely not nothing, but do you read authors because they win the Nobel prize? Probably some people do, but how many? A million people in the world would be my (extremely) generous estimate. And that's literally the highest lifetime honor a literary novelist can receive. Not to disparage these authors, but to put the state of the literary novel in context: that's not a hell of a lot of cultural cache. Again, the question is: what does it mean to be a literary powerhouse in 2023? The stakes seem rather small.
I never paid attention to the degree translation can shape our literary landscapes... Fascinating!
> At the conference, NORLA also underlined that translators are its most important talent scouts, not agents, making passion rather than profit the driving force of the literary export machinery. A month after the conference, NORLA gathered 150 translators from across the world at a retreat in the countryside. The application process for participating in the gathering had been open to anyone with a love for translation, and I assume NORLA encouraged all the attendees to like what they liked in the pool of Norwegian books and then to take it from there.
> Norwegian novels are toned down, rarely noticeably conceptual, rarely in direct conversation with theory or tradition. Here, you find page after page of plot driven middle-class angst, minimalism and melancholy, closeness to nature, mellowness, humility, and what presents itself as stripped-down honesty. Here and there a funny novel does appear, but when it does, it’s usually funny in a purely observational and demonstratively folksy way.
A Man Called Ove was excellent while the American remake A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks was garbage.
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Norway, with 0.07% of the world's population, has the world's best chess player ever. Two of the top ten bridge players. One of the very best soccer players under 25. And so on.
Basically, it's a very oil-rich country that uses its wealth to invest in its people. And we see the results in every field of endeavor.
Many other "rich" countries, whatever the source of their wealth, do not have the same people-investment attitude.
Funny: I learned recently that Norway's Ekofisk oil field almost ended up with Denmark. It came down to a negotiation that went Norway's way - against a drunk Danish minister.
Another myth seems to be that Norway was a very poor nation before the discovery of oil. According to Jan Eivind Myhre[0], professor emeritus in history at the University of Oslo, this isn't true. Norway has been one of the wealthiest countries in Europe for hundreds of years. We had, and to some degree still have, a huge merchant fleet. We've always been big in shipping insurance, probably a by-product of the merchant fleet. The fishing industry has always been a huge part of the economy, same with raw materials.
It's an interesting read, but perhaps a bit more debatable than the myth about a drunk danish minister.
[0] https://www.sciencenorway.no/economy-history/crushing-the-my...
On a totally unrelated note, if anyone wants to help me land my first gig over in Oslo, I'm conviniently next-next door in Finland. Have EU passport, likes keeping a good thing going, willing to learn Norwegian (Fosse's plays are great) -- will travel.
I made a website to help non-norwegian speakers find a tech/it/software job in Norway. All the job posts should be in English and only a few jobs require some Norwegian knowledge.
If you know Java, .NET or JavaScript/Typescript there are a lot of well(-enough) paid jobs in Norway.
https://nordictechjobs.com/jobs
Counterexample: us Netherlanders didn't do very well with our once plentiful gas reserves. Which is why the resource curse is called Dutch disease. In spite of having at the time a century of democratic tradition, our prime minister chose to pump the wealth straight into the social system and not build a national wealth fund. Causing a decade of economic decline.
Or what interesting book may you recommend for one to read to learn more about thier social/political system.
This backdrop explains for example why Musk may find that Tesla needs to withdraw from Sweden unless they sign the deal with the trade unions. Or, as some will have it: Musk and some others will succeed in delivering a coup de grâce to the Nordic model, it has admittedly been withering for some time.
They were based on socialism and progresism but things are changing since recently people started voting with the right.
Sweden, a country next door with not that many people and no oil has someone named Ibrahimovic who is a bit more than a talent. They also produced some of the most hyped novels of the last decade and some of the worst furniture and probably a few other cherry picked examples.
The point is they're just as talented as the Norwegians yet 'no oil'.
I think a more impressive country is Singapore, which has no natural resources, but projects well above its weight.
Look at what the US (I am American) has done with our wealth: highest healthcare expenditure per capita (50% more than #2), 47th in life expectancy, fifth-highest incarceration rate.
What is served by reflexively trying to diminish Norway's accomplishments with a "BUT Singapore is more impressive"? Why not instead try to learn from Norway?
And Japan and South Korea and China. And new stars are rising, like Vietnam
> Many other "rich" countries, whatever the source of their wealth, do not have the same people-investment attitude.
I think this suffices to wonder why Norway achieves better outcomes and how. Doesn't seem trivial at all to me.
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> Their novels are surely enjoyed by far fewer people than an only-relatively successful niche Youtube or TikTok content creator. Literary novels don't make money, and don't shape the culture, so what does it even mean to be a 'powerhouse'?
Mere numerical impressions is a poor standard of influence or staying power. Very many great works of culture, philosophy and history are little read by the standards of social media. I have no idea why you think that means they 'don't shape the culture'. I doubt that, each year, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is read even one hundredth the number of times that Mr Beast's videos are watched. I very much doubt that the future historian will take the Philosophical Investigations - by consensus the most influential work of philosophy in the twentieth century, whose effects on our intellectual culture are deep and pervasive - to be an incidental footnote when compared to Mr Beast.
But cultural value isn't just a function of influence, clearly. Knausgaard's books are to many people, myself included, simply great works of art, and should be celebrated for that fact. They show a level of cultural excellence, ingenuity and craft that the average trending YouTube video doesn't, whatever merit it might have besides.
> At the conference, NORLA also underlined that translators are its most important talent scouts, not agents, making passion rather than profit the driving force of the literary export machinery. A month after the conference, NORLA gathered 150 translators from across the world at a retreat in the countryside. The application process for participating in the gathering had been open to anyone with a love for translation, and I assume NORLA encouraged all the attendees to like what they liked in the pool of Norwegian books and then to take it from there.
> Norwegian novels are toned down, rarely noticeably conceptual, rarely in direct conversation with theory or tradition. Here, you find page after page of plot driven middle-class angst, minimalism and melancholy, closeness to nature, mellowness, humility, and what presents itself as stripped-down honesty. Here and there a funny novel does appear, but when it does, it’s usually funny in a purely observational and demonstratively folksy way.
A Man Called Ove was excellent while the American remake A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks was garbage.
Not to be confused with Karl-Ove Knausgaard.
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(by brain pinged with the intersection of "Norway" and "books")
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