Viking Economics (22 page)

“We simply go to them and say, ‘Ole, we’ve heard you are excellent at catching salmon and you can help us. We’re in touch with people who have no salmon in their country and no idea how to catch them, but would like to learn. Would you be willing to teach them this marvelous Norwegian skill?”

I watched a video of another unusual program in which Center staffers ask Muslim immigrant families to invite ethnic Norwegian families to tea in their homes. Both families in the video are visibly awkward in the beginning. The stereotype about Norwegians being stiff and shy with strangers does, after all, have some basis in reality! The children in each family were the pacesetters, and a couple of hours later the adults allowed themselves to get curious about the deeper differences that enrich each of their lives.

By the time I caught up with the Anti-Racism Center (in 2009), Muslim families had already hosted 3,000 tea times in their homes. Early on, Princess Ingrid Alexandra famously participated in the program.

The rise in immigration to Norway coincided with the rise of the women’s movement, which complicated how the newcomers were perceived by newly feminist Norwegians. By the 1980s and ’90s, several experts told me, feminism had become absorbed into the narrative of what makes Norwegians an admirable people. Hip Norwegian young men gained points among their peers by their political correctness.

One reason to distrust and fear immigrants from notoriously patriarchal cultures, therefore, was stories of mistreatment of
women and girls. The story of a father who wouldn’t let his girls go to school would be widely, and righteously, discussed; forced marriage was gossiped about. Ethnic Norwegians could resist looking at their own racism by emphasizing their moral superiority to the sexism that was “invading” their feminist and egalitarian shores, and showing up in the apartment next door.

I asked Mari about how she began to untie this complicated knot. Her response reminded me of the Norwegians’ historical approach to poverty, which was to develop a set of tools for handling a multi-layered problem. She emphasized the importance of assertively showing respect for cultural differences where there is no collision with one’s own values. “Norwegians traditionally honor Christian holidays,” she said. “Why not honor Muslim holidays? And what’s the problem with providing important information in a variety of languages, to show respect for the language of others? Workplace cafeterias should of course offer Halal and vegetarian food.”

I noted that the traditional practice of the Norwegian state is to provide maintenance grants to religious institutions, and the practice has been extended to mosques.

The second tool she sees is the calm and confident assertion that Norwegian law prevails. All girls as well as boys will go to school.

A third tool is relationship-building on the basis of equality. When a relationship is strong enough differences can be explored from a place of self-respect on both sides. “Tolerance” reflects fear rather than respect, Mari said. When Norwegians avoid one-on-one argument—or at least dialogue—about cultural differences, the avoidance implies a lack of respect. As Mari explained this I easily extrapolated to my own country, where whites often avoid
building relationship with workmates and fellow students of color by skating on the surface rather than engaging about differences.

Mari told me that Norwegians should neither expect in advance to defer to the other’s point of view, nor expect in advance that the other would defer to one’s own. The intensity of honest dialogue about difference is to be welcomed, with some curiosity about the outcome, and openness to change.

I could see her point in daily interactions and in the larger picture. Cultures evolve, and they need to. Cultural defense implies rigidity; dialogue and debate implies openness to growth.

All that sounds good, so I pushed her. What if I’m an ethnic Norwegian living next door to a Muslim family where all the signs are pointing toward an upcoming forced marriage of the young daughter? What do I do?

Mari applied her set of tools. I should intervene, in the context of (a) having shown my interest in and respect for some of their cultural differences, and made the accommodations that a neighbor might, (b) having learned about the Norwegian law against forced marriage and the resources available for intervention from the law, (c) having had deeper discussions that included differences so that a measure of trust and mutual respect has been built.

The exact tactics for my intervention will be situational, and could include telling the youth about resources where she can get help. In an extreme case I would report the issue to the police to prevent the possibility of a murder, since such an extreme is not unknown when a daughter refuses to be married.

Mari said that difficult situations can come up for teachers as well as neighbors, and a creative resolution is more likely to come from discussion than from a procedural protocol.

As she talked I realized that once again
she was relying on
the Norwegians’ root value of equality
. In tough spots, I might be tempted to come from my place of higher rank (skin color, religion, citizenship) and try to power my way through the problem. Alternatively, I can stop pulling rank and turn to my inner strength, which includes willingness to be vulnerable. Mari’s set of tools are an expression of equal relationship.

As when designing an economy, the creativity comes from choosing an alternative to the reigning paradigm.

For multicultural Americans encountering the descendants of the Vikings, what looks like the stain of nationalism can be an interest in cultural survival, not unlike the struggle of indigenous peoples in many parts of the world that are subject to extinction by larger populations prodded by globalization. On the defensive, many of today’s Vikings may hesitate to embrace values and practices different from their own, even though an objective outsider can see the advantages of a pro-diversity stance.

The defensiveness is expressed by political polarization, and politicians gain votes by appealing to fear of immigration even though Norwegian visionaries tell me their country has comfortable physical space and resources for many more people than it presently contains. No one can know how the polarization will play out, among the Nordics or in my country. The question in this book remains, how is the Nordic economic model a resource in that situation?

We start with poverty. I’ve seen in my country how poverty supports the white narrative that black and brown people are inferior.
In the United States, institutionalized scarcity pits people at the bottom against one another, within racial groups and across them, despite the fact that many roads to advancement depend on cooperation and collaboration. The overall class narrative brands people who are poor as “losers,” which then erodes the confidence of all but the hardiest.

The Nordics offer the only economic model with a solid track record for minimizing absolute poverty. Full employment, with a living wage, is a deep commitment.

I’ve also seen in my country how racism and prejudice against immigrants are reinforced by putting obstacles before people who, if they’ve escaped poverty, want further economic opportunity. In Norway, Mari Linløkken told me, a larger percentage of immigrant girls take higher educational degrees than do ethnic Norwegians, when you control for the variable of parents’ education. More young immigrants are speaking out, participating in debates, being role models. Some of them are taking the role of rebels, sparking more involvement from others—engagement is crucial, she said. Also more young adult immigrants are choosing to take careers in teaching and social work.

The Nordic model insists on wide-open doors to free education and training.

In my country, I’ve seen self-defeating behaviors among some immigrants and people of color reinforced by family histories, with insufficient outside resources to assist individuals to break out of family and neighborhood patterns. At present, a national campaign in my country seeks to defund schools and nonprofit centers that have in the past, even though inadequately, offered such resources. In Norway, Mari told me that dozens of Center staffers work behind the scenes advocating with government bureaucrats
and coaching government workers on cross-cultural communication. They directly train immigrants as well, in job-interviewing skills, for example, and in how to relate to the education system. The Center had tutors representing more than a dozen countries with twenty-nine different languages.

The Nordic model generously funds agencies and programs that assist people who otherwise might lack opportunity. It seeks out barriers to advancement, such as the burdens of childcare and dependent elders, and tries to alleviate those to free everyone to move ahead. By universalizing such programs, as well as health care, vacations, access to public transportation, and other enhancements that otherwise can become racialized for disadvantaged populations, the model carefully avoids setting categories of people against each other.

Norwegian social scientists already find encouraging signs for their cumulatively increasing non-ethnic Norwegian population. Overall workforce participation among the immigrant population rose to 61.6 percent in 2010. That compares with 71.9 percent for the population as a whole.
¹⁶²

Length of time in the country matters. The longer that immigrants live in Norway, the more likely they are to get jobs.
¹⁶³
The percentage of young people born to immigrant parents had jobs at a rate similar to their age-peers in families with Norwegian-born parents, 53 percent.
¹⁶⁴

Thomas Hylland Eriksen sums it up this way: “Over the past twenty years, successive governments have largely succeeded in creating a framework of equal opportunities for Norway’s increasingly diverse population.”
¹⁶⁵

To Mari Linløkken, that framework of equality means more room for diversity in Norwegian culture than there was in the 1970s,
when she was young. She said that a recent attitude study showed
a majority of people are happy that diversity is growing in Norway
.

When Anders Breivik launched his attack on July 22, 2011, he chose the right target, according to his views. The Labor Party and its allies had indeed given leadership for a diverse Norway. He parked the car loaded with a mixture of fertilizer and fuel oil in central Oslo, in front of the building housing Labor prime minister Jens Stoltenberg’s office. The bomb severely damaged the headquarters of both the Labor and Liberal parties, the headquarters of the Trade Union Congress, and even the Supreme Court. Breivik’s massacre of 69 young people at the Workers’ Youth League summer camp on the island of Utøya, some as young as twelve, was intended to wipe out the next generation of Labor political leaders. He injured an additional 110 young people. Among the dead were personal friends of Stoltenberg.

At a press conference the morning after the attacks, Jens Stoltenberg vowed that the attack would not hurt Norwegian democracy, and the proper answer to the violence was “more democracy, more openness.”
¹⁶⁶

Norwegians, joined by the royal family, packed the memorial service for the dead in Oslo Cathedral. According to
New York Times
reporter Steven Erlanger, “Long lines of people of all ages and colors waited patiently and quietly, some of them crying, to lay flowers or light candles at the spreading blanket of bouquets in front of the cathedral. Someone propped up a radio on a post so those waiting could listen to the service inside.”
¹⁶⁷

At that memorial service, Stoltenberg quoted a girl in the Workers’ Youth League who said, “If one man can show so much hate, think how much love we could show, standing together.”
¹⁶⁸

The next day, July 25, at noon each of the Nordic countries held a minute of silence to honor the victims of the attacks.
¹⁶⁹
Norway’s minute of silence stretched to five minutes. Later in Oslo, a city of 600,000, an estimated 200,000 people participated in a “rose march.” They gathered at Oslo’s City Hall to mourn together.
¹⁷⁰

At his next news conference, Stoltenberg said, “It’s absolutely possible to have an open, democratic, inclusive society, and at the same time have security measures and not be naïve … I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22. But I hope and also believe that the Norway we see after will be more open, a more tolerant society, than what we had before.”
¹⁷¹

The New York Times
interviewed young members of the Workers’ Youth League including survivors of Breivik’s attack, and found that they emphasized the importance of redoubling their efforts to keep Norway open to immigrants and fight climate change. Referring to Breivik, eighteen-year-old Helle Gannestad said, “He can take the lives from our friends but not their thoughts and wishes and beliefs, because that’s going to go on with the rest of us.”
¹⁷²

However, not all observers were sympathetic in the wake of the massacre. Fox News commentator Glenn Beck compared the Workers’ Youth League with Hitler Youth.
¹⁷³
When it became clear that Norway was not about to reinstate the death penalty that it proudly gave up in 1905,
The New York Times
published an op-ed by Thane Rosenbaum urging Norwegians to arouse their spirit of vengeance. He wrote derisively, “A country of such otherwise
good fortune and peaceful intention is now unprepared—legally and morally—to deal with such a monstrous atrocity.”
¹⁷⁴

Norway went ahead and implemented its own democratic and civil libertarian procedures for handling criminals. It gave Anders Behring Breivik a lawyer and his day in court, during which he acknowledged his disappointment that the state would not kill him and give him the martyrdom that he sought in his bid to inspire a Europe-wide movement against “
snikislamisering
.”