Norway
The ideology of madness
On the wooden jetty from which the ferry used to depart for the little island of Utoya, there stood for…
Unkindly light: The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle sequence is one of this century’s great projects: an intimate epic in which the overriding…
Whiny, polite and beautiful: Kings of Convenience's Peace or Love reviewed
Grade: A– The problem with Norwegians is that they are so relentlessly, mind-numbingly pleasant. Well, OK, not Knut Hamsun or…
Does the SNP really want to copy Norway's gender revolution?
Five years ago, in June 2016, Norway allowed anyone to change their legal gender. Legislative Decree 71 was everything that…
The farce of the Nobel Peace Prize
Betraying the Nobel opens with a detonation from Michael Nobel, Alfred’s great-grandnephew. The vice-chairman and then chairman of the Nobel…
Time to crush China’s Arctic influence
Eyes are opening to the evil of the authoritarian Chinese regime that represses its people, genocides entire cultures, and influences…
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg. The Norwegian painter eschewed the cosy fireside for the great…
An island’s dark secrets: The Tempest, by Steve Sem-Sandberg, reviewed
‘I should not have gone back to the island but I did it all the same.’ So begins the Swedish…
Who was the Isdal Woman? And how did she die?
‘Close your eyes and be absorbed by the storytelling,’ urged Jon Manel (the new head of podcasting at BBC World…
Norway is hard on migrants – but tough love works
When Angela Merkel invited refugees to Germany in 2015, tearing up the rules obliging migrants to seek asylum in the…
Speech therapy
Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this…
Norway’s noir
Valkyrien (C4, Sunday) is the hot new Scandi-noir series, which is being billed as Norway’s answer to Breaking Bad. In…
For fashionable Victorian travellers, the only way was Norway
‘The only use of a gentleman in travelling,’ Emmeline Lowe wrote in 1857, ‘is to take care of the luggage.’…
Might Eurovision determine the outcome of the EU referendum?
You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how…
Do any of us know what our human rights are?
Apart from the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I’ve never known what my human rights are…
How does anyone keep up with all the good stuff out there on TV?
‘We have a problem. Yes. At the wind farm.’ Any conspiracy thriller with lines like that has definitely got my…
Karl Ove Knausgaard describes nothing happening — wonderfully
It is hard to explain the contents of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s vast series My Struggle because not much happens. Or…
The ‘in’ side’s shockingly bad start in the EU referendum campaign
David Cameron wants to get the European Union referendum over with quickly — and understandably so. Things are still going…
Nikolai Astrup - Norway’s other great painter
The Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup has been unjustly overshadowed by Edvard Munch. But that is about to change, says Claudia Massie
What Brexit would look like for Britain
Life outside the EU would be good for Britain
What’s it like to talk to a serial killer?
‘I’ve never met a human being who doesn’t appreciate being listened to, being taken seriously,’ said Asbjorn Rachlew, the Norwegian…
Euroscepticism is growing all over Europe
Europhiles have warned us for years of the dangers of Britain leaving the EU. But all the while a different…
Cognac and the Viking connection in la France profonde
The chestnut trees were still resplendent in yellow leaf along the banks of a misty autumn river on its glide…
We must never again let this 19th century Norwegian master slip into oblivion
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
Radek Sikorski's diary: Show Putin what you think of him – eat a Polish apple
I made a welcome escape from sweltering Warsaw to the cloudy cool of Bodø, halfway up the coast of Norway,…
