However, as I signed up within the first ten minutes, I got a spot for the tour and am now able to tell you everything you never wanted to know!
The tour was supposed to start at 10:00, but we were required to show up at the back entrance by 9:45, supposedly to check-in/ register. Well, I was already stressing out because I was at a corporate activism breakfast seminar at BI before (they do a lot of these events here, and a few of them are actually interesting) and my metro was a little bit late - and then, nobody asked me for my ID anyway...
However, after standing around for a while, we were all asked to go through a security check before the tour started. "All" as in: all 21 persons who were there. General remark: I do not get people who just do not show up at events with limited capacity. If you signed up for an event but cannot go, then just fucking cancel, so that somebody from the waiting list gets to enjoy the event! Seriously, such a behaviour annoys me so much...
Anyway, after the airport-like security scan, including having to take off my shows, we were shown around Stortinget. If you don't remember how the Norwegian parliament looks like from the outside, check out my blog post about the Free Walking Tour which, of course, covered Stortinget. There was also a model of the parliament in the parliament. A Lego model, to be precise!
Norway has had its own parliament ever since 1814, although it was still in a union with Denmark until that year. With the Napoleonic Wars, in which Denmark-Norway unfortunately supported Napoleon, and the following Treaty of Kiel, Norway was to be given away "with flowers" from Denmark to Sweden. However, Norway, inspired by the enlightenment, declared itself a sovereign country and gave itself a constitution. Well, Sweden disapproved and started a war against Norway. This war lasted only for two weeks, because Norway didn't have a chance, and afterwards, Norway joined the union with Sweden which didn't end until 1905.
In short: the end of the union with Denmark, a very brief episode of independence and the beginning of the union with Sweden all took place in the same year, 1814.
In 1905, when Norway became independent for real, they had a referendum about whether they preferred to be a monarchy or a republic. Guess which form of government won...
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| The last two kings... |
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| ... and the 3rd and current king of independent Norway: Harald V. |
The Norwegian parliament consists of 169 members of parliament, coming from 9 different parties. The number of MPs per party varies greatly, but none of the parties ever has the absolute majority and can rule alone. Therefore, they have to form coalitions all the time. (Like in Germany, just that we have less parties.) At the moment, the cabinet consists of 3 parties - and it's still a minority government, if I got it right...
Although the Norwegian party system has been explained to me several times, I still had to google all the party names. I'm not gonna try to sort them by political position (left/centre/right), because I'd probably get something wrong. Therefore, here they are ordered by size according to the last election (2017):
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| Source: Wikipedia. :P |
Just a few remarks. Høyre means right, Venstre means left. Not sure it makes sense calling a liberal party "left" though. And the name of the "Progress Party" makes even less sense, because they seem to be everything but progressive. They are the Norwegian equivalent of the right-populist Alternative for Germany, just a bit less right. Norwegian politics seem to be missing the extremes - and the political spectrum is generally moved a bit to the left compared to Germany.
Want to know how I come to that conclusion? Because the current cabinet of Prime Minister Erna Solberg consists of the Conservative Party (Solberg's party), the Progress Party and the Liberal Party - and it's working! And I mean "working" as in: they're not currently deconstructing all the social aspects of politics. In Germany, a cabinet consisting of the German equivalents of these parties would be unimaginable, because fortunately, all established parties refuse to form a coalition with the Alternative for Germany, although they became the third strongest party in our 2017 general elections.
Back to the topic: the tour!
We went to see what the parliament was doing for a few minutes.
They were actually busy with something called "strong critique" (i.e. basically one step before firing) of one of their ministers. They were discussing the most recent Facebook lapse of their minister of justice, a member of the Progress Party (what else?):
She claimed the Labour Party thinks the rights of terrorists are more important than the safety of Norway and asked people to "like and share". Considering that the youth organization of the Labour Party was the target of the biggest terrorist attack Norway experienced (the attacks of the 22nd July 2011, as you might remember from my visit to the center), that wasn't exactly the smartest move.
Afterwards, we went to the former second chamber of Stortinget. It's not used anymore because Norway now has a unicameral system, since the bicameral system wasn't really useful. (Everything that passed the first chamber also passed the second chamber. So now, the same people just get to vote twice.)
We ended the tour in a room I forgot to take notes about. :D
However, after a short round of googling, I figured out it's Eidsvollgalleriet, a gallery with portraits of politicians from the Norwegian Constitutional Assembly at Eidsvoll in 1814.
Another important element of the room is this:
At this desk, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates (the only Nobel Prize that's awarded in Oslo, not in Stockholm, remember?) sign the guestbook.
I refrained from having photos of myself trying to look very important taken there though. :P
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