In the course of the day eighty new members were signed up. Geir Kåre and Brage had never seen anything like it. Simon basked in the glory of his success.
‘But I did talk to them beforehand, you know,’ he admitted. He had made the most of the time at break, before football matches or at athletics training, on the way to school or in the canteen queue. They had all known they had to bring ten kroner to school with them that day. Simon had wanted to be as well prepared as possible when the townies from Tromsø turned up with their membership pads.
‘Ha ha,’ said Viljar. ‘So you’d warmed them up in advance, eh?’
He in turn had been recruited by Brage, who came up to him at a youth conference when Viljar was thirteen and asked: ‘Hi, have you heard of the AUF?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, I’m its leader.’
The local paper, Salangen News, had already announced the same morning that ‘Friday the 19th of September 2008 will be a historic day in the community of Salangen. A local branch of the Workers’ Youth League is to be set up. Simon Sæbø is heading the initiative.’
The Tromsø lads made sure there were bowls of sweets on the tables at the start of the meeting. Simon was unanimously elected leader, a friend of his called Johan Haugland was appointed his deputy and a committee was selected. The brand-new leader told the local paper he was going to fight for extended opening hours for the youth club, and activities like ‘football matches on the big screen, pool tournaments and an inaugural outing up to the hunting and fishing cabin at Sagvannet.’ The paper provided the detail that there would be dinner at the cabin on Friday and Saturday, but participants had to take food with them for other meals. The local branch would hold regular meetings in coming weeks, the paper promised, and rounded off the piece with Simon’s mobile number in case there were any further questions.
Their meeting place was to become the Sæbøs’ blue house in Heiaveien. Tone would fry up some mince, add taco spices and heat the shells in the oven. She would put out dishes of sweet corn, chopped tomatoes and grated cheese. Other times she made her own pizza. If Simon forgot to buy in banners, marker pens, paper or anything else they needed, his mother had usually already done it. Inspirational leader he may have been, Simon was a logistical nightmare. Luckily, he had a very organised mother.
The young people demonstrated in support of the school, against what mankind was doing to the climate, in favour of the youth club and against drilling for oil in the Arctic. They held ‘get to know each other’ evenings, concerts and seminars. Simon had overcome his childhood stage fright. Now he was keen to be the compère when they staged cultural events in the town. After a demonstration against racism, the under-eighteens from the asylum seekers’ reception centre were invited to the youth club. The refugees had never felt entirely welcome there before, feeling it was ‘the Norwegians’ place’. But when big posters went up at the reception centre saying ‘Welcome to Velve’ they came, first hesitantly, then in big groups. Simon even tried to recruit some of them to the AUF. The fact that they had not yet been granted leave to stay was of no consequence, they could just give their address as ‘Sjøvegan Asylum Centre’. He’d treat them to the ten kroner.
The minibar was emptied before they got there. The hotel always took care of that before the delegates to the county youth parliament checked in. The county administration made the demand whenever accommodation was provided for unaccompanied minors.
On the floor was the crumpled plastic bag that they had brought the beer in. Empty bottles were already lining up by the door.
There were three of them, all mates. Simon and Viljar sat on the bed, Anders Kristiansen in the easy chair. They were comrades-in-arms from the AUF. Before the conference started, they always held their own sectional meeting. The county had invited young people from different political parties, culturally active youngsters, environmentalists, and a few individual high fliers with no political affiliation. There was also to be a geographical spread, and a gender balance.
Anders Kristiansen was the driving force in the gang of three. He was the one who brought them back to politics whenever Simon and Viljar started joking and messing around, or talking about girls.
‘Listen you two, about the road safety plan: I’ve got a few comments. Look…’ he might say, and then they tuned back in.
If they disagreed about anything, they would always turn to Anders and ask, ‘What do you think?’
And then they would do it the way Anders wanted. In actual fact all three of them were used to getting their way, but Anders was the first among equals.
He was six months younger than Simon and came from the neighbouring municipality of Bardu, home to Norway’s largest military garrison. Just like Simon, he started a local AUF branch when he was fifteen, and was elected its leader. He was the most practical of the three, the one who always took charge of the tickets if they were going anywhere and kept tabs on the paperwork for meetings, not least the agenda.
‘Troms county is far too centralised,’ Anders was saying now. ‘Everything that counts happens in Tromsø. We must spread activities across the county, devolve power; only then we can keep the population figures up in the more rural areas.’
‘We’ve got to get the “Home for fifty kroner” resolution passed,’ said Simon, who had come by bus from Salangen to Tromsø that same afternoon, a journey of three hours. Troms spreads over an extended area, and people live long distances from each other. For young people, the bus is the best means of transport. But a journey requiring lots of changes could cost a lot. The proposition was that young people would be able to go as far as they wanted in one direction for fifty kroner.
‘You and your buses,’ laughed city boy Viljar. Until he moved to Svalbard when his father – an expert in Arctic birdlife – got a job there, he used to boast that he had hardly even been across Tromsø Bridge. ‘I see you need to get to the big city now and then for a breath of air!’ he said laughingly to Simon. Though he now lived among polar bears and snowmobiles on Svalbard, they still saw him as a typical Tromsø type – with it and brimming with self-confidence.
‘The bus is important, all the same,’ Anders said firmly, with the documents and minutes from the previous meeting in front of him.
Anders Kristiansen liked to keep account of things from an early age. Aged just one, he would stand by the fence keeping all the passers-by updated: ‘Mummy at work. Daddy at home.’ And he liked to make sure everybody was all right. When his mother washed Mousey, his cuddly toy, and hung it out to dry on the clothes line in the garden, he came rushing up to her.
‘Not by the ears, Mummy! Not by the ears!’ Once the pegs had been taken off Mousey’s ears, Anders said gravely: ‘You mustn’t ever hang anybody by the ears, Mummy. Nobody can stand that.’
When Anders started at nursery school, he was already interested in work and taxes, and how everything was shared out. ‘Where does money come from?’ the boy asked. He wanted explanations of everything and to know how things functioned, from the lawnmower and his father’s kitchen knife to who was in charge of whom. Who was the boss where his father worked, and where his mother worked? Who was the boss at home? Who really decided things?
When he was five and found out there was somebody called the Prime Minister, who decided most things, he said in his thick Bardu accent, ‘When I’m big, I’m going to be Prime Minister.’
If he was in doubt about the slightest thing, he ran round to their neighbour. Because she had an encyclopedia. Vigdis worked long days in the canteen at the military base in Bardufoss. Whenever Anders came to see her she gave him a glass of squash and made coffee for herself. Then they sat down side by side on the sofa with their noses in the book. One word led to another and the little boy and old lady soaked up new ideas and definitions.