Childhood was the subject currently uppermost in Anders’s mind. He was working with the county governor on ‘The Giant Leap’, a project to establish how Troms County was complying with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and how children and young people could be more involved in the decision-making process. He was collaborating with the children’s ombudsman in plans for the Youth Parliament, and brooding at the same time about the stance he should take on Norway’s military involvement in Afghanistan. He was the one of them who – as Viljar put it – ‘talked to the grown-ups’.
‘That was amazing,’ said Simon.
The three comrades were all at their computers, Skyping each other. Viljar in Svalbard, Anders in Bardu and Simon in Salangen.
‘Magic,’ added Viljar.
‘Did you hear the way he repeated the words, took up the thread again to finish off? He, like, moved on from the whole subject and then brought it out again towards the end,’ said Anders.
‘Timing,’ said Simon.
‘Pauses,’ said Viljar.
‘Empathy,’ said Anders.
The three comrades had all read various editions of Famous Speeches. They had now experienced a man of their own time with the same level of rhetorical skill.
‘He’s recreating the magic of Martin Luther King,’ said Viljar.
It was Barack Obama they were taking about. They had been listening to one of his first speeches in the election campaign of 2008, and they were hooked.
Autumn came and northern Norway’s season of darkness arrived. In the US, tension was running high.
‘Mum, can you ask if I can have a day off school on Wednesday?’
Anders was keen to watch the news broadcasts all through election night, but then he would not be fit for school the next day.
‘It’s actually not fair,’ argued the fifteen-year-old. ‘Other people get time off to go to training sessions and matches and camps. Why do they get authorised absence to do sport stuff, which is their hobby, but my hobby, politics, doesn’t count? Why’s it any different for me?’
Anders’s mother suggested he write a letter to the headteacher, putting his case forward. Anders wrote about the momentous Obama–McCain election and how important the outcome was for the whole world, including Bardu. He got his day off. And the nickname Little Obama from his paternal grandfather in Lavangen.
On the first Tuesday evening of November 2008, election day on the other side of the Atlantic, the three comrades were on their sofas in their living rooms, Skyping as they waited for the polling stations to close and the votes to be counted, state by state.
‘America,’ Anders said dreamily. ‘If Obama wins, shall we take a trip over there when we leave school? I could work at the local old people’s home and save up.’
‘Count me in!’ shouted Simon from Salangen. ‘Let’s hire a car and drive coast to coast!’
‘We can buy a car on the east coast, take Route 66 and sell it at a profit when we get to the west coast!’ suggested Viljar. ‘A Mustang, whaddya reckon? Or a Pontiac Firebird, or an old Corvette?’
Long before the sparse daylight began to show itself on the horizon, the three comrades in their darkened living rooms were jubilant. It felt like such a huge event. A black president, a Democrat, someone with experience of ordinary life, not some rich, privileged type. To the three teenagers miles north of the Arctic Circle on the other side of the Atlantic, at such a distance from the Chicago crowds, Obama somehow felt like one of them.
One day they’d get there, to America, come what may.
Daybreak found Viljar and Simon asleep in front of their television sets. This time it was Anders who stayed awake round the clock.
Change was possible!
One April morning the year after the US election, when the snow still lay deep on the ground round Sjøvegan School, Simon was eating his standard breakfast at his desk. Four slices of bread from a plastic bag and a bottle of strawberry jam to squeeze onto them. He was always too tired to eat at home, and stumbled the short walk down to the school like a sleepwalker. His body only started to wake up towards the end of the first lesson. Then he was always ravenous and would devour his bread and jam in the short break before the next lesson. On this particular morning, as he was polishing off the last slice his mobile rang. He wiped his mouth and put the phone to his ear.
‘Someone’s had to drop out of congress. Can you step in?’
‘What?’
‘Well you’re a deputy, and Jan’s cow’s fallen sick so he can’t make it. We’ve got to have a full delegation from Troms.’
‘Do you mean the Labour Party National Congress?’
‘Yes. Bit slow on the uptake, aren’t you?’
‘I’ll have to ask Dad.’
‘Make sure you don’t miss the plane. It leaves Bardufoss at eleven-thirty!’
Simon quickly gathered up his books, pencils and jam bottle from the desk and told the teacher.
‘I’m going to be a delegate to the Labour Party National Congress and I’ll have to ask for time off.’
Then he rang his father. ‘What should I say?’
Gunnar checked with his boss if he could take time off from work to drive his son to the airport. Of course the boy should go! You couldn’t even call it skipping school. Gunnar had never been anywhere near the National Congress himself, and now his son was to be a delegate, at just sixteen and a half. Clumps of trees flashed by as Gunnar sped along the road to Bardufoss.
‘What a stroke of luck, Dad,’ exclaimed Simon when the flight to Oslo was announced. ‘A sick cow!’
On arrival in Oslo he went straight to Youngstorget. The event was being held at the Congress Centre – The House of the People – the big building that occupied one whole side of the square, all the way along to Møllergata.
‘Simon Sæbø,’ he said at the table where they were registering delegates.
He was issued with a name badge and an accreditation card to wear round his neck – Delegate, Troms. Labour Party National Congress 2009 – and a sheaf of papers, a programme, proposals of new resolutions, a songbook.
He went up the wide staircase to the main hall, slipping past all the old hands who were standing there chatting. Before boarding the plane he had sent a text about the sick cow to Viljar and Little Obama.
‘Go get ’em,’ Viljar replied.
‘Show them who Simon Sæbø is,’ texted Anders.
The congress was the party’s top decision-making body. This was where policy would be carved out for the next parliamentary term.
The red–green coalition had been in charge since 2005. The financial crisis came the autumn before Simon’s congress debut. In Norway, unemployment was rising for the first time in years. ‘The Labour Party has lost its vision’ was a view increasingly heard. ‘It’s become a party of administration no longer able to inspire people,’ the newspaper commentators complained. They wanted some new blood.
Simon, Anders and Viljar were the new blood. And here was Simon, sitting star-struck in the row of seats for the Troms delegates, looking about him. There were people he had only ever seen on TV. There was Gro Harlem Brundtland, laughing loudly. She was celebrating her seventieth birthday and was to be honoured with speeches and good wishes from both Hillary Clinton and the UN Secretary-General. There were the powerful Martin Kolberg, the ubiquitous Trond Giske and good-humoured Hadia Tajik.