Came the day of the exam. Viktor showed up looking deathly pale and with a thumping headache. No cause for concern, he assured them; he was in perfect form, felt sharp as a razor. Jonas had been more strung-out than usual as he sat there waiting, freshly sharpened pencil at the ready, in the gym hall — normally a place for physical exercises, but now dedicated to mental gymnastics. He was not really surprised when he was handed the exam paper; it all had to do, as Viktor would have said, with alchemy: ‘Assess the importance of Einar Gerhardsen in Norwegian post-war politics’ read one option.
Jonas dashed off a rough draft, scribbling like mad, wrote down all he had read, all the conclusions he had reached, so pleased that he almost wept after he had made his fair copy and handed it in. He knew he could simply have presented the generally accepted view, that of a man who had spearheaded the rebuilding of the country and worked for social levelling and equality, of an era epitomized by unprecedented economic growth and a rise in prosperity which, perhaps more than in any other country, benefited all the people — he could have written about all of that and got good marks for it. As a reward for delivering exactly what was expected, the conventional response. But Jonas wanted, for once, to think for himself, to be provocative, and so instead he wrote — wrote so hard that his pencil snapped several times while he was still on the rough draft: the most important factor was that of international solidarity, he wrote, Gerhardsen understood that if there was one country in the world that could no longer act as if it were living in splendid isolation, that country was Norway, he wrote. Only through painful collaboration could one hope to contribute to détente and have a positive influence, he wrote. ‘Gerhardsen — possibly because he was a socialist first, last and always — embodied the will to see beyond the bounds of his own country,’ Jonas wrote. ‘Gerhardsen simply took up the fight for a political agenda which led Norway from being a spectator to being an active participant.’
Jonas took his departure in the long peacetime, stated that the nigh-on unnatural, 125-year long period of peace up to the outbreak of the Second World War had left Norwegians pampered and blind. And even during the war — in the minds of most people the greatest national catastrophe of the twentieth century — the number of Norwegians killed was no greater than the number killed on Norwegian roads in a couple of decades. This had given birth to a kind of collective illusion, Jonas wrote, that it was possible to stay out of the turmoil of international affairs. The Norwegian people were used to having bounty flowing into their laps, despite the fact that they kept themselves apart from the world. The Gulf Stream factor, Jonas called it, came up with the name then and there, was all at once a fount of inspiration and ideas. The way he saw it, the Norwegian people seemed to have been in a prolonged state of shock ever since gaining their freedom and independence in 1905; they were absolutely terrified to open their mouths at all in case something went wrong and they found themselves entangled in a web of ties and obligations. They seemed to be hanging on to the notion of themselves as a nation of free peasants and had closed their minds to the fact that Norway was an industrial nation, dependent on a global market. Jonas’s heart sang in his breast, he felt as though the graphite of his pencil was being transformed into diamond. In conclusion he unabashedly wrote that joining NATO represented the most crucial change of the post-war years, namely the internationalisation of Norway. This was also Gerhardsen’s greatest claim to fame. He had recognized — albeit reluctantly — that it was international politics, rather than the labour movement, which had shaped and would go on shaping the development of Norwegian society in our century. Gerhardsen understood, in short, that the prosperity of Norway — and indeed the potential for creating a welfare state — depended on conditions existing beyond the borders of Norway. ‘Einar Gerhardsen saw,’ the Norwegian teacher read in Jonas Wergeland’s essay, ‘that what we today call “autonomy” had in fact been lost long before.’
What Jonas did not realize then, although he did later, was that Gerhardsen, by taking Norway into NATO, also laid the foundations for a ‘No’ to the EU. In reality, the two Norwegian referendums on whether to join the European Union were decided back then, in 1949, by Einar Gerhardsen alone, because, no matter how you look at it, he was the key player, both in the government and in the party. Had it not been for Gerhardsen’s stance on a Western defence treaty, the famous national congress in February 1949 would never have passed a resolution supporting negotiations on membership of such an alliance. And had Norway not become a member of NATO, it would, due to the uncertainties surrounding national security, in all probability have gone on to join the EEC or, later, the EU. To Jonas’s mind, there was no one to whom the Norwegian anti-EU movement owed a greater debt than Einar Gerhardsen.
Jonas sat in that gym hall, tired but happy, as if he had just finished a hard training session: feeling, for once, that he had written something with a bit of bite, a dash of originality.
And I ask you, Professor: can this person — can this faltering, naïve, vulnerable individual really be a murderer?
Axel got good marks, as always, for a gift of an essay question. He wrote about Henrik Ibsen — a glib, sycophantic, coolly calculated essay, totally at odds with everything he believed. Viktor, for his part, got top marks, a six, for an essay which ‘assessed the role played by heroes in the lives of ordinary people’ — top marks in melancholy, alcoholic afterglow. He wrote about Napoleon, he tore Napoleon to shreds. Four Løiten aquavits, two Gammel Oplands and Five Gilde Taffels. His words were hammered in like nails in a coffin. Napoleon didn’t stand a chance.
Jonas, on the other hand, got a two for his essay, subtitled ‘From Spectator to Player’. He didn’t know what to think. His Norwegian teacher made some remark about it being all very well to show a bit of involvement, but God knows there were limits. It should probably be borne in mind that this was at a time, during the build-up to the EU referendum, when feelings ran high, among schoolteachers too. Nevertheless, Jonas Wergeland’s first attempt to realize his dream of becoming the Father of his Country — if, that is, it was not a covert experiment aimed at bringing him immortality — was almost a total failure.