North by Norway

Come with me on a pilgrimage to the tiny mountain village of Vågå – together with 800 other people. They have been drawn there by one passion, one hunger. To hear the music of the Hardanger fiddle. D…

Hitler demanded that Vidkun Quisling should be Prime Minister. The king said: No! With that, all possibility of compromise was closed off for King Haakon and his government. It was a decision that pu…

Today’s podcast is about the greatest drama of modern Norwegian history. What Norwegians call ‘Aprildagene’ – the fateful days of the 9th, 10th and 11th of April 1940. The greatest drama? How else to…

‘I walked one evening along a road – on one side lay the town, and the fjord lay below me…’ In this way begins Edvard Munch’s account of how he came to paint The Scream. Besides the Mona Lisa, it is …

On the 28th of July this year, it will be exactly 100 years since an extraordinary event took place in the tiny mountain village of Lesjaskog. In the cultural history of modern Norway – well, there’s…

Learning to go downhill – wow, that was an uphill struggle! Getting into skiing as an adult is all about making a right arse of yourself. But during my first long winter in Norway, I managed to recon…

At last! For a couple of weeks, Southern Norway has been buried in enough snow to gladden the heart of every Norwegian (and Scot) who loves to ski off into the forest – enough snow to dull the pain o…

It is well known that the great French artists of La Belle Époque were hugely inspired by the art of Japan and the East. But what is rarely mentioned today is the period of a few years in the 1890s w…

In this episode I take a look at midwinter superstitions that carry us from the ancient sagas to the video game Assassin’s Creed! It is the pit of winter. These are the dark days between Christmas an…

For 10 years I was the choirmaster of my local choir, Vestbygda Blandakor. And as such, I had the pleasurable duty of preparing the annual Advent Concert. I had to ensure that when the lights in Onsø…

The troll is ancient. A fearsome 3-headed troll is mentioned in one of the earliest poetic texts, the Edda, from about 1220. And Norse mythology is full of jötnar: supernatural troll-like beings. The…

My podcast today is about the huge secret city Adolf Hitler and his master architect Albert Speer planned to build on the Trondheim Fjord. A secret city?! Well, obviously it wasn’t a secret for the i…

Want to get inspired? Get your faith back in humanity? In podcast number 10 you can hear short sketches of 10 Norwegians whose stories I find inspiring. They are a real mixed bunch – but are all trai…

My passport is for a country called Norge. Or Noreg. Or Norga. All three names are used, right there on the front cover. This week’s podcast is about an aspect of Norway’s cultural landscape that I f…

For two decades there was a genuine, if cautious, thaw in Norway’s relations with Russia. All this shuddered to a halt, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine. Norway’s most alarming wake-up call ca…

Mystery and magic are at the core of the podcast this week. We return to the Oseberg Viking Ship, Norway’s most magnificent historical treasure. But there are also many questions connected with it, i…

90% of all electricity in Norway comes from rain and snow. That makes Norway Europe's biggest producer of hydropower, and number six in the world. Norway also has half of Europe’s reservoir storage c…

NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has been on our screens throughout the Ukraine crisis, ashen-faced and compelling, but never sabre-rattling. This week’s podcast looks at the place of the …

Edvard Grieg’s life and music – in his own words. ‘The Idea of Norway. It’s the one thing that keeps me going strong, whether I’m travelling abroad or at home: The Idea of Norway.’ In this week’s po…

A sculptor – who rose to the highest art position in Norway.

A composer – who was regarded as the equal of Puccini and Strauss.

An author – who was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Three artists with one thi…