A Letter From the Norwegian Village of Å, Where COVID Lockdown Forces a Dramatic Escape

A Journalist Watches the Open Arctic Turn Cold as Its Borders Close 

On a stormy day in mid-March, I found myself the very last man outside in the Norwegian village of Å.

Located on a remote island in the North Atlantic, the village of just 100 people had closed its schools the week before; restaurants and hotels never reopened after the new year holiday season. And now my last glimmer of hope for a hot coffee this morning—the “Bakeriet på Å”—had closed.

As the Northern European Correspondent for the Swiss Broadcasting Company, I must rove around a reporting area that extends from the far …

How Norway Taught Me to Balance My Hyphenated-Americanness

A Minnesotan Grapples With Identity in His Scandinavian “Homeland”

During the year I spent studying at the university in Trondheim, Norway, I sometimes learned more about my own country than Norway. One day, in my immigration studies class, my …

A Mass Murderer Is Testing the Limits of Scandinavian Goodwill

Norway’s Most Dangerous Man Is Back in the Spotlight, Leading Many to Wonder How Much Compassion He Deserves

For four days in March, I watched Norway’s national devil return to public view, in another installment of the courtroom drama familiarly titled Breivik v. State. Andres Behring Breivik, now …

How Anders Behring Breivik Changed Norway

The Country Tried—and Failed—to Become More Democratic and Open in the Wake of a Terrorist Attack

Three years ago this week, Norway experienced the worst terrorist attack in its history. Anders Behring Breivik placed a handmade 2,100-pound bomb just outside the prime minister’s office in downtown …

Building Democracy in the World’s Most Northerly City

In an Archipelago Above the Arctic Circle, Norwegians Are Creating a Polity From Scratch

Aimée Lind Adamiak knows the rules of Svalbard very well. She has lived for six years in Longyearbyen, the island’s Norwegian-controlled settlement of 2,500 people. She knows that as soon …

You Don’t Scare Us, Terrorists

How Norway Kept Calm and Carried On

When I boarded the plane in Stockholm to fly to Oslo recently, no one asked me to show my ID. This stunned me–all the more so when I noticed the …