Today is a day for rejoice, albeit with a hint of regret. Regret that my childhood best buddy Tomas Espedal was passed over for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize again today. Rejoice, however, in the nomination itself, even though he received a 2006 nomination, too. And, but not least, because it is our daughter’s seventh birthday.
Ample cause for celebration, in other words. With regards to Tomas, I also find solace in the fact that he did receive the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature 2009, awarded just a few weeks ago.
This …

In connection with the Bergen Railway’s 100th anniversary last Friday, the Norwegian Broadcating Corporation (NRK) ran a highly bold experiment during Saturday’s prime time: A spectacular journey from Bergen to Oslo, for the full duration of the approximately seven-hour trip, as seen from the engine driver’s seat.
Screendump from the NRK programme on the Bergen Railway.
The programme re-ran in its entirety on the auxiliary NRK 2 today, a huge success, praised on Twitter, Facebook and in a number of domestic blogs, but is available to you, too, as the entire “show” has …

Imagine, it’s 20 year’s since the Berlin wall fell today! I suppose that, like most, I’m glad it did, but can’t help missing a more lucid world, with us good guys in the West and the bad guys in the East. Very, very bad guys.
Last week I browsed the web for communist memorabilia, but would be lying if I claimed to have found much worth mentioning. Fired by, above all, nostalgia, I decided to put up a sub-site, hard-coded, just as we did it almost 20 years ago. But I …

This upcoming Monday marks a milestone in Europe’s recent history; the fall of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989 and the subsequent reunion of a war-struck Germany – taking both WW2 and the following cold war into account.
British pre-war PM Neville Chamberlain had a point, you know, in claiming peace in our time – depending on how you define our time. As luck has it, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg signed the European coal and steel union treaty, the European Union’s predecessor, on just 9 November …

International reactions to U.S. president Obama’s Nobel peace prize award have been mixed, to say the least, since last week’s announcement, as they’ve been at home. In fact, the Norwegian public is split down the middle in the matter, despite general support for Obama and his political agenda.
Of course, it comes as no surprise, as, after all, the laureate himself has very little to show for himself. In fact, he seems just as surprised as the rest of us.
Much as I share president Obama’s ideas, goals, hopes and aspirations, I must …

My absence from the social media scene during summer, mainly based on a number of all-too time-consuming assignments, has lead me to realise that I simply do not miss it, save for blogging, as you will understand. And I think I know why, as I suspect I really tired of the social media more than a decade ago. “Hang on,” you say? “Social media didn’t exist at the time”?
Dear reader, I beg to differ.
The sudden enthusiasm for web 2.0 and, in particular, the scores of social media outlets emerging over the …

I am yet not departed. Actually, I’m not even sick, except perhaps, mentally. But I do struggle. With unimaginable loads of work, preventing me from blogging, twittering, facebooking – or leading a life of my own at all, truth be told.
For the better of a fortnight I’ve been my clients’ exclusive property 24/7, and am likely to remain so for most of summer, amid our family’s move from the Oslo region to the west coast.
I’m terribly sorry for late responses on comments, tweets, private emails and what have you, but …

Both Sweden’s minister of foreign affairs Carl Bildt and his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Støre confirm a joint effort to defend Iceland’s air space as of 2011, expected to be joined by Denmark and Finland as the Nordic foreign minister ajourn in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik on Tuesday.
The arrangement is considered controversial, as Denmark, Norway and Iceland herself are NATO members, as opposed to non-NATO countries Finland and Sweden.
Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas G. Støre.
In an interview on Norwegian national TV news Sunday evening, however, Norway’s minister of foreign affairs …

Some of us have mourned the apparent demise of CitJ site iNorden.org, a service we all hoped would once become the Scandinavian response to the Korean success OhmyNews, which, evidently, never came to pass. After about a year’s existence, iNorden flopped big time last autumn, at which time I decided to retire myself as editor, leaving it all to co-editor Øyvind Strømmen, who clearly didn’t have much time to spend on the project either.
The remaining staff, if that’s an appropriate term, was unable to uphold the regularity we came to …

I’ve never had the pleasure of counting myself among the Alexa elite (as a matter of fact, this blog holds a humble 8763rd place – among sites Norwegians visit). Never paid much attention to search engine optimisation, commenting wildly on other bloggers’ posts for requital traffic, unless I should, for other reasons, but I do appreciate frequent visitors and love the input you provide, unless you’re up to no good, that is.
In short, my insignificances are indeed highly insignificant, in the big picture that is the blogosphere, but I cherish …

British Holocaust revisionist and pseudo-historian David Irving, originally invited to the Lillehammer literature festival, arrived in Oslo on Monday, in spite of the festival’s cancellation last autumn, according to Norwegian news site ABC Nyheter (in Norwegian).
The initial festival programme contained an Irving lecture on the concept of truth, later to be withdrawn on account of massive protests.
It’s been rumoured later that Mr. Irving intended to attend regardless. He is currently confirmed present in Oslo, on his way to Lillehammer.
“Yes, I’m in Oslo, saying ‘tusen takk’ [thank you] wherever I go,” …

The Kiwi software development company Dinther Product Design launched the first version of its free ship simulation, Ships, the other day, which leverages on the browser-based Google Earth plugin as the primary graphics engine, according to the Google Earth Blog.
First of all, let me point out that I was never much of a gamer, save for a brief Amiga period some 20 years ago, but this one actually had me impressed. Not so much by the game’s features and functionality perhaps as by its availability, as a free of charge …

We all seem perfectly agreed that the credit crunch has to take most of the blame for the current media crisis, threatening to overthrow the press we’ve become so dependent on over more than a century or so, but didn’t the media’s frantic search for cost reductions really begin years and years ago – some time around last fin-de siècle?
I, for one, still harbour vivid memories of my very first job in the business, an almost 20 year old novice in a provincial Norwegian newspaper, which happened to keel over …

17 May bears special meaning to all Norwegians. Of course, why shouldn’t it? It is, after all, our Constitution Day, which we tend to celebrate perhaps a little more than what is considered normal in most countries. Which again is to do with the mere fact that we’re convinced we have so much more to be proud of than anywhere else on the planet – a conviction we set out to reinforce every 17 May, by way of much pomp and elaborate circumstance, even in the smallest communities, such as …