The large mound of Herlaugshaugen, on the island of Leka off the coast of Norway, has long been associated with the legendary storeroom (and burial place) of Herlaug, a pre-Viking king of the region Namdalen. Excavations at the site in 2023 recovered iron clinker nails and wooden fragments, identifying one of the earliest ship burials in Scandinavia. Here, the authors detail these findings and explore the significance of Herlaugshaugen in expanding our understanding of the region and its maritime connections in the seventh and eighth centuries AD, arguing that Leka may have been a node in a much wider network.

This study examines Norwegian veterans’ construction of meaning of the war in Afghanistan with two main objectives. A first aim is to add empirically to research on veterans’ meaning-making, querying into veterans’ construction of meaning after failure in a recent military operation. A thematic analysis of interviews with fifteen veterans illustrates how, despite their own admission of the war’s limited overall achievements, Norwegian veterans rendered the war meaningful. They emphasised that they had done their job, realised themselves as individuals, experienced community, made a difference ‘then and there’, and served their country. Working towards a second aim – to enhance scholarly understanding of civil–military dynamics in relation to veterans’ experiences – the study discusses implications of this meaning-making for Norwegian civil–military relations. Two main arguments are set forth: (1) a significant discrepancy in the construction of meaning among veterans compared to the Norwegian public illustrates a societal–military gap in evaluations of the war and (2) a reciprocal distance between veterans and politics and society demonstrates a weakness in civilian control of the Norwegian Armed Forces. By way of conclusion, the study reflects on consequences of its findings.

The Arctic, once a climate victim, is now becoming a climate stressor. The melting ice has brought us closer to climate tipping points and, simultaneously, has made oil reserves in the Arctic more accessible. As a result, a clash has emerged between scientific warnings and climate change obstruction (CCO) discourses that prioritise economic ambitions over climate concerns. This study investigates whether, despite scientific warnings, Norway defends further oil extraction in the Arctic, thus aligning with CCO discourses by prioritising economic interests over climate urgency. Based on a qualitative inductive approach, we analyse four official White Papers from the Norwegian government, identify their discursive patterns and contrast them with CCO discourses found in the literature. We found that the Norwegian government exhibits an affinity with six CCO discourses: 1) Non-Transformative Discourse, 2) Responsibility Deflection Discourse, 3) Discourse of the Common Good, 4) Discourse of Higher Priorities or Loyalties, 5) The Legal Discourse, and 6) The Discourse of Good Intentions. We conclude that the Norwegian government has constructed a narrative where the recognition of climate urgency does not mean the renouncement of its long-term petroleum interests and further oil extraction in the Arctic. This narrative, named here as the “green oil” narrative, uses renewable energies to electrify the oil industry, thus presenting renewables as an ally of oil expansion rather than a step toward a fossil fuel phase-out. Overall, Norway’s current narrative fails to address oil dependency, defending and justifying oil extraction in the Arctic.

Drawing from 41 qualitative interviews with Norwegian voluntary football clubs and local public stakeholders, this paper explores whether voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) are a convenient measure for including refugees in society. The following research questions are addressed: what expectations of refugee inclusion initiatives do local stakeholders hold towards voluntary sport clubs, and how do the clubs grapple with pursuing non-sport and sport objectives and systems simultaneously? The results show that the football clubs face high expectations of refugee inclusion. Although the football clubs generally understand and accept the expectations, inclusion and integration activities are costly in terms of time and competence and challenge the club’s capacities. Two competing logics are identified in the data: a functional logic passively welcoming everyone that are keen and resourced to play football and a moral and proactive logic, that expects the clubs to reach out to include refugees that are alien to the organization of indigenous sport. We find that despite external expectation, the sport clubs are not fast-tracks to refugee integration because the logic sustaining their existence and practices are at odds with the logic prescribing refugee integration through sport.

This article focuses on the development of a key type of regulation ensuring public surveillance of political finance: party finance transparency rules. It makes two contributions to the emerging theory on the evolution of political finance regulation. First, using previous research, it conceptualises the underlying causal mechanisms that explain when and why party finance transparency regulation changes. Second, it presents the first detailed study of party finance transparency reforms in Norway, which is a deviant case for the introduction of such reforms. It is found that, in the absence of major scandals, an intense political discourse on corruption and political competition are sufficient factors to launch transparency reforms. Whether reforms are enacted depends on the interaction of several factors. Parties that predominantly rely on state funding and grassroots support push for and adopt more constraining transparency regulation, while parties that are close to business oppose it. Experience of regulation in similar contexts and intense discourse on corruption – stimulated by domestic or international events – are necessary for the reform to succeed. Norwegian cooperation with the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) further demonstrates that the success of party finance transparency reforms initiated by a foreign actor is a function of the existing tradition of party regulation, the policy position of a governing party and the international reputational costs of non‐compliance.

Corporatism may be seen as variety of capitalism in which specific structural prerequisites such as unionization, centralization, and strong states combined with bargaining and concertation produce certain economic outputs. Corporatism may also be seen as a variety of democracy in which interest groups are integrated in the preparation and/or implementation of public policies. Departing in the last position, we measure the strength of Scandinavian corporatism by the involvement of interest groups in public committees, councils, and commissions. Corporatism in relation to the preparation of policy has gone down in all three Scandinavian countries whereas corporatism in implementation processes are more varied among the three countries.

The means, motives, and opportunity of cooperation must be present if organizations are to establish mutual ties. Public benefit and conflict oriented organizations are hypothesized to have stronger motives for cooperation than member benefit and consensus oriented groups, and organizations with broad activity scope are likely to face more opportunities of cooperation than specialized organizations. These hypotheses are strengthened by results from regression analyses. The article further shows a historical decline in both the motives and opportunities for such cooperation in the case of Norway through processes of depoliticization, individualization, and specialization. Thus, here, the preconditions for cooperation within organizational society are gradually deteriorating. Such developments are likely to weaken the interconnectedness of voluntary organizations and the potential micro, meso, and macro benefits of such ties.

The mass media, politicians, and social scientists assert that there are increasing problems in recruiting volunteers to voluntary organizations. This paper investigates the situation with respect to voluntary sport organizations in a Norwegian context. The situation for voluntary and paid work is described and discussed with respect to different kinds of sport organizations. The empirical results show that voluntary work still is the foundation of most sport organizations, but that there are large differences between various types of organizations, and that voluntary work functions in complex interaction with other important economic and structural features of these organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and explain how a Norwegian voluntary, faith-based organization—the Gospel Centre of Norway (Pinsevennenes Evangeliesenter)—successfully substituted a “network” for “market” strategy vis-à-vis the public sector in order to obtain organizational legitimacy and financial security. During the first decade of its existence it obtained a unique position in its relationship with the state, as a separate item in the budget of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The organization operates in the field of substance abuse rehabilitation, i.e., in a situation where instrumental effectiveness is difficult to assess. In such a situation ritual or other institutional criteria may replace effectiveness criteria and impression management is shown to be a successful strategy. Attention is paid to the relevant environmental conditions under which this organizational change of strategy was successful.

This presentation introduces the analytical framework applied in this symposium for the analysis of publishing trends of European political scientists. Our goal is to ascertain the degree to which the discipline in four contrasting countries (Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Spain) speaks to a wider European or international audience. Is political science insular in these countries, or is it internationalised? On which aspects are the publications similar at the domestic, European and international levels, and on which do they differ? What dynamics have affected publishing habits over time? Is it possible to observe a process of convergence or divergence across levels over time? To face these questions, we set up a cross-national research team composed of graduate students and professors from the four countries, and created a common dataset that collected information on articles published in the highest ranked national, European and international journals between 1999 and 2014. The findings suggest that political science research in these countries has been running in two separate worlds: the domestic and the foreign levels. Also, the analyses point to a divergence between north and south regarding the predominant fields, topics and the interest for Europe, and institutional concentration.

Nonprofit, public, and for-profit welfare institutions have different operational logics. The distinctiveness of a nonprofit institution is more prominent in some circumstances than in others. This paper is based on case studies conducted in Norwegian municipalities to understand when and why nonprofits operate with distinctive steering mechanisms. Based on the framework of hybrid organizations, I analyze the interaction among institutions in the public sector that have democratic legitimacy through a hierarchical organization, the for-profit sector that seeks efficiency to compete in the market, and the nonprofit sector that has civil society logic. The study revealed how more detached demand-driven regulation of nonprofit schools gives them more room to pursue goals different from those of the public sector institutions, which can be contrasted with the supply-driven regulation of nursing homes that have far less room for steering independent of the municipalities. Surprisingly, the results also suggested that small close-knit communities influence institutions in ways that diverge from the hierarchical steering, and that this happens across the sector split. Moreover, regulation and alternative sources of income contribute to making the organization more hybrid, in the sense that the hierarchical steering is challenged.

The right to roam – balancing inclusion and enclosure. In Norway, the right to roam is an old custom – a right to traverse and gather berries, herbs and firewood on uncultivated lands – dating back to the Viking Age. In 1957, this right was included in Norwegian laws, in the Outdoor Life Act (Friluftslova). The law transformed agrarian lands into areas for outdoor life and recreation, primarily walking and hiking. However, due to modernisation, the activities performed today are very different than those in the 1950s, involving many sorts of technical devices and installations, commercial activities and a different landscape. The law was a manifestation of the Norwegian outfields as a commons, but what is a commons for some can be an enclosure for others. This is the topic of this article: how the right to roam includes many and much but represents encroachment, displacements and enclosures and has created crowding, natural wear and tear and urges for management regimes. The article describes this as a balance between inclusion and enclosure. The article has two major parts: one presenting the academic discussion about inclusion and enclosure, the other discussing the implementation of the principle in Norway in light of this theory.

Two expert groups on global health from Norway and Denmark have recently made important strides in reenergizing the debate on the role of the Nordic countries in global health. Their tailored recommendations — emphasizing core values of human rights, equity, accountability, and local ownership alongside health security — have proven influential at a time when new forms of international collaboration in global health are urgently needed.

Norway exhibits one of the highest rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) in the world, and several dietary factors have been associated with the risk of CRC. With higher consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF), a better understanding of how food processing affects CRC might be a new approach for prevention. The current findings are contradictory, and new findings indicate that CRC risk factors might affect colorectal subsites differently. We wanted to study the association between intake of UPF and CRC risk in Norwegian women. In this prospective cohort analysis encompassing 77 100 women (1625 cases) from the Norwegian Women and Cancer study, dietary intakes were collected using validated semi-quantitative FFQ and categorised using the Nova classification system. Multivariable Cox proportional hazard models were used to assess the association between intake of UPF and CRC risk. The average follow-up time was 17·4 years. A high UPF intake (fourth quartile), compared with a low UPF intake (first quartile), was statistically significantly associated with increased total CRC risk after adjusting for all covariates and energy intake (hazard ratio (HR) = 1·24; 95 % CI 1·04, 1·49, Pfor trend = 0·02). Furthermore, a high UPF intake, compared with a low UPF intake, was statistically significantly associated with right-sided colon cancer (HR = 1·58; 95 % CI 1·19, 2·09, Pfor trend < 0·001). More research is needed to understand the associations between UPF, UPF subgroups and total CRC as well as cancer in colorectal subsites.

This article examines how Norway, a hydropower-rich oil and gas producer, has sought to diversify its energy production since the late 1990s. It explores how and why leading Norwegian oil companies have attempted to redeploy into offshore wind, and how this redeployment has been shaped by political developments and sectoral interests. Through a four-part historical analysis, the article pays particular attention to the motives and interests of key stakeholders within the so-called oil–industrial complex, which encompasses both industrial and political actors, including employer and labor organizations. By integrating corporate and political perspectives, the article explains Norway’s attempt to transform from an “oil nation” to a “wind power nation” despite growing awareness of poor profitability and challenging conditions for offshore wind.

Recent years have seen an increase in forced migration from the Global South, e.g., Congolese refugees with long transits in Uganda, to countries in the Global North, like Norway. Many of these newly-arrived Congolese refugees in Norway have English in their linguistic repertoires after decades-long transits in Uganda. English can thus be used as a lingua franca in Norway while they are learning Norwegian, as many Norwegians also have English in their repertoires. However, the ways these refugees have learnt English differ starkly from the ways most Norwegians have learnt English. While most Norwegians have mainly learnt English formally, i.e. in school, these Congolese refugees have mainly learnt English informally, i.e. outside language classrooms. The present article explores specific examples of how these refugees have learnt English. Some have, for example, learnt English through lingua franca interaction with other refugees with whom they do not share any other languages than English; others have initiated English language awareness in the wild themselves through, for example, talking explicitly about the English language with motorcycle riders in Uganda; and others have listened to English-speaking radio programmes in order to learn English faster. I argue that many of these ways of learning English informally can be referred to as “grassroots learning” of English, since English learning is initiated by the refugees themselves. These findings from empirical research among newly-arrived Congolese refugees in Norway may contribute to developing our understandings of informal English language learning, as well as making sure forced migrants’ voices are heard.