A few blocks up Grubbegata in the OBOS building’s characteristic head office on Hammersborg Square, a young and competent executive officer sits with a throbbing headache. He’d had at least one drink too many last night. He and his friends hadn’t seen each other for a while, and that’s when time flies by with anecdotes and embellished reminiscences, lubricated successively and alternately with beer, gin and tonic, champagne, and shots of whiskey. There aren’t any juicy scandals to be embarrassed about, but the twenty-five-year-old knows that he’ll soon call up one of the friends to hear how it went with the woman he tried chatting up at the trendy bar, Skaugum.
Eivind Dahl Thoresen has a summer job in the legal department of the building society. In the spring he wrote his master’s thesis on bankruptcy regulations, and in the fall he was scheduled to complete his law studies in Amsterdam. It’s purely coincidental that he ended up in OBOS, but the work period from June 20 to July 31 suited his vacation plans well. So far the work has been challenging, but much of it was about housing cooperative regulations and the Planning and Building Act. If someone has done what isn’t permitted—extended too far or built an overly large terrace—what kind of sanctions can the housing cooperative board impose? Small, trivial matters that the cooperative’s founder, Labor Party politician and carpenter Martin Strandli, did not envision would overshadow the dream of affordable housing based on solidarity for Oslo citizens in general. “Housing for all the people” was Strandli’s motto. No one has had greater influence on urban space in the capital than Strandli and OBOS, from the blocks built in Etterstad in the early 1930s to the development of suburbs such as Lambertseter after the war. The current OBOS isn’t as purely social democratic as in the time of Gerhardsen. Now the building society owns office buildings, shopping centers, and a hotel chain and builds apartments for the wealthy in Fornebu. Outside the main office building, the Nils Aas statue, A New Challenge, looms in stainless steel.
If there’s anything Eivind has learned from his trainee jobs in other companies and during the past few weeks, it’s that people can argue about the most trivial matters. And often such arguments escalate into small-scale wars. A boy kicks a soccer ball into a neighbor’s yard. The neighbor then confiscates the ball. The boy starts to cry, and his father goes over to the neighbor, who refuses to give the ball back, and the whole thing ends in a fistfight. Eivind doesn’t know which aspects of the law he’ll be working with, so it’s okay not to take things too seriously in the meantime. The former Skeid soccer club player had to choose among law, economics, and physical therapy. His buddies thought he should become a lawyer as he’s so infuriating to argue with.
It’s peaceful and quiet in the office today, and that suits the law student perfectly. He and a colleague are the only ones in the department. There’re no urgent tasks, and most of them can be postponed to next week. Eivind sits in front of his PC in the impersonal and spartanly furnished office, nibbling cashew nuts and eating chocolates while trying to look professional. He dispensed with breakfast in the morning and instead bought some food for his hangover at the corner supermarket by the roundabout at Bislett Stadium before he got on the tram going to the city center. By the side of his desk is a packed sports bag. The consequences of drinking one too many pints are not only side effects, but also ripple effects. Eivind had set aside some time in the morning to pack sensibly for a trip to Stavanger this weekend, but his splitting headache laid that plan to rest. Instead he had to fill the bag with items for every contingency: a nice white shirt for going out to restaurants, a black raincoat for outdoor activities, underwear and socks for all-weather use, and a John Grisham paperback for the flight. Then he put on a pair of dark denim shorts and a white polo shirt and ran out of the apartment on Underhaugsveien Street. The dress code at the OBOS office is far from strict. Moreover, today might just be an extra casual Friday.
Eivind goes down to the cafeteria and picks up a couple of sandwiches before he settles down at the table where his only departmental colleague of the day is sitting. The topic of conversation between the two cycling fans is a given: the imminent 109-kilometer-long nineteenth stage of the Tour de France, which runs from Modane to Alpe d’Huez. They don’t talk much about the four favorites. They are mostly occupied with the power performance of Hushovd and Boasson Hagen. The editor of Dagsavisen, Lars West Johnsen, has gone as far as to claim today that Thor Hushovd is the best Norwegian sportsman ever. It’s a daring and contrarian thing to say in a country that is mainly occupied with winter sports.
The road from Modane to Sardinia is shorter than first presumed, at least around the lunch table at Hammersborg Square. Eivind’s colleague hasn’t been on the Italian island himself but knows enough about it to recommend to Eivind which attractions to explore, delicacies to devour, and Cannonau wine to sip in a civilized manner. In a week’s time Eivind and his girlfriend will be traveling to the Mediterranean as soon as he has finished his summer job with OBOS.
Every morning Andreas Olsen walks across Hammersborg Square on the way from his apartment at the bottom of Grünerløkka to the office on 8 Apotekergata, vis-à-vis the supermarket in the vg newspaper building. The publishers Schibsted and Cappelen Damm are also located in this quarter. “OLSEN” is written in capital letters over the entrance to the Oslo trade union offices. Carl Marius Olsen used to run Oslo’s leading coachman business and had the honor of driving Norway’s new royal family from Vippetangen to the castle on November 25, 1905. Some of the court coachman’s forty horses were stabled on Apotekergata. In the building and backyard he had stalls, coach equipment, sleighs, hay, and straw, as well as sheep- and bearskins with which to warm the seats. Given the fact that the coachmen were quite prone to going on strike, especially when the first taxis appeared in the city in 1908, it’s noteworthy that the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions’ most powerful union is located here today.
One of Andreas’s tasks at the trade union is to scrutinize the news to find issues that management should consider. He has read the national newspapers but has not found anything that undermines the impression that it’s a peaceful, uncomplicated summer’s day in the capital. The daily Dagbladet has devoted the front page to the Norwegian singer Gabrielle, whose single, “Call Me,” has topped the charts but who doesn’t want people to call her anyway. A new study reveals that people from the Trøndelag region of Norway argue mostly about sex and that elderly people argue about the remote control. The daily vg is advising people to put up with the rain as it’ll be sunny in the coming week. The Dagsavisen daily’s front page appeals more to the socially engaged with an article about our inability or unwillingness to help the famine-stricken Horn of Africa. Five million Norwegians have given a total of 3 million kroner to aid organizations—that is, well over half a kroner per person. The aid organizations—Church Aid, Save the Children, and the Norwegian Refugee Council—show some understanding for the low figures and blame it on the summer vacation period.
Normally there are twenty-five employees working in the Apotekergata office, but today there are just two from management, a secretary, and information officer Andreas Olsen. Hence, the thirty-six-year-old from Tonsenhagen in Oslo can read the newspapers in peace in the morning. The Middle East isn’t at the top of the agenda for the trade union before the election, but Andreas is particularly interested in the reports on the foreign minister’s visit to Utøya. vg has angled yesterday’s Middle East debate as a contest between the “no crown prince,” Trond Giske, and the “yes crown prince,” Jonas Gahr Støre, with regard to Norway’s joining the European Union. Olsen has spent a combined total of eleven weeks at summer camp on the island on Lake Tyri. The former county secretary and central committee member of AUF received his membership in the organization for his eighteenth birthday and was on Utøya as recently as seven years ago. His wife, Marianne, is also a longstanding AUF member. The couple had plans to take their four-year-old son to Utøya for their first visit in years to give him a taste of their youthful paradise. Earlier in the week, however, they decided not to go because the weather forecast was so miserable. A soaking wet camp in pouring rain doesn’t sound much like paradise, even for a four-year-old.
Instead Andreas is spending this Friday almost utterly alone in the office. He flicks through the union’s campaign pamphlets: “The city council took their jobs!” says one under a picture of gardeners Anne Kristine Sandborg and Thor Truls Lie. They are two of the eighty-nine employees of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department who were given notice this spring that their jobs would be put out to tender after the department had used its own gardeners for 136 years. Another pamphlet, written in English, Urdu, Somali, and Tamil, encourages the people of Oslo to vote. A picture shows Mary Khayumbi, a deputy in Ullern Trade Union; Fauzia Hussain, the head of the Planning and Building Services Trade Union; and Farideh Keshavarz, a member of the Oslo Public Transport Workers Union in front of City Hall. The text criticizes the conservatives’ zeal regarding privatization over the past fifteen years, so the three proud, photogenic women don’t give the impression of being politically impartial: “Vote Labor, Socialist, or Left-Wing!” Andreas Olsen will soon submit the text to management and an agency for approval and translation. Then he will greet the weekend with a broad, warm smile. The information officer leans back in his chair, rests the back of his head on his clasped hands, and stretches his legs out on the table while he considers whether to buy flowers for his wife on the way home from the office in the afternoon. She certainly deserves flowers.
Oda Faremo Lindholm cobbles together a salad in the canteen on the fifth floor of the YMCA building on Grubbegata. For the vegetarian it’s a daily challenge to find something tasty to eat among all the pork and chicken dishes. She takes the salad with her up to the seventh floor, where the Dagsavisen’s culture section is located. The summer intern, who, in addition to holding the newspaper job, is writing a master’s thesis on currency regulations in Norway’s Central Bank after World War II, is a little stressed. She’s almost done writing about Joddski, the rap musician from Bodø, but there is an unexpected hitch in her plans when he comes late to the scheduled interview. Half an hour more or less is normally not the end of the world, but the plan was to be done quickly so that she could walk out the door at three-thirtyish and get a head start to the weekend. In the end Jørgen Nordeng, as the musician was originally called, was so delayed at the Internasjonalen Club in the People’s Theater building that she had to call to track him down.
When Oda listened to the tape of the interview, she had to acknowledge that he didn’t say anything sensational. It’s a standard interview for Monday’s launch of Joddski’s second solo album. When the exrapper, known from his previous band, Tungtvann, and as a participant in the TV show Detstore korslaget (The Battle of the Choirs), starts talking about how small Bodø’s music scene is and how reggae, hard-core, and electronica musicians played together in the 1990s, the conversation starts to digress. The music journalist and the interviewee go off topic and talk instead about mutual acquaintances. The music scene is small in Bodø, but it’s not big in Norway either. The digression was pleasant. But as a consequence the article is taking longer to write, and Oda has to work longer hours at the office.
Hanne Gro Lille-Mæhlum sits in a crisp uniform at the reception area in S-Block, where the Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Health and Care Services, and Government Service Center are located. The uniform is comprised of a light blue short-sleeved shirt tucked into a navy blue skirt reaching to just below the knees, nylon stockings, and black flat shoes. Around her neck she has an orange patterned scarf. The thirty-three-year-old is doing a master’s in sociology and started working in late May. The S-Block was completed the same year that Hanne Gro was born—that is, 1978. The building was erected on the site of the old prison associated with the police station at 19 Møllergata, and the remains of the prison wall can still be seen at the reception area. Two former prime ministers of Norway, Einar Gerhardsen and Trygve Bratteli, and key Labor Party leaders and members of the resistance were imprisoned here during the war. Einar Gerhardsen and Trygve Bratteli were later sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. When Germany capitulated in 1945, Vidkun Quisling stood on the steps under the clock that adorns the façade facing Youngstorget Square and surrendered himself to the Norwegian police. The S-Block shares the same reception area as that of 19 Møllergata, where, among others, staff of the Government Service Center have their offices.
On this day one could be misled into thinking that the “S” in front of the block stands for “summer serenity.” No ministers on the job, not many meetings, few visitors to register and sign out. A few times Hanne Gro has gone over to the High Rise Building, which houses the office of the prime minister to get coffee in the lunch room. Fresh-roasted coffee, which can be transformed into cappuccinos or lattes, is a fringe benefit that she’s never had at previous jobs.
After lunch the reception guards took a tour of the government buildings to familiarize themselves with emergency exits and evacuation procedures. On the tour the guards discussed how they could best protect themselves against harm while evacuating employees in the ministries during a potential emergency. The discussion ended with someone jokingly pointing out that it wouldn’t take long for the firefighters to come to the rescue since the main fire station in Oslo was located next to the S-Block, just a few meters away. “Yes, there’s not much chance of their driving to the wrong place,” he joked.
Hanne Gro reads on the Internet about the Prince concert that she’ll be attending on Sunday with a childhood friend from Brumunddal. The ticket costs 850 Norwegian kroner, but she thinks she can indulge a little since she has worked practically full time the whole summer. According to the work schedule Hanne Gro is supposed to be on duty at seven o’clock Monday morning. She ventures to call the desk manager to see if she can change to a later shift and is told that it should be no problem. There’s nothing in her email inbox except a pollen count alert for Saturday, July 23. She is looking forward to the end of the summer’s grass pollen season.
She browses through the daily Klassekampen, which she always brings in the bag with her to work in case she doesn’t find someone to eat lunch with. In today’s issue there’s an article saying that the AUF leader, Eskil Pedersen, thinks the Labor Party should sacrifice the mayoral seats in some municipalities rather than cooperate with the Progress Party, as party secretary Raymond Johansen has proposed. “Cooperating will send an unimaginably negative signal,” said the leader. The headline on the front page concerns Norwegian complacency. Professor Nina Witoszek thinks Norwegians are more concerned about the poor summer weather than the financial crisis in Europe, while Iver B. Neumann, the head researcher of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), claims that Norwegians view the rest of the world as one big holiday resort where one can visit for a short while and throw a lot of money around. He has spent his life trying to argue that the world is bigger than Norway but has realized that Norwegians are not particularly receptive to such arguments. “I think there is currently a lot of bragging among Norwegian politicians. But it’s not due to the politicians that things are going well in Norway. It’s due to pure luck in our having found oil; a skilled business class; and an easily managed, homogenous society,” Professor Janne Haaland Matlary says.
Hanne Gro puts away Klassekampen and kicks off her black standard-issue shoes. She has clammy feet and reminds herself that she should air them before going across Einar Gerhardsen Square to the High Rise later in the day.