Independent Artikel über Norwegen
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Meggie -
1. August 2002 um 17:35 -
Erledigt
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Oder
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=320427Only a shame that The Independent writes "Morten Harket, the lead singer of Eighties pop phenomenon A-Ha, hailed from Norway" - instead of mentioning that a-ha is a Norwegian band as a whole; or that the said Morten Harket <I>still</I> hails from Norway. Maybe next time, Magne and Paul should join Morten when promoting in the UK - the media there almost always speak of "Morten Harket and his band a-ha".
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Ja, das Problem werden a-ha immer haben... "Morten & Co.", "Morten und seine Jungs" oder was auch immer...
Ich habe eh nicht verstanden. warum Pål und Mags überhaupt nicht bei der Promotion in UK mitgemacht haben? -
PS: Danke für den Link!
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Danke Sabine!
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Zitat von Mechthild
Ja, das Problem werden a-ha immer haben... "Morten & Co.", "Morten und seine Jungs" oder was auch immer...
Ich habe eh nicht verstanden. warum Pål und Mags überhaupt nicht bei der Promotion in UK mitgemacht haben?Die Frage haben wir ja schon öfter gestellt. Und ich versteh es auch nicht !
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Wenn ich mir diese englichen Sendungen ansehe, kann ich es fast verstehen. Das ist eigentlich pure, gequirlte Sch....... Ich glaube, ich hab sowieso den falschen Humor dazu!
Irgendwie haben Mags und Paul einfach keinen Bock drauf, denke ich!
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Ich glaube auch, dass Mags und Paul auf diese Shows überhaupt keine Lust hatten.
Vor allem bei Graham Norton drehte sich doch alles nur um Morten! Traurig, aber wahr. Was hätten die anderen zwei dort machen sollen? Daneben sitzen und in die Kameras grinsen?!Im Dagbladet gabs zu dem Artikel übrigens noch dieses Bild von Morten:
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Nun ja, man sollte doch annehmen, daß eine Band auch als solche auftritt und für sich wirbt, oder? Was macht das denn für einen Eindruck, wenn sie den Sänger vorschicken und ihn allein die Arbeit machen lassen?
Selbst wenn sie nichts sagen, sollte sie doch wenigstens gemeinsam auftreten!
Sonst heißt es wieder wie bei den Liquid News "die neue Single von Morten"... -
Es macht keinen besonders guten Eindruck, klar, aber es ist auch nichts total ungewöhnliches.
Viele Bands müssen damit leben, auf eine Person reduziert zu werden. Warum soll da ausgerechnet bei a-ha eine Ausnahme gemacht werden?
Dass Lifelines als Mortens neue Single vorgestellt wurde, liegt wohl auch an unzureichender Recherche bzw. purer Dummheit! :-x -
Nicht hauen bitte , wenn ich den ganzen Artikel einstelle. Aber vielleicht interessiert es ja jemanden....
Is Norway really the greatest place on Earth?
It's the country that gave us A-ha and Munch's 'Scream' (not to mention the mackerel and the paper-clip). But it's also where a beer and a sandwich costs £14. So just what is it about Norway that makes it the number one place to live?
By Paul Vallely
01 August 2002
Here's to the good life, though at these prices I suspect I won't be raising a glass to it that often. I'm sitting in the sunshine in a café by Aker Brygge on the waterfront in Oslo, and I think I may be sipping what is possibly the most expensive beer in the world – even allowing for the ones you buy in that little square behind the Uffizi in Florence. The medium-sized glass cost 56 kroner, which works out at about £5.50 a pint, though with a ham sandwich the total bill came to £14.30. It's not that there's something special about Aker Brygge. That's pretty much what beer costs everywhere in Norway.Mind you, I have just committed the guidebook's cardinal error here. If you go around Norway constantly translating the prices back into your own currency, it says, it will not make for a happy holiday. Just learn to think like a Norwegian.
It's not an easy task. For smokers, that means getting used to Marlborough at £5.90 a pack. For the rest of us, most food – apart from tinned fish – costs double what it does in the UK, and that's in the supermarket as well as when eating out. So do books, cosmetics, toiletries... And though this is one of the top three oil-producing nations, the petrol-pump prices are the highest in the world (four times what they are in the US, a disgruntled New Yorker here told me) and a VW Golf will set you back a whopping £6,000 more than it does even in Britain.
But I mustn't put you off. For according to the United Nations' new quality of life index, Norway is the best place in the world to live. Using a composite of life expectancy, education and average income, the UN Human Development Index – in which Britain last week lost its place in the top 10 countries – showed Norway coming top, followed by Sweden and then Canada, which had previously won for six years running. (The UK was 13th, one place behind France, but above Germany). The Australians, who came joint sixth along with Belgium and the US, were outraged – how could an icy country, a large part of which is inside the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn't rise for two months each year, be thought to beat sun-kissed Australia?
It was sunny enough at the weekend. Though Oslo is on the same latitude as Siberia, when I went to the home of a friend of a friend, we had drinks on the balcony in the long evening light. (Admittedly she put on a cardie halfway through. "Norwegians are like the Brits," she said. "We are determined to sit in any sun there is, and will do so until we're freezing.") I had rung her just before 6pm to say I had arrived. "I'll ring you back in a moment," she said, with a touch of panic in her voice, adding "I'm in the food shop," as if that were sufficient explanation. It turned out that by law food shops have to close at 6pm prompt, and she had needed some tomatoes for the bruschetta. "We can get nice, big, red ones from Spain now," she said. "It used to be just little, green Norwegian ones."
Tomatoes, like most other things in Norway, have been tightly controlled, but are now being slowly liberalised. Food prices are high because the government taxes imports so that they don't compete with the produce of Norwegian farmers, who get some of the biggest agricultural subsidies in the world. A similar approach obtains in other key sectors of the economy.
They are keen on rules in Norway. If you think you can get round the high beer prices by going to the supermarket, think again. The locals are fond of a drink, particularly in the winter, when the lack of light depresses people and the sight of the fall-over drunk is pretty commonplace in the late-night city streets, so – in a paradox which is typical of Norway – they set up laws to curb their drinking. They had prohibition during the First World War, and the population voted to continue it (while simultaneously operating illegal stills at home) until 1927. Then it was replaced by the system that is still in force, which means that strong beer, wine and spirits can only be bought in government monopoly off-licences with very limited opening hours. Some local communities have even stricter drink laws, which make drinking in the street an imprisonable offence.
Then there are rules on speeding, pornography, crossing the road when the green man isn't lit, and smuggling sweets. Smuggling sweets? Well, actually they're getting a bit lax on that one; the government recently announced that families with an unauthorised additional chocolate bar – the import limit is one kilo of candy per person – "will no longer be considered criminals".
It sounds like the nanny state reductio ad absurdum. Government intervention is everywhere, most noticeably in the high taxation on almost everything. Norway's income-tax rates are at nearly 50 per cent, and some 60 per cent of the price of a new car is tax. On the other hand, wages are high, too, and the high tax pays for a cradle-to-grave welfare system that is probably the most comprehensive anywhere in the world: it offers 52 weeks maternity leave (on 80 per cent pay, or eight months at full pay), a world-class education system, free universities, high unemployment benefits, generous sick leave, and a guaranteed pension. There's also a superb public transport, and trains have baby compartments for the under-twos, with their own changing room.
It all depends on what your idea of a good society is. The Norwegians are in no doubt. "We work to live, not vice versa," one said to me. "The main point of life is to get out of the office and on to the mountains. Our soul is in the countryside; we prefer nature to culture." You can see why. On Norwegian tourist web-sites, culture ranges from the grim claustrophobia of playwright Henrik Ibsen and the tortured screaming souls of the painter Edvard Munch to the vacuous jollity of the Eighties boy band A-ha who are listed, pace Edvard Grieg, as the country's greatest musical export.
By contrast, the great outdoors offers sailing, hiking, skating, dog-sledging, snowboarding – and above all, skiing (downhill is now trendiest, though half of the entire population does cross-country). "If we wake up and there's snow and it's sunny," said one young woman from Tromso, well into the Arctic, "we feel we have to go skiing." Her eyes sparkled at the thought. Many are not even bothered about the sunny bit. When the winter Olympics were held in Lillehammer, thousands of locals waited in the open all night in temperatures of minus 25C to get a good place to watch. "There's no such thing as bad weather," one man told me, "only bad clothing."
All of which explained why Oslo seemed incredibly empty. It's never crowded at the busiest of times apparently. But from 3pm on Fridays at the weekends, and throughout almost of July, the population of the city decamps to the countryside. Even the woman from the UN responsible for the Norwegian end of the quality-of-life survey was not to be found. I eventually tracked her down on Monday morning, on her mobile. "I'm up a mountain, enjoying the morning sunshine," said Ragnhild Imerslund, "but I've got a copy of the report here."
Why is Norway so wonderful? "Well, it's not because of one factor," she said. "Life expectancy is highest in Japan (80), and education is best in Australia [which gets 106 per cent, for reasons I can't quite work out; Norway gets 97] and average incomes are highest in Luxembourg – $50,061 (£31,800). But combined Norway does best."
Interestingly, if you add in additional criteria – such as the probability of not surviving until 60, functional literacy, long-term unemployment, the position of women and inequality benchmarks – Norway, followed by the other Scandinavian countries, still comes top, but all the English–speaking countries – Australia, the UK, Ireland and the US – drop to the bottom of the developed-world rating. "The UK proportionally has nearly double the number of people living below 50 per cent of the median income," says Mrs Imerslund. "That is a lot more people who don't participate fully in society. What it shows is that economic growth isn't enough; you also need the right policies."
But do Norwegians agree? To find out, I decided I would have to head out to the country, too, so I took the morning ferry down Oslofjord to the coastal town of Drobak. It was full of late escapers from the city, clad in cagoules and windcheaters, but with shorts and bare legs into which they optimistically rubbed sun cream or, more prudently, which they covered with blankets or towels against the brisk, salty wind. They drank strong coffee from flasks or clutched empty baskets for mushroom picking.
When we docked on the little jetty at the side of the wide fjord an hour and a half later, I was invited up to the home of Oysten Berg, a 36-year-old collision-repair equipment salesman. It was an attractive wooden chalet, set into the bare rock of the mountainside, and edged by pines, silver birches and rowan trees in full orange berry. The air was soft. Delicate geraniums were in flower. On the decking, which created a horizontal platform in the steep hillside, his two daughters, eight-year-old Benedicte and three-year-old Camilla, played while his wife Tone, 32, served the strong black coffee that is the staple of Norwegian hospitality.
"Life is good here. The air is clean," says Oysten.
"It's even cleaner in the north of the country," says a family friend, Paul Mork, who is there drinking coffee, too. He once ran a children's music school for two years in the region where there is midnight sun for two months of the year. "You can taste the chlorophyll in the air – it's so strong from trees because of the 24 hours of daylight. The downside is that there is all-day darkness for two months each year, which eventually drove Paul south to Drobak.
"Here," says Tone, "if you've had a good summer and built up lots of vitamins and energy, you can cope with the dark months." They sleep seven or eight hours in the winter, and just five or six in the summer.
What characterises their conversation as they roam around the landscape of Norwegian life is ambivalence. It's there when they talk of food prices – they are too high, yet it is good that farmers are protected. It is there on drink laws; they are inconvenient, yet they do good. It is there on welfare provision; it does encourage some scrounging – "Norwegians won't pick strawberries, you have to get migrant workers from Poland," says Paul, "and local firms can't get youths for summer jobs; all the young waiters are Danes or Swedes." And yet they all agree with pride that in Norway, no one is left in the gutter. "And hard-working people like me," says Oysten, " are reassured by the knowledge that a safety net exists if things do go wrong."
The middle classes are quite happy to take advantage of the system, too. Tone stopped work as the manager of an after-school childcare centre three years ago when Camilla was born. "For the first year I got maternity pay," she says. "Since then I have been given Dkr3,000 [£250] a month by the government in lieu of the fact that they can't provide me with a kindergarten place until she is three. We manage quite well on one salary with that."
"And I think I have the home/work balance right," says her husband, who travels a lot, but generally sticks to the traditional 8am-4pm working day when he's at home, "though I sometimes do a few hours after the kids are in bed."
But things are changing. Norway has not proved entirely immune from the brutalisation of the labour market. "Over the last 10 years, pressure in the workplace has grown," says Paul. "Everyone is working harder. And people are getting fatter and less fit. Attitudes are changing."
You can see the shift in the country's newspapers which, like the rest of society, once took a rather sniffy attitude to the nouveau riche – men such as Kjell Inge Rokke, who rose from being a humble fisherman to become a billionaire who now controls the oil, engineering and shipbuilding group Kvaerner. Now the papers write endlessly about his flash lifestyle, power-boat racing and model girlfriend – and they do so in a tone that is shifting from distaste to sneaking admiration.
"Ours has always been an egalitarian culture," says one journalist. "We have no aristocracy, no honours system, no private schools (apart from those with a specific purpose such as Steiner, Montesorri or Christian). We have low differentials between high and low salaries in society. Sharing is very much part of our culture. We don't like anything that offends against the idea that everyone should be equal."
The negative and positive aspects of this are summed up in two distinctly Norwegian concepts. There is jante law – the small-town idea that no one should get above themselves, which is seen as stifling innovation ("there are very few Nobel prize winners from Norway" is a frequent lament). But then there is dugnad – which is translated as "let's do it together", and which describes the key concept that everyone must participate in society, taking the rough with the smooth. Dugnad means that parents arrive in school twice a year to spring-clean or decorate the classroom.
"When I was chief of staff to the prime minister, I still left the office at 2.15pm to do the dugnad," says Jonas Gahr Stor, the chairman of Econ, Norway's leading think-tank. "Even in the highest powered offices it's acceptable – just as it is to leave at 4pm if it's your turn to pick up the kids." Dugnad is a symbolic gesture of equality and a way of keeping everyone's feet on the ground. "There's no expectation that people in high positions should be exempted. Quite the opposite." And there's no question of buying your way out. "Twice a year we do the garden in these flats," said my bruschetta-maker, looking down from her balcony. "Everyone here could just hire a gardener, but that would imply you didn't care." You have to get soil beneath your fingernails.
Some suggest that all this – and Norway's place at the top of the UN table – is just the last gasp of a style of European capitalism which, in a global marketplace, is being killed off by its more ruthless American cousin. Jonas Gahr Stor sees it as evidence that the Nordic approach offers a viable alternative to offer to the devil-take-the-hindmost attitude of US capitalism.
"It contradicts Mrs Thatcher's thesis," he says. " There is such a thing as society – and consistent and systematic investment in it produces results." By holding on to the tension that we are all both consumers and citizens, he argues, Norway has discovered that investing in people is not just politically idealistic and morally right, but also economically wise. The US way produces economic growth, he admits, but with large numbers of people disenfranchised.
By contrast, the Norwegian way produces results that seem impossible: "We have both one of the highest birth rates in the developed world and the highest proportion of women in work. And we retain our economic competitiveness, because we have arguably the most educated workforce in the world, which is highly adaptable to new technology."
But can it last? The short-term dynamics of consumerism have now entered into politics – which is why Jonas and his colleagues were thrown out at the last election. They tried to explain to the electorate that it was no good throwing the nation's oil money at problems that needed to be sorted by getting economic fundamentals right. The electorate did not understand.
"Why can't I get my grandmother into an old people's home when we have all this oil money?" the voters riposted, and were unconvinced when told that would be inflationary. Nor did they accept that food and petrol were not dear if you measured them by asking how many hours' work it took to buy a week's supply, in which index Norway, with its high wages, looks rather good.
"It's the paradox of plenty," Jonas sighed. The new government got in by promising better schools and lower taxes, which is going to prove tricky now the profits from oil, which were partially invested in the stock market, have evaporated.
A little anxiety is in the air in the Norwegian utopia. People fret about street crime and drugs – fatal heroin overdoses doubled last year – though, by comparison with the rest of the world, the problems are tiny. Norway has about one murder a week throughout the whole country, women walk home safely late at night. The streets are virtually litter-free, there is hardly any graffiti, and the trains run on time. Which is why, though Norwegians go to fast-moving cities such as Paris or London to find fun or fortune, when they have children they almost always return home.
Whether it would suit the rest of us, immunised as we are by more messy freedoms, is another matter. I had wondered, when I went, whether I would want to send home a postcard like the one I got from a friend in some rural idyll a few years back. "Life here is perfect and we have decided never to come home. So goodbye for ever." In the end I never even bought one.
Norwegians would: The facts of life in the world's No.1 nation
Laid-back: compared to Britain, the Norwegian attitude towards royalty is more relaxed: Olaf V ("The People's King"), who died in 1991, is remembered for travelling on public transport during the international oil crisis in 1973 when the use of cars was limited.
Politically aware: in 1913, Norway was one of the first countries in the world to allow women to vote. In 1981, a special commissioner was appointed for children, who – although they can't vote until they're 18 – can call him personally to air their views.
Plenty of space: the area covered by Norway is around the same as the UK, but the population is only 4.3 million. Even Oslo, the capital, has less than half a million inhabitants.
Schooldays: Norwegian children don't have to wear school uniforms, and they aren't graded at all until they reach secondary school.
A nation of inventors: the paper clip hails from Norway (courtesy of Johan Vaaler in 1899), and, in 1925, Thor Bjorklund invented the cheese slicer. Eminently practical.
Cheeky: Oslo is home to the world's largest granite monument. The work of the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, it is called The Monolith and is basically a single block of stone with 121 naked figures carved into it. It stands at 14.12m (46ft) in Vigeland's Sculpture Park
Creative: Morten Harket, the lead singer of Eighties pop phenomenon A-Ha, hailed from Norway. Henrik Ibsen and Edvards Grieg and Munch came first though, and made somewhat more sophisticated cultural contributions.
Want to lengthen your life? Go and live in Norway: the life expectancy there is 78.5 years, while in the UK, it's 77.7.
Rolling in it: there's more money to be made in Norway, too: the average income in the United Kingdom is £14,959, but in Norway it's £19,037. -
Tja, ich begreife auch nicht warum a-ha in England bis auf Morten 'reduziert' wird -?
Es ist immer ein bisschen so gewesen, aber diesmal scheint es mehr so zu sein als in die frueheren Jahren. Ich denke, das auf diese Weise vielleicht eben eine 'Frage und Angebot' kreiert wird da die englische Medien so auf Morten fokusieren, wirden am Ende Magne und Paul nicht mehr auf promo Tour dort mitgeschickt - wodurch das ganze natuerlich noch verstarkt wird.Ausserdem schienen die englische Medien nicht so sehr in das musikalischen Aspekt interessiert zu sein - es muss schnell gehen, ueber eine ganze Menge Sachen aus der Showbizz, und es muss witzig sein (vor allem die Presentatoren mussen die Gelegenheit haben um 'scharfe' Bemerkungen zu machen). Ein Interview im Ursprungliche Meinung des Wort ist eher seltsam.
Aber Morten ist nicht nur der 'beliebtesten' des UK Presse. In Holland habe ich erlebt wie der hollaendischen Radio Journalist sich beklagte wie unfair es war, dass es immer die deutsche Presse war (es soll ja auch einen deutsche Journalisten oder Fotografen anwesend sein gewesen?) die Morten interviewen moechte, und dass er es "nur" mit Magne stellen musste. "Furchtbar!", fand er. Und eine andere hollaendische Zeitung, die einen Journalist nach Ullevaal geschickt hatte und dort Paul interviewt hat, schrieb etwas wie "Morten ist natuerlich beschaeftigt mit die deutsche presse, weil wir das minst sexy Band Mitglied bekommen."
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Das sehe ich auch so Sabine!
Und ich denke, daß das überall immer noch so ist, daß Morten "aha" ist. Vielleicht in England und Holland besonders schlimm. Zum Teil kann ich das ja noch nachvollziehen. Er ist nun mal der "Frontman", "the Boss". Aber man muß immer bedenken, daß aha niemals zu weit weitermachen würden! Egal wer aussteigen würde: Die Band gäbe es nicht mehr! Die Jungs SIND einfach gleichwertig!! Ein Bon Jovi kann es sich erlauben, einen Musiker auszutauschen. Aber da ist die ganze Band einfach anders strukturiert und konzipiert. Ein "aha" kann man sich einfach nur zu dritt vorstellen! (Wobei ich auf die Begleitmusiker auch nicht mehr verzichten möchte.... ) -
Solange das Morten, Mags und Paul wissen, dass sie zu dritt sind, reicht es doch eigentlich. Sie haben ja auch unlängst gesagt, dass sie ab jetzt getrennte Interviews geben, weil sie sich sonst doch nur wieder selbst ins Wort fallen. Ausserdem sitzen Mags und Paul (seien wir doch mal ehrlich) eben doch nur meistens daneben und dürfen auch mal auf eine Frage antworten, die ebenso gut auch Morten hätte beantworten können.
Wenn die Drei damit leben können, sollten wir, die Fans, das doch eigentlich auch können.
Ich denke mal die Zeiten sind vorbei, da sie *eifersüchtig* aufeinander waren.....
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Weiteres über Holland: In einem TV Interview von "RTL Boulevard" haben sie einfach nür Morten sehen lassen, obwohl sie auch mit Magne und Paul geredet haben weil "Morten doch der bekannteste von a-ha ist".
Aber am anderen aussersten hat das TV Programm "Rolfs Antwoordapparaat" Morten sogar abgelehnt, als er allein kommen wollte, weil sie nur die ganze Band haben möchten.
Also dann doch lieber Morten allein, als gar nichts ,finde ich doch irgendwie... -
nee,find ich nicht.entweder alle oder nix.aber das kann natürlich jeder anders sehen...
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Englische Fernsehsendung sind teilsweise sehr gewoehnungsbedueftig, geb ich zu und da ist Graham Norton noch so ziemlich am Besten davon. Aber ich schaetze mal Morten wusste schon auf was er sich einlaesst hat hier schliesslich lange genug gelebt und frueher waren die Sendungen ja noch schlimmer....
Petra
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Ich finde auch Morten *alleine* besser als gar niemand. Aber da sind die Meinungen wohl unterschiedlich.
Ich verstehe bloss nicht, warum denn Mags und Paul nicht mitgehen, wenn es so ausdrücklich gewünscht wird......
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Ich steh auch auf dem Standpunkt etweder alle oder gar keiner aber die WEA und a-ha werden schon ihre Gruende gehabt haben.
a-ha ist und bleibt eine Band und wenn dann nur der Saenger Promo macht sieht das einfach nicht gut aus aber gebracht hat die Promo ja auch nichts......Petra