@work in Norway: Europe@Debate

Twenty-three young Europeans from 12 countries met in Oslo for the Eustory History Camp "National Constitutions and European Democracies in Times of Crisis". Read here from their daily blog.

Day 5: Time to put everything in perspective

Today we started the day attending to two lectures that took place in the hotel. The first one was held by the journalist Halvor Tjønn and dealt with trust and distrust and the role of media in democracy. He actually talked about confidence-based societies and the development of democracy in Norway throughout the years. Among the examples of non-trust based societies we found quite impressive a quote attributed to Stalin: "Trust is fine. Control is better". 

Some indexes and charts about income equality, corruption perception, democracy scale and human development brought something interesting to light: Norway came out on top of most of them. Why? Tjønn told us that "it is all about choices and, of course, partly about history". He gave us many reasons and made a ranking of necessary elements in democratic societies that not everyone of us agreed with.

 

The second lecture was carried out by Dr. Iver B. Neumann, from LSE (The London School of Economics and Political Science), about "Peace and agreements – From Westfalen to UN and beyond". To get to understand decision-making all along history, Dr. Neumann told us to look into the religious background, which was Christianity. After setting the basis for his lecture, he explained the most important diplomatic conference in history, such as Conferences in Vienna in 1815 (after Napoleonic Wars) or Conferences in Paris in 1919 (after World War II). He closed his lecture saying that nowadays conferences are much more specific.

After having lunch in a crowded dining room where we had to queue and fight in order to get something to eat, we walked to Fritt Ord Foundation. There we were welcomed by Fritt Ord's director, Knut Olav Åmås, and attended a talk about The Role of New Social and Digital Media in the European Public Sphere, as well as a debate titled "The web as a Public Space". 

Once we had spent two lovely hours writing new articles for our magazine, we missed salmon and potatoes because we ate some pizza at last! (which, by the way, was considered to be great by our professional Italian cooks). And then, bowling time! Even though two of us got injured.
Despite the fact that the conferences we attended today were really meaningful and we enjoyed so much bowling, this fifth day in Oslo will be always remembered as Tancia's birthday. 

Happy Birthday!
¡Feliz Cumpleaños!
Všechno nejlepší!
Palju õnne!
Všetko najlepšie!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch!
Gelukkige Verjaardag!
Penblwydd Hapus!
Tillykke med fødselsdagen!
Gratulerer med dagen!
Buon Compleanno!
Wszystkiego najlepszego!
Ilgiausiu metu!
Mazal Tov!

Carina (Estonia) and Alicia (Spain)