Author: Eustory-Blog

Today, we visited the Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library, where we were received by the director Frank Meyer. After getting stickers with our name on it, which is a point to remark, he showed to us many interesting pictures displayed in the main corridor about male and female workers situation or some of the first labour demonstrations in Norway. Then he led us to arcades and library, where all documents and books about labour movement are gathered, sorted and pretty well preserved, as they will be there forever. These books and archives tell about labour movements in history and they can be consulted by researchers, students and members of the LO, it is open to anyone though. This institution was created in 1899, when several local labour movements, that had sprung up because of the working class situation at that moment merged. That is how they started to fight for their rights as workers and constituted an umbrella-structured institution, which would assume a really important role in Norwegian democracy. Though this incipient confederation, citizens, workers and unemployed, common people, as Frank pointed out, found a way to get better working and conditions as could be higher wages, social security, healthcare, right to vote or leaves of absence. Of course, these important achievements in terms of democracy were obtained though many years of fight, so people demonstrated and went to strikes. Frank emphasizes LO’s importance for the Norwegian democracy: “It is a strong force to support and guarantee democracy”. It consists of 900.000 members and it is one of the most successful and influential labour union in Norway. Alicia (Spain), Girts (Latvia), Jan (Germany)

  Mrs. Randi Hagen Eriksrud told us that there are several types of discrimination: it could be based on the gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, ethnicity or disability. The organization operates in five different ways: it helps people who have experienced discrimination; it has lawyers that take care of the cases of discrimination; it gives people advice about discrimination; its members take part in debates on equality and discrimination, to inform about them; it also influences the governmental politics, controls what the government does and wants to do according to the International Conventions and the human rights.   What makes this organization different from the others is that it works only in Norway: in fact it is a governmental organization, it is part of the State. It is paid and appointed by the Parliament, even if it operates in an independent way. It is like an intermediary between the State and NGOs: it supports the disadvantaged ones according to the guide-line politics of the government. But even if you can’t compare it to an NGO, you have to remember that they work in completely different ways and both – the “governmental organizations” as well as the NGO’s – are important. Ombudsman for legacy supports everyone: not only minorities, but also Norwegian citizens that were discriminated (e.g. at work). According to Mrs. Eriksrud, the inspiration for the organization are people who were brave to declare the existence of discrimination and have the power to talk about the difficulties they had experienced. This is an unusual organization: this is not an NGO, and the people who work there are appointed and paid by Parliament. In our opinion, they could have a different view on the situations they deal with. Pietro (Italy), Tanzia (Germany), Tomaz (Poland), Jan (Slovakia)

Today we went and met Havlar Tjønn who has been a journalist for 30 years. He is an interesting character and very knowledgeable about the the history os Oslo and the surrounding areas. Halvar was keen to show us around the national library and explain the history behind the building and took us on a little tour. The tour ended in the new area of the library where we sat and began our interview. Insights from a Seasoned Journalist We started with the ice breaker questions we had prepared back at the hotel, hearing the answers was really interesting about how each day of a writer varies as he has to meet different people everyday, how far he would go to get a good story and what was his most interesting d´so far. As one of the members of the group i found the question “what is your biggest story you wrote” the most interesting thing was when he explained about his time in Russia as he spent 10 years in Moscow. In the time he spent in Moscow the fall of the Soviet union happened and he watched and reported live from Moscow to the newspaper back in Norway as the wars broke out across the country. Dorin found the answer to question 6 where we asked ” what has changed in the media in the last decade?” Halvar replied with how much money the paper was creating with the amount of information and adverts that where inside, but with the evolution of of the online paper, money was lost and the newspaper became into minority. Rafael was interested in what Halvar’s reply would be to what makes a journalist the best they can be? The reply was interesting where he said you have to be open minded and some journalists get restricted by there own mind and should never believe anything people are saying. Media’s Vital Role in Democracy As a group we found his answer to the leading question interesting but didn’t go into enough detail in my opinion, his answer to “what is the role of your institution for the Norwegian democracy?” The answer was short with him saying that the printed papers are declining in numbers and that high risk stories are impossible to prove so anyone could be saying anything which could influence the democracy. I wish that he explained more about media being the 4th power in democracy. Dorin (Israel), Huw (Wales), Rafael (Spain)  

This whole day was dedicated to interviewing different kinds of people. We started off by interviewing each other aka getting to know each other a little better. After the whole group had been properly introduced including the midnight peers, we got our first assignment! We needed to visit 7 different institutions and ask about their role in the Norwegian democracy – which was not always an easy task! Some went to Gyldendal (publishing house), some to Cicero (climate research) and others to LO (the labor union). The person we were going to interview should also tell us 3 words that he/she associated with democracy – this was harder than expected, some had to think really hard. After some hours of research the groups could go to their destination on their own. We were all able to follow the maps, but some had trouble finding their way back to the hotel. Another challenge on the way back was to ask 10 random people to name their 3 associations with democracy too. This was not easy, as some people suddenly got very busy! You can find these associations summed up in an tag cloud soon! Luckily everyone returned safely with a lot of footage and information. We spend hours preparing our presentations with all the information that we had collected – doing our best to impress Tina, Karsten, and Jørgen – but of course as well also the other peers and to answer the leading question about the role of that institution for Norwegian democracy. That resulted in some very detailed presentations, so everyone is exhausted now and almost asleep.. zzzzzz… Presentations from that visits are up on the blog next. Kristine (Denmark), Gregor (Germany), Mette (Belgium)