Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian prime minister, is sitting in a garden chair on a sun-drenched terrace in a comfortable, but not exceedingly luxurious house. A gardener plies a hole in the black loam with his spade, and then plants a small bush of purple Aster in full bloom as a garden waterfall bubbles tranquilly nearby.
Since July 22, when twin attacks by a right-wing extremist destroyed Stoltenberg's office, left 76 dead, and rocked Norway, Stoltenberg's bucolic home-office has doubled as his command center. In one room, a group of aides are huddled over laptops. In another, two security guards seem to be trying hard to remain invisible and pass the time. The furniture is modern, but not extravagant. If Norway were a house, it might resemble the prime minister's residence: modern, functional, wealthy, but a home that would fit a dentist or a lawyer just as easily as the head of government. (See "Viewpoint: Defending the Open Future of Scandinavia.")
"This house says a lot about Norway," says Stoltenberg, a fit 50-something, sporting dark athletic sunglasses, in an interview with TIME. "One of our qualities is that the distance between political leaders and the people is smaller than in many other countries. Our challenge now is to try to remain a society where people can still be close to their political leaders."
That is Stoltenberg's mantra. Since Friday's bombing and shooting of dozens of teenage members of his left-leaning Labor Party by a right-wing extremist named Anders Behring Breivik, Stoltenberg has stayed on message at every occasion, whether in press conferences, or memorial services in Oslo, or facing a barrage of television cameras. He insists that Norway will not change.
Stoltenberg works the message, perhaps to calm Norwegians' fear of change and uncertainty, but also to keep the political realities clear. Asked what his first thought was when he learned that the attacker was a white Norwegian and not a dark-skinned Muslim, he said: "The first thing I thought is that this will create a completely different debate than if it was a foreigner." (See TIME's photos: "Explosion and Shooting Rock Norway.")
A white home-grown right-wing attacker turns the debate in Stoltenberg's favor. Instead of getting grilled by a resurgent right charging the government with being soft on terrorists, Breivik has put right-wing politics on the defensive in Norway. And Stoltenberg and his Labor Party are clearly benefiting.
As he worked his way up the Labor Party ranks, Stoltenberg - a former journalist - was a regular visitor at the annual retreats in Utoya, a place, he says, where young Norwegians and government ministers would hang out and discuss politics. He has at times been a controversial figure in Norway. In his youth, he hung out in radical left circles and was active in anti-American protests in Oslo that decried the Vietnam War. Stoltenberg has admitted to smoking marijuana in his teenage years. In the 1990s, he served in various government posts, including Ministry of Industry in the Third Brundtland Cabinet, a Labor-led minority government. Stoltenberg previously served as prime minister from 2000 to 2001; his current term began in 2005.
See "Norway Attacks: How a Once Moderate Region Became a Haven for the Far Right."
In a culture where private emotions are usually kept private, Stoltenberg has given impassioned speeches over the past few days, often appearing close to tears, and hugged Oslo citizens. His spirited defense of Norway's democratic tradition in the face of the July 22 attacks has also won him sympathy from voters. In a public opinion poll published this week by the Oslo-based newspaper VG, 94% of Norwegians polled said Stoltenberg was doing his job "well" or "extremely well," scoring even higher than Norway's King Harald, who scored 76% approval. "It's seldom that anyone gets results that are as unambiguous as this," Anders Todal Jenssen, political scientist at Norway's technical university NTNU in Trondheim, told Norway's NRK television. Norwegian media are also reporting this week that all of the country's main political parties have seen a surge in membership. (See TIME's photos: "Inside the World's Most Humane Prison.")
Stoltenberg's popularity will allow him to retain control of the debate as it moves back to the policy arena in the coming weeks. Already he is preparing to propose heightened security measures. But there will be nothing that even resembles a U.S.-style Patriot Act or some of the anti-terror measures seen in the United Kingdom, Germany or France. Stoltenberg has created an independent commission to investigate the official response to the attacks and draw conclusions for security policy. Does that mean that Norwegian police will routinely carry firearms or that metal detectors will be installed in all public buildings? Not likely.
"Even if we had armed police, it wouldn't have changed a thing at Utoya or downtown Oslo," he says. "No society will ever be able to have security measures which gives you 100% security against violence, and especially not against what we believe was a one-man, lone wolf act of violence."
Stoltenberg is not the only Nordic politician who has fought the corsets of security commonly imposed on holders of public office in Western Europe and the United States. But that freedom has often carried a heavy price. In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme was gunned down in the streets of Stockholm as he walked home from the movies with his wife and no bodyguards. In 2003, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death while shopping in a department store. (See More on Anders Breivik.)
Still, with the threat of Islamic terror growing and the arrests in Norway last year of three suspected terrorists, the country is imposing more security measures on its political leaders than ever before. The area where Breivik planted his car bomb, for example, was due to be sealed off to public traffic. "We were just in the process of closing this street because it goes between two government buildings," says Stoltenberg. "When I was prime minister in 2000 and 2001, there was hardly any security at all. I could just walk around Oslo without any body guards. Now I have security."
This security dilemma is hardly unique to Norway. Many countries today are faced with the question of how to hold firmly to democratic principles, civil liberties and freedom of movement even as those characteristics of societies make citizens more vulnerable to madmen. But Stoltenberg insists that you cannot compare Norway's experience with that of the United States in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. "We are a tiny country," he says. And yet, who could argue when he says that the "response to violence is more democracy, more openness, and greater political participation."
See "A Killer in Paradise: Inside the Norway Attacks."
See "How Serious Is the Terror Threat in Europe?"
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