Jan Vardøen: Scotland can mirror Norway success

Scotland can mirror the successes of its northern neighbours, writes Jan Vardoen. Picture: Jane Barlow

SITTING here in Norway, I can’t help but notice all the similarities between our two countries as you move closer to the referendum. Norway is this year celebrating the 200th anniversary of our constitution, written when Sweden “took us over” after several hundred years of Danish rule.

Sweden held on to us for a little under 100 years until Norway held a referendum in 1905 and overwhelmingly voted for our independence from them, which we have since held onto.

Norway’s relationship to her Scandinavian neighbours has been fraught at times, although nowhere near as complicated as Scotland’s relationship to England. We have traditionally been seen as the younger, country bumpkin brother by the high lords in Denmark and Sweden and if truth be told, we have often felt very parochial and ungainly in comparison to them.

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Norway has been achingly poor for many centuries and our small wooden houses and farms seem pathetically twee compared to the stone palaces in Stockholm and Copenhagen.

But we have thrived on independence. While trying not to blow our own trumpet (not a popular Norwegian trait) we have become the richest nation on the planet with arguably the best standard of living in the world, the most equal division of wealth, a highly functioning and fair social and welfare network and a calm and just political system run on the proportional representation model.

‘Norway canny with oil in 1960s’

Ok, we haven’t reached Utopia quite yet and, yes, we do have our problems, but in the larger scale of things we’re not doing too badly and I think we’re a lot closer to where humane and peaceful people think the world should be. But it is a constant battle; there will always be forces of self-interest who will try to derail progress for their own private gain and attacks on the social and political status quo can take decades to repair.