Rural Norway Struggles With Loss Of Inhabitants

Tray cake with chocolate icing is promoting on the kitchen table. Roger Granli takes a quick sip of his coffee cup and looking out your window. Fields and forests.

– There is no guarantee that any of our three sons will take over the farm after us.

The voice of the 44-year-old farmer is crisp and clear. Roger is a guy who says things straight out. Maybe that’s why he has served two periods in Lierne council.But when it comes to the prospects of Liming farm, saw things a little fuzzier.

– Maybe we will not recommend them to do so either, to take over the farm. It will probably be a lonely life here.

Kona, Siri, come into the kitchen and stands in the doorway. They look at each other.

For although they both hope so, so it is far from any platitude. How tempting is it really for Svein Oliver (11), Karl Anton (18) or Ole Mickal (19) to jump Up in the driver’s seat in the green tractor in the yard, to live as a proud dairy farmer here in the future?

There is so much else in the world you can do. And so many other places to go.

Roger takes another gulp of coffee. Remember Eighteen lists will fork lap and rubs his back against his hands, as if to comfort his master.

It gets quiet for a moment. Roger begins to think of neighboring farms that have been closed down in recent years. On all the lights in the windows of the hamlet who have gone out – one by one.

One kilometer to the nearest rural Noway neighboring farm

It happens all over the country , farms are thinned out. Schools and shops closed down. Young working age move to the cities. Older remain in rural areas. As if gravity pulling the entire Norwegian population.

An invisible hand is about to take a stranglehold on village life.

– It is not good prospects in this area. The children in the back. Things are going in the wrong direction.

Roger and Siri moved home to take over her family farm in 1999. When they grew up here in the north of Lierne, next to the Swedish border, there was still optimism.

Rogers father worked in the mine by Røyrvik, like many other fathers and mothers did at the time. But after the cornerstone enterprise was closed down in 1998 it has gone down.

Hamlet school here is laid down, today must Svein Oliver (11) runs 4.5 mil to school Nordli every day. And now is the nearest neighbor, one kilometer further west, just home sporadically. He works in Namsskogan.

– Centralization goes faster and faster. But I hope that things might turn around once, Roger says, looking over the kitchen table.

There sits postman Jan Arild Devik rod and nods.

– Mmmm, says Jan Arild.

It is not the first time the postman is invited here for coffee and cake. Nor is it the first time he talks about how things were in the past. It belongs somehow when driving out the record in this district.

Moreover, Jan Arild one of the neighbors to Roger. One of those neighbors who have laid down farm operations in recent years.

He put the cup on the table. And suddenly coffee paw slide over for this time.

Postman dishes of cap and rush on out to the hallway – past the little white dog Pitbull.

The records shall be.

Post route runs through four municipalities

On the back of the yellow police office in Grong things happen in the morning.The watch is only half past seven, but it’s a hell of a racket with trucks idling and rickety aluminum pallets being dragged hither and yon.

Piles of letters, newspapers and parcels are distributed and carried out in red post cars of a gang industrious human versions of ants. The darkness and the fog is about to let go.

Things take a little longer today than usual. Posten’s distribution unit in Grong has just joined in sorting mail are out of this district. Now terminal in Trondheim has taken over. There are some teething problems. Post centralizes and cuts on a large scale throughout the country.

Two employees here in Grong department must cease. Which it is spoken about low, while the cars being prepared.

Jan Arild Devik Tangen gets into the car and closes the door behind him. He does not know himself, but when he returns to the office tonight to return the car, he will receive an unexpected message from the boss.

First he will run one of the longest postal routes. A demanding road trip with winding and steep mountain passes. Ruta are 27 mil long and the journey goes through four municipalities in Nord-Trondelag: Grong Namsskogan, Lierne and Røyrvik.

It’s going to be a long day in one of the country’s most secluded corners.

Twists and rocks

The sun peeks cautiously from behind the clouds in the sky. There are four degrees. Autumn wind blows fresh into the driver’s seat every time the car door open.

– I know most of the route. There are a lot of old people. They need to get medicines by mail.

Jan Arild is well underway to cram down Namdalsavisa, magazines and bills in the mailboxes of people. Here and there he delivers packages and have a chat. It will probably be several hundred stops by the vehicle during the day.

– It’s ugly left here sometimes. We let into studded already 10 October. The tires wear out quickly on these roads.

The landscape never ceases to fascinate. The narrow and bumpy road twisting through a thick moss green carpet as it grows fir trees on. So far as one can see there the forests and mountains. And water.

This really could not have been any place in Norway.

The red mail car comes out before the Skorovatn, a small mining town with fewer than 30 permanent residents.

Here it was brought out tons of ore between 1952 and 1984 . At the most there were 700 people in Skorovatn but after a mine was laid down so moved the great majority. Now there are almost only retirees again.

The large community hall resembles a haunted house, with black garbage bags hung in front of windows. The walls are completely gray, with paint that has peeled off. It was long ago there was a party here.

In the midst of a swing piper suddenly from his pocket and Jan Arild. The good old Eurovision song “Sámiid ædnan” resounded in the car while he fishes until the small Nokia phone.

It’s just Roger wondering when Jan Arild pop. He may have out for a walk with the tractor first.

– There are many places without cell phone coverage in this area. Home I have to put mobile on the bookcase to get the signal. I can see who’s calling, but I can not take it. I need to call up fixed phone.

At an end

Odd Ingulf Water sitting in the brown chair in your living room and look beyond Ingelsvatnet. Here the road ends and the postman must turn and run back.

58-year-old was born and raised on the farm Ingulf Water Vestre. An entire working life is spent here on the farm, where the lake meets the forest belt. Now the body is worn out, and he has no any plans end up on something old people.Odd intend to die here.

– I will stay here until they pick me. When you see the view here, had you been able to plan anything else?

Postman Jan Arild sitting across the coffee table and shakes affirmative head.

– I know several moves towards Nordli. That I’m never going to do. To sit and look into a roof, I will not. I want to see water and mountains. It’s good medicine.

Odd took over the farm and ran it until 2009. Then he had to give up because of health, milk quota was sold to others in the area. Cohabitant Unni Ramberg working to cook at age home in Nordli, while he himself has become a “gårdkaill” engaged in vedarbeid and such these days.

– To get the record is one of the highlights during the day. I like paper newspaper.

Odd leans back and reminiscing back to childhood, to a time where both kids and adults for back and forth between the houses in the hamlet. As there was plenty of life in the community with Christmas parties and stuff. Ice-fishing trips and skiing. They made the jump and stood on. They would never be built.

It was really fun to grow up in such a place with tight cohesion. Safely. People dropped by for a coffee just as it was. It happens scarcely more. But then traveled one on visits to relatives and friends all the time, on both sides of the border.

– It was a nabok that had a little Volkswagen. The stewed ourselves into: Three kids, our parents and the driver. Sometimes we sat on a truck platform on the winter with blankets over us. The main thing was to get around, it was not important how.

Odd is adamant. Something was nicer before. And now all become a little quieter.He stands on Platten outside the house and look beyond Ingelsvatnet.

– It is important with kids in remote areas.

50 årspresangen

Postman Jan Arild has ended up in a rather strange situation. He stops the car, drive to the side of the road and get behind the seat. Consider that it would end like this?

He begins to tinker a bit with the letters in the red plastic box located on the seat to his right. Jan Arild has been told he must stop running post route he runs today.

Another delivery company has taken over the newspaper run on Saturdays in this area . And since Posten’s distribution unit in Grong also’ve cut out to black record yourself, then suddenly it is less work for employees.

Jan Arild has learned that he is one of the two permanent employees who have quit. His last work month is January. The same month he gets 50 years.

– I got your message of August. Of course it was a shock. I really thought that I came to work in the Post Office until retirement.

Was not Posten one of the safest workplaces in Norway? It was certainly the Jan Arild thought. Now he has started to look around for other jobs. And it is certainly not many in the area, not for an old man who has driven waste and postbil recent years.

– I follow online. But working as a truck driver or operator’s just south. Not here.

It’s something about it. One is not necessarily as attractive in the labor market when they have passed 50. It’s a little desperate situation. He still lives in the old farm, alone. He is divorced and has two children.

– The thought had never struck me before. But I may have to move from here. Or commute. One has to have work.

The car door opened. Out jumps Jan Arild with another stack of letters and newspapers.

The records shall be. But not everyone with, obviously.

The new regional rural Noway policy

Norway is about to change. Maybe we face the BIG TRANSFORMATION for the modern rural communities.

Municipalities shape involves complex mergers of today’s 428 municipalities by 2017. Besides, county mergers – that in Trøndelag . And not to talk about police reform .

Unlike Finland and Sweden, which has led an aggressive and targeted centralization policy from the 1950s onwards, Norway constantly been committed to preserve a decentralized settlement.

– Norwegian regional policy has slowed the pace of centralization, which has been much greater in Sweden and especially Finland. In 1950 Finland actually the Nordic country with the most sparsely populated areas, says Rønningen.

Various governments have come and gone in Norway, but the overall regional policy, there has been a fairly consensus throughout.

But now signaled a major change of course on how to make sure that the elongated country continue to be populated.

– Regional policy, which also has towns as its catchment area, seems to be more important. The current government clearly signals that they want a smaller and narrower regional policy forward , says senior researcher at the Norwegian Centre for Rural Research, Svein Frisvoll.

– It will be interesting to see how this political change of course turn out, says Frisvoll.

The government wants bigger and stronger regions around the whole country.Some fear that small municipalities on the outskirts may end up being the big losers .

– Norway stand at an important crossroads, says Rønningen.

Only old again

Major lines are overly apparent. Areas far from towns emptied constantly for people.

– Municipalities in the outskirts is facing a relatively rapid population decline, says Frisvoll.

The merger of municipalities and counties can remove many attractive and important høykompetansejobber.

– These jobs at City Hall has been an opportunity for young and highly educated people could move back to the home of her. All types of jobs in the municipal sector has proven to be extremely effective to maintain vibrant communities in the districts explains Frisvoll.

In 2040 there will be almost only older people in many of the villages around the country, if the trend continues. SSB population projections are not to be misunderstood:

We become like Sweden?

Fringes in Sweden – Dispersed settlement – has been more or less abandoned for a long time. At least compared to Norway .

This fall flared one regional policy debate in our neighboring country, after the documentary series The rest of Sweden put the spotlight on how the historical centralization has created a sharp distinction between town and country .

The questions raised are relevant, also with Norwegian eyes: Is it fair that people living on the edge – that pays as much, or more, in taxes – will have to settle for far less services than people in the cities? Schools, police and hospitals are constantly drawing farther away.

Is it true that land community’s role in the future will be a kind of passive natural scene, a recreation place for weary urban dwellers who need to go on holiday and relax? A pure tourist destination for magnificent scenery – where modern man should be able to find themselves?

“The country ska delivered – inte först och’s foremost leva”, as it is said in the documentary series.

For there is no doubt: The Swedish countryside is so incredibly driven into the ditch. And politicians have willingly gassed on the wheel. In Sweden there has been no political aim to preserve a sparsely populated. One has not found it profitable.

Norway is on the way there?

Two different paths

– Sweden had a strong industrialization much earlier than Norway. Authorities used the fraflytningstilskudd to effectively get workers to the industry in the south. Large parts of Norrland experienced several waves of massive depopulation south in the 1900s, explains Rønningen.

It started already in the 1800s. When Sweden had a powerful nobleman who ensured that natural resources were collected in a few hands. This concentration of ownership has been extended to our time, in that the money from such as mining in the north, has been sent directly south to the owners.

– The big companies in Stockholm have been those who have sat in with the profit. A smaller percentage have been left in the communities where the values were created, compared to Norway, says Rønningen.

Norway has a history of more decentralized industry, which has created jobs across the country. Hydropower development is an example of that – with local and municipal owners, as well as legislation and regulation, which has ensured that much of the revenue remnant locally.

– At the farmers and the fishermen themselves owned the right to harvest of the local natural resources. The farmers were in the 1800s a major force in politics, and the principle that the community should take part of the value creation has prevailed in Norway until today, explains Frisvoll.

Rural Norway has many faces

– The future will be fragmented for the districts Norway, predicts Frisvoll.

For there is the not one collected the districts Norway. There is a difference between inland and coastal areas. North and south. Both Oppdal in South Trøndelag Snåsa in Nord-Trondelag are out on the village, but they evolve into two quite different directions.

It does not help that one year after year tops culture index, such as Røros made . It does not necessarily many more residents of the reason.

– Roros is interesting. They are often cited as a success story, with a successful focus on local food, branding and tourism – they really have been abused its status as a World Heritage Site. But Roros has not been any engine in its region. They have not had any significant population growth, says Rønningen and continues:

– The growth we see is probably the result of migration within the region from neighboring municipalities.

BIG DIFFERENCES: the districts Norway is many things, but there is no doubt that population growth is greatest around the major cities in the country, here exemplified by Trondheim and Stjørdal in Trondelag. Figures show population percentage change, 2000-2014. (Source: Trøndelag in numbers / Sør-Trøndelag County Council and Nord-Trøndelag County Council)

Workplaces trumps everything

– Where you have job growth, there you have population growth. As Freya.

Researcher Svein Frisvoll points out the vast difference between the two coastal municipalities Leka and Freya. The first live on farming, the other fish. They have had quite different trends between 2000 and 2014.

While Leka has struggled to recruit new generations a farmer, and had 22% population decline – so Freya through its focus on aquaculture, had a 10% population increase.

– Here we come to the wide regional policy purposes, which has been having many farmers turn around. These should be the foundation on which local communities could stand on. 15 farmers has meant that 15 families have penetrated school and shop, explains Rønningen.

But because of the tremendous efficiency of agriculture , so it is today perhaps only two or three farmers who run the same soil.

A New Hope

Jan Arild Devik Tangen jump in and out of the car, as he has done hundreds of times before today. Stops and depart. Planking, reads and sorts. There is still a fair amount of mail in the rear to be out before the day is done.

Up a bumpy dirt road passes Jan Arild a garage on the left who are completely open. He hands to look quickly into.

– There has been hunting.

A pink white elgskrott hangs down from the ceiling, attached to a hook. A pickup standing outside, but there are no people in sight. As it has been throughout the day really. And all the other days.

Many houses. Few cars. Empty of people.

– But I know of siblings who live nearby. Adolescents who have moved back home and taken over the farm. The rates shown properly.

Life on a rural Noway mountain farm

Synnøve Ingulf Vand comes stomping out of the red old barn boots to get the mail.Lua and work suit is on, and cheeks are pink fresh off the cool air. Right behind her paws little Hakon after.

Two year old helps his mom with loading and unloading of dry feed from the wheelbarrow.

– We took over a couple of years ago. Last year we built a new barn with milking robot. It will gradually fill up with 50 dairy cows.

Synnøve always wanted to move back here to Tunnsjøen, where she grew up with parents Sissel and George, brother Sven Georg and brother Einar Otto.

But it was thus brother who had allodial rights. In recent years Synnøve lived on the island of Hitra, along with his girlfriend, and worked within the plan of the community.

Suddenly life took a turn. Einar Otto and Synnøve found out that they wanted to take over the farm, so both their families were able to return home and stay here.

And guess if she is happy about it.

A revitalization for rural Noway?

Here there are more than enough opportunities for hunting, recreation and nature. So that other people can only yearn for.

And distances, not least.

Her roommate, Arne Aarnes, must ukependle Steinkjer to work. Driving there takes over two hours. Soon the Synnøve spend three hours each day to deliver children to the nearest kindergarten in Nordli.

But she threatened the future. The plan is that she and her brother are going to work every other week in the barn, so the family can be a lot together in Steinkjer.Or here.

Growing up with lots of animals – and learn how to look after them – is a possibility she will pass on to their children.

– I want them to get the same wonderful childhood I had, so that they can reap by nature and take care of the soil around the farm.

Also other peers on neighboring farms have begun to move back. She notices a small revitalization of the area. 4H club is up and running. The club organizes trainings for both adults and children. It lives in the village hall.

– It is important for me to develop the farm on, and help to keep alive in the village. It’s about giving something back and take care of the families before me have built up.

The last stop on our route

Jan Arild Devik Tangen glances quickly at the clock and out the kitchen window.The red record car is parked right outside. It lir the afternoon here in Hudningsdalen in Røyrvik. Soon it will be dark again.

– Yes. It’ll not be long before we get mail only three times a week?

Hildur Vestgård laughing smålurt as she glances over at the postman.

– Where have you heard that?

Jan Arild looking questioningly back.

He was just going into the couple Hildur and Steinar Vestgård to deliver a couple of letters and exchange a few words. But then it became a little apple pie too. It can not say no to.

– There goes the wrong way. We are only 10 years later.

Steinar speak in the way that it goes against Swedish conditions here in Norway.They have namely a daughter who lives far out in the countryside of Sweden.Where people have reportedly run gargantuan far to get to the community center.

The conversation between Hildur and Steinar rolls on, while postman politely listening.

– By all means. It’s peaceful and quiet here in Hudningsdalen too.

– Yes, it’s like they say in Swedish: Dispersed settlement.

– Two-three pieces live over there. So we have Jon and Jarle. And us.

– It’s almost only retirees again here.

– True. It’s pleasant that?

– Yes, as long as they are alive, then.

– Yes, clearly.

Both Steinar and Hildur worked at one time for Grong Gruber in Jomafjellet, not far from here. As Jan Arild also did when he was younger.

Steinar worked right from the start in 1972. All three were dismissed in 1998, when the mine was closed. Then they moved many of the others from the area.

– We have no plans to move from here. It is not applicable.

– We can go on a vacation trip, but it’s best to get home.

An unexpected message

The key turned. The engine stops. A long day is over for Jan Arild Devik Tangen.He’s back where he started this morning, the parking lot at Posten’s distribution unit in Grong.

It takes to drive out the kilo with mail through four municipalities. Narrow gravel roads. Slippery mountain passes. Long stories around the tables.

Soon it all over, thinks Jan Arild.

He unloads the empty red plastic crates from the car. It still feels strange to be dismissed. What should he do after he leaves here in January? The boss has said that she will have a few words with Jan Arild before he goes home. She stands inside the office and waiting.

He straightens the cap. Breathing deeply. And entering.

– You, Jan Arild …

– Yes …

– It’s your dismissal. You’re formally terminated with us in January.

– Yes?

– You know that we do everything we can to not lose good people, right? I really want to have you here at work. This is a tough process for all of Posten.

– Mmm.

Jan Arild looking down. Kicking around with skospissen on the floor.

– I can not promise anything … But, I think we should get to a solution. So you can continue to run the mail for us here in the area.

He glances up.

– Is it true?

– Yes. I think we continue to have work for you, in one way or another, even after January. I think so.