“Der Skjærene Stilner”
About the work
For thousands of years, the fjord has been our livelihood and our great highway of trade. Now, though, the life in the Oslofjord is quietly going out. And at the very same moment, the weapons factory at Sætre is handed a permit to quadruple what it discharges into the water. It sits just a stone's throw from where the Blücher went down and stalled the Nazi invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940.
How did we get here? Four years ago, Europe's security situation fell off a cliff, when Russia marched into Europe's breadbasket — Ukraine — exactly as the Nazis did back in '41. So how much of our own fjord can we sacrifice to keep the war from spreading, to keep enemy ships from sailing into our fjords all over again?
But it isn't only weapons factories killing the fish out there. The synthetic fertiliser from the farms all around leaves enormous amounts of nitrogen in the water. Algae gorge on it, bloom out of all control, and gulp the oxygen right out of the water — so everything else suffocates. And here's the twist: nitrogen fertiliser is a Norwegian invention, one that has saved millions of people from starvation over the past hundred years. Without it, the world's grain harvests would be cut clean in half. So can we really afford to stop? How much of our fjord are we willing to trade for food on the table?
Food security is part of the security picture too. Today, Norway grows only about 40% of its own food. Stop using fertiliser, and you halve that again — are we really willing to make ourselves that vulnerable?
So it comes down to this: what weighs more when the echoes of the past come creeping back toward our harbours? Is our own safety, our own survival, worth more than the fish in the fjord? Do we who live above the water have a greater right to life than those who live beneath it? Or is the fight to survive simply so brutal that every nation — and every species — has to do whatever it takes?
