Farthest west in Norway, at the entrance to the Sognefjord, is the municipality of Solund. 900 islands, islets and islands, and almost as many inhabitants. – There could well be several ferries. That’s the only thing. Otherwise, I don’t miss anything. Silje Alvheim and her son Birk (14) are on their way home after an errand on the mainland. The motor unit has grown together with the ferry, and has found its way into the salon furnishings. A loose seat singles through the entire crossing. Birk’s class has four boys, no girls. – It’s going well, he says. In the ceiling above, he has found a place to charge his mobile phone. – But at the next stage there are twelve pupils, says Silje. She mentions the hiking team, the frisbee golf facility, the swimming pool, the karate club and the North Sea rotation, which means that they are never without a doctor. – We are proud of our municipality, she says. Silje Alvheim and her son Birk (14). Solund is 900 islands, islets and islands, and almost as many inhabitants. Photo: Sverre Hjørnevik. The county road is no more than two to three meters wide, but the traffic follows the ferry times, like rhythmic pulses, and in the meantime the road is clear. Photo: Sigmund Krøvel-Velle. There is a crisis in Commune-Norway. Young women can’t wait to get away, and what’s left are bachelors, seniors and Robek menaces. At least that’s the short version. Few fell in love with the name of the Generalist Municipal Committee, but many came to the conclusion: No Norwegian municipalities manage to deliver on the services they are required to provide to their citizens, and it is worst in the small municipalities. The prescription? Larger and “more robust” municipalities. The same message was repeated in the report “Size counts”, which came out in May. Here the district municipalities were blamed for the nature crisis getting worse. While the Demographic Committee warns that District Norway can become “an old home in scenic surroundings”. But in the midst of all the description of misery, there are also a bunch of small municipalities that are doing … well, quite well. Among them Solund, the tiny island kingdom with 768 inhabitants. What is the secret? news has packed its bags in search of the Solund alchemy, the mysterious mixture of spirit, will and matter that the other municipalities can tap into. – If we have a cinema? It’s rural cinema on Thursday! That’s what I’m trying to tell you: We have everything! says Mahmoud Abu Alnujoum. On a daily basis, he works in an aquaculture company, and now he has been attending football training with the eldest boy, Omar. – My birthday is in two weeks, he says. The mother in the family works at the retirement home in Hardbakke, a stone’s throw away. It is a long way to Syria, from which they fled, but in the island kingdom outside the Sognefjord, the family of five has found a new home and our sulingers are as good as anyone. – I also go to handball and karate, says Omar. Mahmoud Abu Alnujoum and his family have lived in Solund for six years. Irene Vaulen and Gry Buer run Gjenbruket café. In Norway there are around 300 inhabited islands. Does it last long? – Haha, have you come up here before you found someone? In an otherwise empty municipal building on the main island of Sula, news has finally found someone to talk to: a Bergen goose hidden away in the drying loft. But Cathrine Grasdal is not like most Bergensangers. Firstly, she thinks it is just as nice in Solund as in Bæærgen, and secondly, she is studying how Norwegian municipalities and counties can become better at talking to each other. – They have a lot to do, she says, and offers to show the way to the village house. – Do you have a car? I can come along and explain the way. It’s a bit confusing with that walkway. A couple of hundred meters away, in Solund village hall, mayor Gunn Åmdal Mongstad (Sp) has the club in the municipal council meeting. – We have a perfectly good economy. But without the Aquaculture Fund, it would have been tight, she says. 14 municipal council representatives are sitting in horseshoes, and in the corner some baguettes with prawn salad are displayed. – What kind of thing is this? Crab sticks? says one of the elected representatives. Another has studied the financial plan. – Or I guess I have the most skimming of him, he says. – Why does the income from the Aquaculture Fund fluctuate so much? he wonders. – We plan to use these funds soberly, replies the mayor. She adds: – There is one thing we cannot accept, and that is a positive atmosphere. But we have. In Solund, four parties are running lists for this year’s election. There is a lot to be such a small municipality. Scattered around are round boulders, which look as if they could start moving every second, if only the wind blows hard enough. Among the things the municipality has adopted is the swimming pool, which students on the mainland take a boat out to Solund to use. They solved the issue of wind power, which is causing problems in municipalities along the coast, this way: They had a referendum in 2012, and left that ball dead. On top of that, the municipality has just appointed its own psychologist, and they have control over medical expenses. news has written about desperate fringe municipalities offering NOK 300,000 a week for a temporary doctor. Down by the lake, dock Roar Moe. He moved to Little Ferøy in 1997. Then he couldn’t wait any longer. – I saw what the oil did to us, he explains. His own small protest is to take care of the traditional coastal culture, and to initiate new generations in him through restoration and lectures. – You have to meet people while they are young, he says. – Adults are so … they are so bound by the choices they have already made. When he is not fighting against the fossil age, he is fighting against another sin: the sitka spruce. The imported tree was planted along the coast in the fifties and sixties, to provide shelter and timber, but has since grown into impenetrable walls that not only shield from the wind, but also from the sun, glade and other vegetation. He characterizes the Solund humor as sharp. Sharp and realistic. – And healthy. Lutra of weather and wind. – Solund is a small municipality. Anything you miss out here? – No, not really. Or, you know…concerts, theatre. Such things. Utvær railway station, the westernmost in the country, was built in 1900. Photo: The county archive in Vestland. Hardbakke is the administrative center in Solund. The town has 290 inhabitants and is located by Liasundet, southwest of the island of Sula. Photo: County Archives in Vestland. Buskøy is an old trading town in Solund with a history dating back to the beginning of the 17th century. Photo: County archives in Vestland. A drive and two boat trips to the west, you can, at least if you’re willing, see a sword mark in the rock after Harald Hardråde and his army. Here they sharpened their swords against “Likberget” before they were tempted to subjugate England. Battle even with a fall at Stamford Bridge. But notice it says, um man he stupa. Utvær lighthouse stands just as upright, even though it was damaged during the war. 45 meters on the shelf, it has a light width of 20 nautical miles, just as far as Ytre Steinsund, where the sulings will finally be bridged. The bridge project has existed in non-committal variants since the sixties, but last year the dream began to materialize. Then work began on the 835-metre-long bridge that will replace the ferry connection between two of the outermost islands. – I believe it when I see it, says Aud Sølvi Brengenes, who has been the only taxi driver in Solund for 37 years. – It will be fine with a bridge, but I will lose the ferry surcharge, she laughs. The county road is no more than two to three meters wide, but the traffic follows the ferry times, like rhythmic pulses, and in the meantime the road is free. Between sharp road bends and scrubby mountains, small “pockets” of pine forest and patches of field appear from time to time. People have lived here for several thousand years, and perhaps time has not left Solund yet either. Scattered around are round boulders. It can look as if they can start to move every second, if only the wind blows hard enough. Behind the counter at Gjenbruket café are the volunteers Ronja and Marit, from Germany and the Netherlands respectively. The two are involved in a voluntary program that facilitates young people in Europe to work in Norway for a year. Visits that sometimes turn into permanent move notices and family additions. 19-year-old Ronja is actually going back to Berlin in September, but has already postponed her journey home by two months. On her Instagram account, she shares tidbits from her stay, which the tourism manager in the municipality is happy about. – It’s so nice here, she says, in more or less perfect Norwegian. – I had Norwegian as an elective at school, she explains. – But it was more Bokmål. So I was a little afraid that it would be difficult with Western, but it went well when I learned that “where-do-you-come-from?” is the same as “where-are-you-from?”. On Thursdays she has a café service, otherwise she is a kind of mixture of social worker and security guard around the municipality. – I think I know everyone in Solund now, she smiles. – What will it be like to travel from here? – I always want Solund. Here in the heart. And I’ll be back. Behind the counter at Gjenbruket café are the volunteers Ronja and Marit, from Germany and the Netherlands respectively. Solund mayor Gunn Åmdal Mongstad (Sp) greets Gry Buer, leader of the Light Festival on the island. At most there were around 100 volunteers who each year tied up with Norwegian municipalities. Then Norway was devalued from “partner country” to “project country”. Today, therefore, there are only 20 volunteers who pollinate Rural Norway with European impulses. At Ingebervika, with a view to Simmerøyna and Nesøyna, is one of the cornerstone companies in the municipality: Solund shipyard. – Next year I will retire, says Stanislaw Sulowski. For 25 years, Stanley, as everyone calls him, has commuted between Norway and Poland. Four weeks in Solund; and two weeks in Gdansk. In a lifelong rotation. But soon it will be over, and part of the fabric that is a society must be replaced. The sun is about to set over the island kingdom, but 9 men of various ages are running around on a football pitch. The mood is light and fun, as he likes to be when fathers of small children escape for a couple of hours. For the first time, the municipality has its own football team in the Norwegian league system, and then there is only one thing to do: To recruit widely. – We only manage to field a team of seven. The goal is eleven, says Kim Arnes. He moved to Solund because of a woman in 2007, and soon took on the work of building a proper football pitch. A good ten years later, gravel shoes have been replaced with artificial grass shoes, and the neighboring rivals on the mainland can only wait. Kim Arnes moved to Solund because of a woman, not football. Stanislaw Sulowski, or “Stanley” as everyone calls him, has commuted between Solund and Gdansk for 25 years. And there was evening, and there was morning. On the green slope down towards the sea, Losnapelet is seen every quarter of the year. Eindride Erlendson, who took part in the king’s coronation in Kalmar in 1397, lived here. At that time, no one was more powerful than Eindride. Today, there are four remaining on the island that was his main seat. The ferry ramp goes down, but no cars show signs of moving. Only a lone walker jumps ashore. On Gåsvær, at the far end of the archipelago, electricity first came in 1964, via an eight kilometer long submarine cable. But time eats away at everything, and two years ago the cable broke. In the meantime, the state had obtained a delivery exemption for Gåsvær. The benefit of supplying the few remaining with electricity was no longer great enough to justify the investment in a new cable. For several months, therefore, the sound of the sea, wind and seagulls’ cries were joined by the engine of a diesel generator, and it could have continued that way until there was no longer anyone on Gåsvær. But a year and a half ago, the power company let corporate economic oversight be corporate economic oversight, and laid a new cable to the island. All by grace. “What happens in us, happens because of what happens around us”, it says in Kjærleikens ferrereises, by Edvard Hoem. And another place in the novel: “We who want to change this country need more than a theory about money and power. We also need knowledge of the backward logic that controls the feelings in people”. Perhaps it is this backwards logic that is the Solund formula, and which can set the course for other municipalities: The ancient insight that freedom is not to do what we want. But to will what we do. Eighth in the village hall, it is the turn of local council representative Anne Marie Gåsvær (Sp) to speak. For her, the power cable means that she can continue to live where she belongs. And now everyone at Gåsvær can make Christmas dinner at the same time. The previous cable was so frail that they had to do it by turn. Outside, ropes, nets, lifebuoys and boat houses are colored golden red in the June sun. A blackbird sings its mournful flute notes. The ferry slips free from Krakhella, and the lanterns create a pocket of light that moves across the fjord. (The last sentence is free after Edvard Hoem.) Each person is like an island, so there must be bridges. And roads.
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Kjærleiken’s ferry trips – news Vestland
