Hopes from Scandinavia

By C. V. Gopalakrishnan

THE INITIATIVES taken by Norway in response to feelers from Sri Lanka might leave many wondering how a Scandinavian country, separated by quite a few thousand miles from South Asia, is being sought after for bringing peace to the strife-torn island nation. The global spread of Sri Lankan Tamils has brought a scattering of them to Norway; possibly their links with Oslo are sufficiently close to enable them to persuade it to take interest in the ethnic tragedy in their homeland.

An indication that this is very likely recently emerged from the speech delivered by a Sri Lankan Tamil, Mr. V. Rudrakumaran, at a seminar in Bergen on the ethnic conflict in his country. He dwelt at length on the origins of the ethnic violence and its escalation in Sri Lanka and the `brutalisation' by `oppressive Sinhala Governments'. Of specific interest here are that the seminar was held at the Christian Michelsen Institute and Mr. Rudrakumaran's passing reference to the ``peaceful secession of Norway from Sweden''. This gives a clue to the role Norway could play for bringing about peace in Sri Lanka.

Peter Christian Michelsen (1857-1925) was the founder of the Institute named after him. He became the Prime Minister of Norway in 1906 after proclaiming his country's separation from Sweden in 1905. He began his career as a lawyer and later started his own shipping company which became the largest in Norway. He was elected to the Storting, Norway's Parliament, as a member of the coalition party. He later left the party led by G. F. Hagerup in protest against his extremely moderate policy towards Sweden. He became the unquestioned leader of the group urging the dissolution of the union with Sweden and the establishment of the Kingdom of Norway under King Haakar VII. Michelsen is remembered for bringing about a peaceful secession from Sweden.

A possible explanation for this was the total absence of any imperialistic trends in the relationship among the three Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. If there is a positive response to Norway's efforts for ending the conflict in Sri Lanka, it will be because of its record as a non-colonial, non-imperial presence in Asia and Africa. This, however, should not lead to wrong notions about Norway or the other Scandinavian countries having remained very meek all along. On the contrary, the Viking invaders of East Anglia and Northumbria in England in the eighth century and of the whole of Europe from the ninth to the eleventh century were the seafaring Scandinavian warriors. But their raids were restricted to Europe and even these belong to fading, receding history which is now preserved in the print media in the hilarious strip cartoon, ``Hagar the Horrible''. (The Scandinavian invasions of the past should, incidentally, recall a Western comment during the Fifties about the Soviet annexation of Eastern Europe being in the same class as the erstwhile pre- Second World War British and French imperialism, the only difference being that the first was European while the second was trans-Atlantic and extending to the rest of the world. The ancient Scandinavian ``colonialism'' was also very European).

Among the strange happenings in Scandinavian history was that of the much smaller Denmark ``ceding'' Norway to Sweden in 1814. This led to the development of an independent Norwegian culture for the replacement of all existing Danish elements in Norwegian literature. The history of the Scandinavian countries was either one or the other of them assuming the more pronounced role over the centuries. In 1389, Eric of Pomerania was crowned King of Norway and by 1396 he had become King of Sweden and Denmark as well. In Norway, King Magnus V (1263-80) drafted a common code of law for the rural districts in 1274. Sweden followed this with a similar development in the fourteenth century while Denmark had three different provincial laws until the promulgation of Christian V's Danish Law in 1683. The code of King Magnus abolished private vengeance which probably legalised the fighting of a duel to which the rivals resorted to in medieval Europe and England. The three countries were subsequently ruled by Danish kings until 1814 with all of them retaining a measure of independence provided under a specifically designed Constitution.

This continued until 1905 when King Oscar II relinquished his crown of Norway and the Norwegians voted for the restoration of their own monarchy. There had also been a plea for the inclusion of Finland among the Scandinavian countries along with Iceland and the Faeroe islands on an anthropolgical, cultural and linguistic basis. The word, Norden, came into use along with Scandinavia for imparting a sense of the togetherness of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as a group of countries having affinities with one another and a distinctness from the rest of continental Europe. If Norway was seeking separation from Sweden in the early 1900s, its desire for it could have resulted more from a longing for a separate identity than from any resentment against the kind of colonialism which provoked the freedom movements in Asia. The linguistic and cultural closeness of the Scandinavian countries - which could be seen in the languages of Danish, Swedish, Norvegian, Icelandic and Faeroese - did not stop their developing their own distinct identities as separate nations with none of them feeling alienated from the other by the kind of separatist sentiment which has snarled up relations elsewhere in the world.

If, as Mr. Rudrakumaran indicated in his speech at Bergen, Norway's peaceful secession from Sweden qualifies it to play a role in ending the conflict in Sri Lanka, the handling of the issues relating to secession by the Scandinavian countries calls for a closer look. Their response to the secessionist urges was probably very different from that in other countries including Sri Lanka. The indications are that the Scandinavian secessionists were very persuasive and did not spark a fierce and stubborn resistance from the ruling groups. Such a sober response to secessionist urges could be attributed to Scandinavian perceptions about kingdoms being wholly different from those of the other European countries. Any sense of dismay over their breaking away seems to have been wholly absent. This may be because the Scandinavian kingdoms were seen as what they were - and not as the empires and colonies acquired far beyond Europe to fill the metropolitan rulers with a sense of imperial glory.

The carving out of Scandinavia into Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland did not look like a sundering away and as a catastrophe for which neither the French nor the Americans were prepared when Vietnam threw them out. If this makes the Scandinavian countries a far more civilised European presence, this is borne out by their literature as well.

The uniqueness of the Scandinavian temperament - which might have a special appeal to ethnic groups - would seem to be that their being very much in Europe, with a good part of their northern areas being snow- bound most of the time, did not fill them with the kind of European alienation from the non-European and non- white world of Africa and Asia. On the other hand, Scandinavian literature of the Sixties and the Seventies was articulating a dissatisfaction with the capitalist system and a concern for the third world poverty. There has, however, been a slight shift since the Eighties with a re-emergence of imaginative literature and a philosophic approach to problems of contemporary society, and an upsurge of interest in myth and fantasy. It has also been drawn towards an increased experimentation with technique and style.

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