Lesley Riddoch on Scotland and Norway

Last Friday night in the Community Theatre at the High School, there was an unwritten expectation that Lesley Riddoch, well known as an outstanding broadcaster, would be speaking on behalf of the Yes campaign for Scottish Independence – and in a way, she was. But Lesley’s way did not tread the well-worn steps of political argument. Instead, she presented the content of her recent book, Blossom, as a closely-worked suggestion that Scotland has much to learn from Norway.

There are strong similarities. Norway and Scotland have almost exactly the same population, and both countries consist of a mainland and a broad outreach of islands. Both have people who are at heart practical and pragmatic, ready to solve problems as they find them. But there the similarity ends. Norway is robustly Scandinavian, and has little truck with over-fussy government. Though the state is in control of such things as Norway’s oil and overall economic decisions, it trusts the wide spread of local communities to do things in whatever way they find fit and possible. In a semi-Arctic country that abuts on the Russian border in the north, weather conditions are reliably frightful in the winter, so there is no sense of emergency about coping with frozen roads and deep snow. Overall policies, too, are very different. Land is not in the hands of a few traditional owners of vast estates, as it is in Scotland. As a result, land is cheap and self-built houses are not only permitted but expected. The regulatory hand is light. If you want to build yourself a wooden hut with no outside loo, and live in it, you can. In 1944, when the retreating German forces left Norway a ‘scorched earth’ desert, there were no houses. It was assumed people would build their own, with some finance from the ‘husbanken’ – house-banks. As a result, there are 368.000 wooden huts in Norway – not second homes but first ones, with people living in them full-time. On Arran, we all know people well able to build a home made of the abundant timber, and anxious to do so. But they are not allowed to. Instead, we watch tree trunks being hauled to the pier and shipped off to the mainland to be pulped for paper. Is this not crazy?

Why, Lesley asked, are Scots dying at a younger age than people anywhere else in what is still the UK? The figures for cancer and heart disease are the same, but the really big killers are alcohol, drugs – and suicide. People are dying of frustration and unhappiness. That’s a frightening fact, and one to which the Westminster government seems indifferent. Lesley’s book, Blossom, is highly readable, telling the stories of people she knows all over both Scotland and Norway. It makes fascinating reading, and its solid good sense may with any luck be a beacon for the future.