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Thursday, January 1, 2015

165

Ingunn had for a while been a rather popular character in the news, and Bjorn needed only to skim the article to be reminded of her rather eccentric stance against the state. However, she had for some reason suddenly fallen out of favor with journalists, and after she was evicted from her house, there had been no more mention of her.

Bjorn had not thought much about it. News stories come and go, and as far as he was concerned, Ingunn's story had pretty much ended with her eviction. But now that he had her full story in front of him, he read with interest that she had in fact ended up in a mental asylum for treatment after a panel of judges had declared her innocent of criminal civil disobedience due to a severe case of paranoid schizophrenia.

Rather than going to jail for her activism, she had been sentenced to treatment at the national center for the criminally insane, the same place where Anders the mass murderer was being treated for his mental illness. And just like Anders, Ingunn's release from the mental asylum would be wholly dependent on her being well enough to return to society. A panel of medical experts were monitoring her progress, and would not sign her release before they could all agree that she no longer posed a danger to herself or her surroundings.

However, unlike Anders, Ingunn had been denied all contact with the outside world. Her mental illness was such that even indirect contact with the outside world would pose a problem. She had no TV, no radio and no internet. Her only contact with the outside world was through a limited group of people deemed harmless to her health. Only a handful of close friends and relatives were allowed to see her, but only while under observation by medical experts who would make sure that the topic of conversation never stayed away from the mundane.

Ingunn's isolation was in other words complete. While Anders was free to interact with the outside world, even to the point of establishing a political party, Ingunn was denied all such interactions. Although seemingly cruel, her isolation was entirely for her own good. Her severe paranoia was such that even a tiny bit of news could have her regress into her madness.

Psychologists had in fact identified her illness at an early stage, and had advised reporters to ignore her rants and ramblings. But her world view was so eccentric and entertaining that most journalists had been unable to resist the stories that emanated from her. First it was her decision to declare her property in Skien an independent state, making herself a sovereign of her newly created nation, lovingly named Niceland.

Having declared herself a sovereign, she proceeded to send official letters to the foreign minister as if she was indeed a queen of an independent nation. She returned her passport and birth certificates, and finally refused to pay the debt on her house.

As a sovereign, she felt it wholly within her right to simply refuse to pay the "national debt". Furthermore, she argued that since her debt to the bank had been created out of thin air, there was nothing to be paid back. And with the bank unable to document the existence of any original owner, there were no one to pay the money back to. The money was simply conjured into existence when Ingunn signed the loan document, and there were no original owner. Hence, she had nothing to pay back, and no one to pay anything back to. She was therefore, in her own words, taking a principled stance against the banks and the fractional banking system that allowed for the current system of loan and currency creation.

The reporters covering this story were delighted, of course. Her David against Goliath like stance was insane. She was behaving in a manner reminiscent of Don Quijote, fighting windmills, conjuring up elaborate stories, and impressing the feeble minded with explanations that sound entirely true, yet had little or no baring in reality. And to the journalists' great surprise and further delight, Ingunn was getting followers, admirers who loved her explanations. Ingunn was becoming an increasingly popular subject for the journalist and common folks alike.

However, when a number of her followers started emulating her behavior, returning their passports and birth certificates to the state, it was becoming clear that things were getting out of hand. Reporters were again advised to stay away from the matter since it had clearly caused a lot of people to become similarly confused as Ingunn. The idea that one could simply declare oneself sovereign was of course pure madness. And seeing that her mad ideas were rather infectious, the justice department itself came out with a guideline concerning her particular kind of mental illness, making it clear that irresponsible reporting on this type of insanity could lead to criminal charges against the journalists.

Ingunn was evicted from her house, and shortly after, she was apprehended and brought to trail, charged with criminal incendiary speech with the aim to cause massive civil disobedience. The trial went largely unreported due to its sensitive nature. And with this, Ingunn's brief claim to fame came to an abrupt halt.

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