54

Bjorn was lazily observing the orcas on their way across the fjord in the direction of the village when he suddenly became aware of the white van he had let in earlier heading back up towards the check point. He first caught eye of it down at the intersection which gave him plenty of time to finish his coffee, and even go out for a quick smoke before it arrived at the barrier.

The young man greeted Bjorn with a cheerful "Hi again!" while waving his passport at him.
"Not so quick, young man," Bjorn replied politely and in an equally cheerful voice. "I need to take a quick look in the back, just to see that you're not smuggling anyone out with you."
"Okay. That's fine with me," the man replied, putting his passport back into the inner pocket of his jacket.

He stepped out of his car and opened the back of his van, allowing Bjorn to have a good look at what he was taking with him out of the colony. And while this should not have come as any surprise to Bjorn, he was amazed by all the wine, beer, cigarettes, meat products and cheeses that were piled up inside.

"That's quite a catch you got there," Bjorn commented.
"It is indeed!" the young man replied shamelessly.
"But, is this legal?" Bjorn asked, immediately realizing how silly the question was, coming from him, the supposed expert.
"Well, you should know, shouldn't you?" The young man replied with a cheeky smile. "But yes, it is indeed legal."

Bjorn was tempted to call Frank to have him confirm what the young man was saying, but since this would make him look even more clueless he chose to fake detailed knowledge of the rules once again, just like he had done with a certain degree of success down at Ane's factory the day before.

"Of course it is," Bjorn replied with a smile. "But this is hardly the intention of the law, is it?"
"I guess not. But there is nothing in the rules that say anything against this."
"No, but that is just because no one had anticipated this kind of behaviour."
"Maybe so, but I'm just playing by the rules."

It was beyond obvious that the man was smuggling a cartload of products into Norway, but Bjorn had received no other instructions than to prevent asylum seekers from escaping the colony. The lawmakers in Oslo must have made the mistake of thinking of the colony as nothing more than an enormous asylum centre, and completely ignored the fact that all sorts of other businesses could and would be established down there too. Blinded by the prospect of having a problem solved for free, they had completely lost sight of the bigger picture. The colony had not developed into the gulag or prison camp that they must have imagined, but instead morphed into a strange mix of detention centre and tax haven.

Stunned by his sudden insight into the obvious, and filled with a sense of bewilderment regarding the failure of professional lawmakers to foresee this kind of thing happening, Bjorn hesitated. And the young man must have interpreted this as a growing reluctance on Bjorn's part to let him pass.

"Surely, you've bought some cigarettes down there yourself," he insisted, grabbing hold of a carton of cigarettes and holding them up to Bjorn.
"Well... no..." Bjorn answered bemused by the young man's sudden change of tone.
"You should! It can save you a small fortune."
"Yes?" Bjorn answered, still confused. "I know! I'll buy my next cigarettes down there."
"Good for you!" The man said with a smile. "What is your favourite brand?"
"Marlboro," Bjorn answered truthfully.
"Well that is my favourite brand too!"

The man tossed the carton of cigarettes he was holding back into the van, and pulled out a carton of Marlboro instead. The carton was already broken into, and the man held it up to Bjorn as to illustrate his point. "See! I've already broken into this one," he said proudly. Then he pulled out a pack and handed it to Bjorn.

"Why don't you keep this one, since we're smoking buddies and all?" The man insisted, tossing the carton back into his van before closing the back doors.
"Well, that's very generous of you," Bjorn replied. "But you really don't have to. I mean... You don't have to bribe me to get out, you know."
"Hey! Of course not!" the man retorted, pretending to be appalled by what Bjorn had just said. "If I wanted to bribe you, don't you think I would have given you something more than just a pack of cigarettes? Do I look like the kind of guy who would try to bribe people with pennies?"
"No, you don't," Bjorn admitted, not able to hide his amusement. "So, I can keep these?" he continued, feeling confident that the pack of cigarettes could hardly be classified as a bribe.
"Of course you can!" the young man replied. "We're buddies after all."
"Sure we are," Bjorn replied with a knowing smile.

53

Bjorn was in the middle of a cup of coffee when he suddenly spotted several orcas over by a small island at the other side of the fjord. At first, he didn't quite see what it was, but through his binoculars he could see that the disturbances of the water in the distance were in deed caused by whales coming up for air. And by studying them further, Bjorn concluded that the whales must be orcas. Later on, when they swam closer to Lundby, there was no longer any doubt about the whales. Their characteristic white and black patterns could be clearly seen, and Bjorn could congratulate himself on having come to the right conclusion right from the start.

Just like the day before, a fishing boat headed for Lundby at the beginning of Bjorn's shift. And with a second fishing boat heading for Ane's processing plant towards the end of Bjorn's shift, Bjorn concluded that Ane's factory was doing quite well. This did not in any way surprise him, of course, considering how well organized the woman had appeared when he had the pleasure of meeting her.

However, what did surprise Bjorn quite a bit was the number of cars heading for the colony. Neiden was after all quite far away, almost two hours by car, so anyone bothering to take this journey would have to have a pretty good reason for doing so. And with Neiden housing less than three hundred people, five cars entering before noon was quite a lot.

One driver in particular had puzzled him. It was a woman with her daughter of five years or so insisting on entering the colony even without a passport. Bjorn pointed out that entering the colony without a passport may make it difficult to leave later on, but the woman brushed his explanation off as irrelevant.

"It is not like there's any doubt that I'm Norwegian, right?" the woman insisted, in a broad local accent.
"No," Bjorn had to admit. "But this is a restricted area. We have to check people for valid passports as they leave."
"And what if I´m not going to leave?" The woman asked.
"But you are, aren't you?" Bjorn asked, incredulous of her assertion.
"No. Not in many years, I´m not."
"Really?"
"And by then, I´ll have the papers sorted out for you. You can be sure of that."

Bjorn felt reluctant to go along with the woman's story. There was something manic about her intense insistence, and it made Bjorn uneasy. However, as far as he knew, his duty was limited to keeping people inside the colony. He had seen nothing about preventing people from entering, and the only reason he was asking people to show their passports was to prevent people from accidentally finding themselves trapped in the colony.

"Anyway," the woman insisted as if she had read his mind. "You have no right to keep me out."
"No... That's true..." Bjorn replied reluctantly. Then, he pushed the green button, thereby raising the barrier and letting her in.

52

Bjorn was deep asleep when his alarm went off. He had been dreaming, but of nothing unpleasant, and he was in no mood for introspection, so he let the lingering dream evaporate without any effort to hold on to it.

Bjorn had set his alarm to go off at the time when no one was using the bathroom, just after Ante had been there, and before Thomas and Espen would appear. Assuming that everyone were as sett in their routines as they appeared to be, he figured he should be able to have the place for himself by targeting the fifteen minutes interval between Ante and the two other men.

As it turned out, Bjorn was correct in his calculations. He went to the bathroom the moment he heard Ante close the door to his room, and ended up having the bathroom to himself for the whole duration of his shower and morning routine. Not until he was back in his room did he hear Thomas and Espen walk past on their way to the showers.

Bjorn smiled to himself on his way down to breakfast. His main discomfort as far as the check point was concerned was the lack of privacy, especially during his morning routine, and by having found an opening for himself where he could have the bathroom for himself, he felt relieved and happy. "If this pattern keeps, my stay here will be almost as pleasant as a resort vacation," Bjorn thought as he skipped down the stairs.

The weather looked promising, with the sun shining through the south facing windows of the kitchen. Ante was in his usual good mood, and Bjorn felt a relaxed eagerness to enjoy the day to its fullest. Chatting casually with Ante, Bjorn ate his bacon and egg breakfast, not paying much attention to the time. But when Espen appeared, shortly followed by Thomas, he knew that it was time to go down to the glass box to relieve John from his duty.

John was as eager to leave his post as always, and disappeared up to the barracks as soon as he had handed the keys over to Bjorn. However, Bjorn felt positively happy about being once again all to himself. He put his thermos of coffee down next to the one he had brought with him yesterday, but forgotten to take in, before sitting down in the office chair to take in the panoramic view.

Pretty soon, he felt an urge to have a cigarette, so he stepped out on the sunny side of the office to light one for himself. The sun, bright and unobscured over the mountains to the north, was warm and invigorating. He closed his eyes for a minute while facing the sun straight on. In the background he could hear the light trickle of melting snow. Life was slowly returning to the arctic wilderness, one drop of melting snow at a time.

After a few puffs of his cigarette, Bjorn became suddenly aware of a white van coming down the windy road from Neiden, and he thought to himself, slightly bemused, that this was in fact the first car he had seen on that road apart from the truck with the snow plow. He followed the car with interest as it came closer, until it came to a full stop in front of the barrier.

Bjorn tossed the cigarette on the ground, and stepped on it while the driver rolled down his window.

"Good morning," Bjorn said with a smile. "Do you have your passport with you?"
"Yep, here it is," the young man replied waving it in his hand.
"Okay," Bjorn replied without bothering to inspect it, reaching instead into the office to push the green button next to the door.

The barrier rose, letting the young man into the colony without further delay. Bjorn followed the van with his eyes until it disappeared behind a barren knoll where the snow had already receded from the top, pushed back by a mix of wind and sun. Then, back in the office, he caught another glimpse of the van as it took a left turn at the intersection with the road joining the village to the port.

51

The foreign minister was busy defending Norway's military actions in Libya as well as his own involvement in it in what was clearly a well orchestrated interview with no surprise questions.

"Simply bombing rebel positions is not enough to ensure security for our national interests," the foreign minister explained. "We will need an additional five hundred men in order to defend our economic interests in that country, which coincidentally are one and the same as the interest of the Libyan people. Only a stable and peaceful environment can ensure prosperity for all, and as a leading peace nation we have a particular moral duty to make this happen."

The economic interests the foreign minister was talking of were of course the oil fields in which the state controlled oil company, Statoil, was heavily invested. However, this was not mentioned by a word, nor did the interviewer make any inquiry into what the foreign minister was referring to by his words. Instead, she moved on to ask him why he, and not the minister of defence, was in charge of the operations.

"The answer here, of course, comes down to the nature of our involvement in Libya," the foreign minister replied with a confident smile. "Since we are not at war, but simply helping the Libyans in their struggle to rebuild their national institutions after decades of neglect under the deposed dictatorship, our involvement can best be described as foreign aid, which falls under my department. What the Libyan people are labouring under on a daily basis is the absence of good national institutions, and the first and foremost of these is of course the institution of law and order which can only be achieved by legitimate and dispassionate force. Hence the involvement of our armed forces."

"Libya is not at war," the foreign minister continued. "It is burdened by civil unrest, and we have a duty to the world community to take our share of that burden. All of this has been laid out in detail by the UN, and we cannot simply ignore this and pretend that things will sort themselves out without our involvement. Such an approach has already been tried, with terrible consequences, and no one wants to see a repeat of that."

And again the foreign minister was referring to things without mentioning them. Neither the foreign minister nor the interviewer felt it necessary to explain that the terrible consequence referred to was a particularly bloody attack on a Statoil installation in the south of Libya where almost everyone had been killed in cold blood. Those that tried to escape were gunned down, and those that surrendered were ritually beheaded. The videos of the beheadings went viral on the Internet, and were in large part responsible for the surge in support for the foreign minister's anti-immigration party, which in turn won him a seat in the current government, and ultimately his current position as foreign minister.

Having risen to his current position on the back of the outrage that the bloody attack had caused, the man clearly felt that no further explanation was necessary. And the interviewer, presumably no big fan of the foreign minister, had even less of a desire to delve into the memories of the terrible incident.

After a few more questions about Libya where the foreign minister got the chance to repeat his objection to the word "war", re-emphasizing instead that this was all about foreign aid and nation building, the interviewer changed the subject to Lundby, which made Bjorn sit up and pay even closer attention. "Another mention of us," Bjorn thought. "We really are about to become famous!"

"Some say that the colony violates our constitution, and is in breach of basic human rights," the interviewer said with a stern face.
"Well, that is simply not true," the foreign minister replied, brushing aside the question. "Moving all asylum seekers to Lundby is a hugely popular move, with a recent pole showing more than seventy percent of eligible voters in favour of it, and it is in no way contrary to our constitution. Such a assertion is simply political nonsense."

"But what about the claim that the colony is in conflict with the indivisible sovereignty of Norway?"
"Well, first of all, Lundby is not a colony. It is as much a part of Norway as any other part. The fact that it has been turned into an asylum centre does not make it any different from any other place with special rules, such as airports, prisons, and, well, asylum centres. We have merely moved and co-located the centres already in Norway to a remote location where the inhabitants will be unable to cause stress or anxiety among ordinary Norwegians."

"And what about the claim that there is a casino up there? Isn't that in violation with Norwegian law?"
"Well, it is true that there is a casino in Lundby. Although, as far as I gather, it is hardly a place worthy of such an extravagant name. It is more like a bar where there is some gambling going on. However, the claim that this is in violation with Norwegian law does not take into account the Sami reparation act which give Sami people wide powers to regulate this kind of activities on their own land. The casino is fully owned and regulated by the Sami people, and as such completely legal."

"And the report that casino tokens are circulating as money, surely that is in violation of the recent amendment to the constitution making only Norwegian Kroners legal tender in Norway."
"But those tokens are not money," the foreign minister retorted with a big smile. "They are tokens. They have no value or use outside the asylum centre. Do you really think that anyone will accept a casino token outside of that village, far away from the casino? Of course not! The tokens are no more money than what similar tokens would be inside a closed club. They can be used inside the club, but have no value outside of it, so they are clearly not money. Only Norwegian Kroners are money in Norway."

And by this the interviewer had exhausted her questions related to Lundby and its constitutionality. She continued with a few questions regarding the centre and the claim that it was violating human rights. But here too, the foreign minister had no problem defending his position. And in the end, the whole interview seemed to Bjorn to be more like an orchestrated promotion of the foreign ministers policies than a truly critical inquiry.

Bjorn turned off the TV, impressed and a little surprised by what he had just seen. He had not expected such an open talk on Libya, and even less so on Lundby. But now that it had been aired, Bjorn got a strong feeling that the foreign minister was on the offensive, anticipating things to come, and positioning himself as best he could for some imminent storm. "He is a sly fox," Bjorn thought to himself. "This interview was no doubt carefully planned, putting him one step ahead of the rest. By answering questions before they were fully formulated by the opposition, he had effectively silenced most of his critics by making it very hard for them to come with a different interpretation of things."

The mention of more boots on the ground in Libya had left Bjorn a little worried, though. It was absolutely not a place he would like to be sent, and even the remote possibility of being sent there gave him the shivers. He had after all signed onto his three year contract with the army with the checkpoint along the Neiden to Lundby road specifically in mind, and he was at the interview lead to believe that this was indeed the only position he would ever be expected to fill. But the contract he had signed was deliberately vague on the exact scope of his duties, so he could possibly, at least in theory, be sent to Libya against his own wishes.

And with this worry lingering uncomfortably in the back of his mind, he set his alarm for the next morning, hoping that the spectre of Libya would not interfere too much with his sleep.

50

Back in his room, Bjorn sat down on his bed, turned on the TV, and flicked through some channels before settling on a reality show on a cooking channel where competitors faced each other in a "bake off" to make "the best chocolate cake ever."

"Just the right kind of entertainment after a festive dinner," Bjorn thought to himself with a smile. Then he let his thoughts drift, inspired by the spirited conversations he had just taken part in. He really felt he had come to know his colleagues quite a lot better over the dinner, and that he now finally had been fully accepted by his colleagues. Not that they had ever been anything but polite and friendly with him. But getting to know people always take a bit of time, and if anything, Bjorn felt that the process in this case had been surprisingly quick and pleasant.

Bjorn had taken an immediate liking to Ante, who had welcomed him wholeheartedly from the very beginning. Maybe primarily because Ante neither liked Geir much nor fit very well into the card playing group. Not that the card players were unpleasant in any way. But they were a closed group, uninterested in opening up much to others. However, over dinner they had opened up quite a lot, and Bjorn thought them all quite likable in their own way.

Thomas had consistently made positive comments regarding Lundby and Ane's business, arguing against John and Frank who both were of the opinion that the village would eventually blow up due to a combination of internal social tensions and right out desperation. Thomas pointed instead out the fact that the general atmosphere, as experienced by Bjorn, was positive, even optimistic, and that people always have a tendency to sort out their differences in a peaceful manner if left to themselves.

Espen on his side was always quick to oppose any position with facts to the contrary. His strange habit of never looking anyone in the eye, had made Bjorn jump to an early conclusion that Espen was suffering from some sort of autism. But Espen's well developed sense of humour soon made Bjorn realize that whatever was the matter with Espen, it was not interfering with his ability to see things clearly and humorously. When John and Frank argued that the village should be shut down, or at the very least be policed properly, Espen commented dryly that that would hardly save the government any money, which was the whole point of the establishment of the colony in the first place. And when Thomas, confidently stated that people have a tendency to sort things out peacefully when left to themselves, Espen suggested the so called "liberated Libya" as an example of how well people get together once the central government is gone, or left impotent.

John on the other hand revealed himself as truly sceptical to people's ability to take care of themselves, stating at one point that he would be lost without the strict routines of military life, and that he would probably not even get out of bed if it was not for Frank's schedules. "That's why you are our night watchman," Frank replied to this with a great big smile. "You don't seem to mind when you have to get up as long as I'm the one telling you to do so."

Realizing that he had thoroughly embarrassed himself by admitting his deep seated insecurity about his own ability to make even basic decisions regarding his own life, John quickly retorted that he was just making an exaggerated point and that he did not really need someone hanging over him for him to get through his daily routines. But none of his colleagues were very convinced, and taunted him for his silly comment for some time before focusing again on what they would all do on Friday evening.

"Poor guy," Bjorn thought to himself as he recalled the deeply embarrassing insecurity that John had admitted to. "I might be lost," Bjorn thought. "But I'm not as lost as John." And with this in mind, Bjorn flicked through several channels before stopping at one where the foreign minister was in the middle of an interview. "Ah, here he is," Bjorn thought. "The man at the centre of the universe."

49

"Ante sure knows how to throw a party," Bjorn thought to himself as he entered the kitchen where most of his colleagues had already sat down to eat. Only Thomas and Espen were still over by the stove heaping up generous amounts of steak, baked potatoes and vegetables for themselves. There was no shortage of whine either, but John and Espen were both having water, either for personal reasons, or in sympathy with the official rules banning any kind of alcohol consumption from Norwegian military bases. But Bjorn saw no reason to be any more prudent than Frank or Ante, and poured himself a big glass of red wine to go with the food.

The atmosphere was positively festive which made Bjorn almost embarrassed to think that he had suddenly felt so uncomfortable in the living room less than two hours earlier. "This is not a bad place at all, is it?" Bjorn thought to himself. "And they are definitely a friendly and polite bunch." And to encourage himself to be more positive in his view of things, he concluded his short lecture for himself. "This is far better than I had imagined," He thought. "So why not be a little more grateful over this unexpected bit of good fortune?"

Almost immediately after sitting down, Bjorn was bombarded by questions from his colleagues which served to underscore his deliberately positive view of his colleagues. They were all curious to hear what he had to say about Lundby, and genuinely interested in all he had to say. They were especially curious to hear about Ane's factory, which none of them had visited before. But Ante was also very curious to hear about the open air market, and everybody thought the replacement of perfectly good pavement with a Portuguese style cobbled stone alternative excessively extravagant, especially in light of the poor living conditions that most of the inhabitants were suffering under.

At one point, they all descended into a discussion on the environmental aspect of the fish processing plant, sparked by Bjorn's description of how all the waste was simply spewed directly and untreated into the water underneath the plant. They all agreed that this could not possibly be legal. But with the alternative being to send everything to China with no guarantee that the environment would be treated any better over there, they could not agree on the factory´s net effect on the global environment. The local environment would surely come under strain from Ane's careless waste treatment, but would things really be any better if the exact same was done in China?

This in turn brought up the idea of a global government. A government with global powers on environmental issues, but they all agreed that such a solution sounded too utopian, and that it had to be up to local governments all over the world to make sure that people like Ane could not go around polluting the environment without any kind of cost or consequence.

Having settled on a conclusion of sorts as far as the fish processing plant was concerned, the talk turned towards the planned outing on Friday night, with Ante raving about Nora's place for which he clearly had great expectations. And Frank was all enthusiastic about the casino, eagerly describing the place as he remembered it from an earlier visit.

Bjorn gathered from the talking that all of the men, except John, had been down in the village on one or more occasion. John, it seemed, was fearful of the village, and the enthusiastic raves by his colleagues made him only less eager to ever visit the place, which made Bjorn think that the young man might be fearful of a lot more than just the village. John, it seemed, was not only fearful of the village, he was fearful of himself.

48

Bjorn turned on the PC. "Let's check the gold price," he thought to himself. "There were something about it in the news, something about it falling, and this being a sign of health in the economy." How exactly a falling gold price was a sign of health was not explained. But with TV news necessarily being brief, this was not unexpected. A comprehensive explanation on the relationship between gold and the economy would surely required more air time than a five minute slot in the daily news. However, a quick internet search might turn up some good articles on the subject.

Finding a graph of the gold price was not difficult. The first link he clicked on turned up a scalable one where he could zoom in to see the price fluctuations from minute to minute, real time, as well as the overall movement of gold over longer periods, all the way up to years and even decades. The long term trend was clearly upwards, but the last few years had seen the gold price fall, and the price had turned sharply lower over the last couple of days, falling as much as ten percent in less than a week.

"So I guess we have had a recovery in the economy over the last few years, then?" Bjorn thought sarcastically to himself, finding this very hard to believe with unemployment and poverty relentlessly on the rise during these same years. "And this latest drop is somehow proof that everything is rapidly improving?"

However, after some more searching, Bjorn found an article on gold, and its relationship to stock prices, pointing out the obvious fact that low gold prices necessarily mean that other assets measured against gold are valued higher. Very high stock prices relative to gold is an indication of euphoria among investors, while very low stock prices relative to gold is an indication of depression among investors. The article then went on to explain that gold is a better yard stick to measure investor sentiments than fiat currencies like the dollar, since the quantity of gold is relatively stable, while the quantity of dollars sometimes increase in leaps and bounds.

"Well that makes some sense," Bjorn thought to himself. "If gold functions as a yard stick for investor sentiments, then the latest drop in the price of gold combined with the stock market making new highs every day must be an indication of optimism among investors. But is optimism among investors necessarily a good indication of economic health? Could it not just as well be an indication of unsubstantiated euphoria?"

Bjorn read the article to the end, and could not from what he had read conclude that investor sentiment in itself had much to do with the state of the economy. "What really drives the economy is real investments made with real savings," the article concluded. And by real investments, the author meant machines, factories and education. And by real savings the author meant savings accumulated from productive labour. Money created out of nothing by simple fiat would, according to the author, do little more than distort the economy.

The article was clearly anti-establishment. But it was level headed and to the point. The author was critical of what he called the Keynesian School of Economics, embracing instead something he called the Austrian School of Economics. And the author certainly gave the impression of knowing what he was talking about. It was well written, to the point, and easy to understand. Surprisingly easy in fact, which made Bjorn a little suspicious of it possibly being over simplifying things quite a bit.

Leaning back in his chair and once again looking out over the village and the fjord, Bjorn's thoughts were drawn to Ane and her factory. Her factory was certainly a good example of something created from real savings. Her grandfather had put his life savings into it at one point, and apparently gone bankrupt. But somehow managed to save it for his granddaughter. The factory had all the elements described as real investments in the article. Even education, if on the job training could be considered education.

However, the workers were barely earning enough to stay alive. All the profits went directly into Ane's pockets, which could hardly be described as fair, or even healthy for the economy. The author of the article had not taken into account the human aspect of the economy, it seemed. Ane's greed for profits was pretty much a guarantee that her workers would never earn more than an absolute minimum.

But Bjorn could not help liking Ane despite her shameless greed. She was refreshingly direct and to the point. Very unsentimental, even when talking about her grandfather, who she had mentioned with a direct and to the point fondness. She made no secret of anything it seemed, and her forwardness in explaining things to Bjorn was generous and unashamed.

Then, in a flash, Bjorn remembered the heavy revolver strapped to Ane's thigh. He could not help it, but he thought it insanely sexy. She was after all a beautiful young woman, and the gun highlighted this by its obscene contrast to her feminine frame. The gun made her the queen of her estate in a primitive, shameless and sexual way.

Bjorn imagined her pulling the gun at him, and the thought made him ice cold and excited at the same time. "What a woman," he thought to himself. Then, out of nowhere it seemed, he heard two distant knocks.

"Dinner is served," a voice said, almost equally distant, and with this Bjorn was pulled out of his budding daydream.
"I'll be right there!" Bjorn replied, shaking off the light daze of imminent sleep interrupted.