Some advantages we have after all!
There has always been tension between centre and periphery: We who live in Kirkenes (5,000 inhabitants) have looked at Oslo in envy because they have cheap flights to New York and Barcelona, the newest movies and the hippest concerts. We have read about all the cottage palaces they build in mountain-Norway (inner eastern Norway), with electrically heated driveways, garages and jacuzzis. While our cabins here in the area have no electricity or water. We're heating oldstyle with firewood.
Then comes the new epidemic (I can't even mention the name) and people aren`t allowed to go to their cottages unless the cabins are located in their own municipality of residence. Because the authorities are afraid that the small so-called cottage municipalities are unable to cope with a spread of infection.
Luckily we up here in the north live in such large geographical municipalities that we all have a cabin in our own municipality.
So we go to the cabin and rejoice that we live on the outskirts of the world. As we drive snowmobiles into the tundra, fish for char on ice-covered lakes and live a free life.
Finally, we get payback for living in the middle of nowhere – far from people!
In these times it's OK to be rednecks! Long live the wasteland!
Kåre Tannvik
02.04.20. Kirkenes
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