From Sweden to Narvik... all in a day!

June 18, 2010

It’s finally a beautiful day outside! The sun is shining (at least for the morning) and the temperature is about 13 degrees. Even the residents of Narvik are complaining about the unseasonably cold June this year, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the weather warms up soon since there are only two months of summer left!

Narvik is a town of 15,000 residents, or about 18,000 if you include the suburbs. It is the first industrial community in Northern Norway and a city that expanded with the creation of the Ofoten Railway. The town is known as a shipping and transportation hub. Due to the Gulf Stream, the water in Northern Norway does not ice or freeze in the wintertime. This makes it an ideal base for large companies looking to ship materials into the world. Currently, Sweden sends all of its iron ore to Narvik via train, to be shipped out from the port to locations worldwide. There are currently plans to connect China to Narvik via railway, to take advantage of the same port. Narvik is also the headquarters for Hrutigruten, the famed cruise ship that travels the Norwegian coastline.

On April 9, 1940, Narvik became the focus of attention when Hitler attacked Denmark and Norway. Narvik, as the transportation hub, became the prized target and for two months, there was a bitter war between the Germans and Allied forces (British, French, Polish and Norwegians) but ultimately, the Germans did succeed. Throughout Narvik, there are several World War II memorials immortalizing the landmark battles and events of the war.

Today, Narvik is also a large tourist attraction offering a range of extreme winter sports activities including off-path skiing, dirt biking, jumping, paragliding and anything else you would want to do. The Norwegian system allows individuals to go off the trails or the marked paths, but if any ambulance or police are needed, it is at the expense of the individual. From mid November to early January, Narvik is the home to migratory orcas. Every March, the town celebrates the “Winter Festival” in remembrance of World War II and the Navy period.

Our trip today is on the Ofoten Railroad, which was built in 1891 to bring the iron ore from Sweden to Narvik, the second largest harbor in Northern Norway. The railroad is actually built in the mountains, blasted into the hillside, and requires 20 tunnels. On the Norwegian side, the line had to climb from sea level to 500 meters in only 40 km. It was a difficult project that employed 6,000 individuals working for four years. The railroad was the start of the community of Narvik nearly 100 years ago. Without the railroad, the communities of Kiruna or Malmberget wouldn’t have existed because it was impossible to live in the mountains without access to the cities below. The Sami people were the only ones who lived in the mountains before the railroad existed. The Ofoten Line is dubbed one of the most beautiful journeys in Northern Europe and it certainly lived up to that name with the mountains and the fjords offering a brilliant contrast to the brown tundra just warming up for the summer.

Our host for the day is Svenn-Arne Andreassen, who was born and raised in Narvik and is a proud self-declared authority on the history of the city. We jumped off the train at Riksgränsen, Sweden. Riksgränsen is a tiny town located 200 km above the Arctic Circle in the Swedish Lapland. Laps are another term for Sami people. This area is empty during the summer months, but during the winter, it is packed with Swedes and Norwegians taking advantage of the ski slopes. Our hosts in Narvik wanted to take us on this trip to show us the beautiful scenery and to allow us to step onto Swedish territory. We had a quick lunch at a local restaurant and then drove back into Narvik for our afternoon career days.

This afternoon I visited Fremover, the regional newspaper headquartered in Narvik. My host for the day was Jan Erik Teigen, the kulturjournalist or arts and culture journalist. This newspaper is a small production with only 16 journalists putting together an average 42-page publication. Fremover was created in 1903 and has a subscription base of 9,000 with a pass-along readership of 30,000. A subscription to the newspaper is about 2,000 NOK while the newsstand price is 20 NOK. Fremover is one of 56 publications in a newspaper group owned by Apress, which includes Rana Blad of Mo I Rana. The newspaper is printed at Polaris Trykk in Harstad.

Fremover has a smaller newsroom than most of the other newspapers I have visited in Norway. There are about two editors and 16 journalists working in house with a small sales team of three people. There used to be several designers but the newspapers (as in most of Norway) has decided to consolidate their staffing and laid off the designers in favor of templates that section editors can use directly. The result is what looks like an unfinished newspaper, with lots of white space both around stories and photos, as well as at the bottom of columns. The pages all look standard as well since the editors have to use templates with a limited variation. At Fremover, most of the journalists write their pieces and then are responsible for a certain page which includes dropping the text into the column and the corresponding photo alongside. Another notable trend is there are few photographers, but rather, most journalists are asked to take photos while interviewing for pieces. Jan Erik is a journalist by title but is the only person responsible for the arts and culture section, which is usually three pages every day. As a special section, he does have the freedom of planning ahead and generally works a 7:30-3 shift. His first page is due at 11 am, second and third pages are to be in by 3 pm. He does the initial layout and then sends the pages to the design team – a single designer who works for a company located in Tromsø – for tweaks before giving his final approval.

Talking with Jan Erik was an interesting lesson in Norwegian culture. As I had mentioned earlier, everybody here seems content with their life. Jan Erik said he was working in Bodø for a while and was even paid twice his journalist salary to teach at the local university. He spend three semesters teaching journalism but when he was offered a permanent position, he turned it down because it lacked the excitement he felt while working for a newspaper. At the time, his wife wanted to move so when he was offered a editor position here in Narvik, he took the job so as to bring up his children in a quiet and peaceful city. Soon after working here as an editor, he asked to go back to being a writer because he missed the reporting and as the kulturjournalist, he feels like he has the best of all worlds. He loves what he is doing and is happy where he lives. A typical starting salary for a journalist in Narvik is 300,000 NOK or $50,000. Each year the journalist receives a bump in pay, per the union negotiations. This year, for example, the union negotiated a 10,000 NOK salary increase for all members of the union at the state level and then the local level added more increases based on job descriptions and work produced. Jan Erik said he makes about 450,000 NOK, which is enough to live comfortably in his own house with his wife and three children, travel frequently including an upcoming trip for his wife and himself to Sardinia where they plan on purchasing a summer house. The quality of life is an added incentive. All employees are given a mandatory six weeks of vacation, plus sick leave and holiday time. Any pregnant employee is given one year of full salary during the first year at home with her child. And most work days end by 4 pm with the option of flexible hours to take advantage of three day weekends.

Journalism in Norway are certainly a more respected and honored career than back home in the United States. Norway is a newspaper reading country and according to Jan Erik, that has not changed. There was a slight dip in readership several years ago but that was attributed to the population moving but at the local news level, readership has been consistent through the years. Jan Erik believes that comes from providing local news in a country that topologically is so isolated by the mountain ranges. When it comes to television, radio or the local newspaper, people always choose to pick up the print edition and learn more about their neighbors and their hometown. While Fremover does have an Internet-only reporter, they have made it a company policy to not put all the print information on the web and to use the web as an extension of the print publication rather than an alternative. Jan Erik sees that as a success and doesn’t hesitate to say that job stability and security in the newspaper industry in Narvik at least is not in question.

When I talked about print journalism and the dying industry back in the United States, I mentioned that while the pay is always going to be less than other industries, you can deal with that if you are doing something you love. The issue today is whether newspapers will even continue to exist and whether that is an option as a career. Perhaps the solution is to learn Norwegian and move to Norway!