I am admittedly not a football buff, but when Bafana were (admirably) vanquished and Donald Trump goosed FIFA right in the CEO’s balloon knot, I was torn between supporting Norway and supporting England. Now they’re playing each other on Sunday.
England desperately needs victory here. In the quest for national interest across that ungovernable kingdom, fraught with division and loathing, World Cup glory won’t be so much an antiseptic as an anti-venom. At present England is on the verge of agreeing to mousy academics’ demands that a welcome-to-country be performed at every event in future, from the Changing of the Guard to Prime Minister’s Questions, and where Muslim (women) are acknowledged as having built Stonehenge, invented the world wide web and cracked the Enigma code. It really, really needs this.
Norway doesn’t, but they’re a class act. Every now and again the country flexes its muscle, and you can’t not be impressed by the way they go about stuff. Donald Trump noticed this some years ago, offending everyone when he bemoaned that while Norwegians don’t come to America, Haitians and Somalians do. The ‘sh*thole countries’ comments riled up all the wrong people, and we remain grateful to the President for his candour.
As a child I was obsessed with Norway because of a-ha. Eight years ago, I got talking to a brilliant man: a farmer called James Rebanks, whose book The Shepherd’s Life is one of the most poignant accounts of English culture ever written, and he suggested I read Shark Drunk by a Norwegian journalist called Morten Strøksnes. As much a masterpiece, it explores the fortunes of Strøksnes and his friend Hugo as they go about trying to catch a Greenland shark from a little boat in the northwest.
No other choice
A year later a-ha recorded an album alongside the Arctic Philharmonic in the same region. When I was looking for a name for my new company, I felt I had no other choice but a landmark on one of the islands in that breathtaking, mesmerising Lofoten archipelago.
Norway has got money. Plenty. On the Norges Bank Investment Management website, you can see the market value of (what is known as) the Government Pension Fund Global (sovereign wealth fund) in real time. As of writing it is around 22,581 billion Krone, or $2.2 trillion, with its headline investments being across the Megacap table in the US. South Africa contributes 0.4% of its portfolio.
The reason why it’s got so much money is also the reason why it’s so good with it. Planning the sovereign wealth fund involved philosophers and people who see the world as Strøknes does. Buccaneering London wide-boys and fat-cats fiddling with their secretaries after eight-hour lunches were excluded from participation. Obviously, the fund is not money you can spend, but relative to its headcount, technically one Norwegian equals over one million Krone.
Invariably outliers emerge from egalitarian parameters of a society taxed progressively to avoid wealth disparity. One of these was John Fredriksen, a shipping billionaire who left London last year in a huff at the ineptitude of Great Britain’s self-destructive policies. The most useless finance minister for over 2,000 years, Rachel Reeves, was puzzled by his remarks, and sought clarification from Norges. When she explained that it was her desire to transform Great Britain into a Nordic economy, she was reportedly told, in curated diplomacy, that she did not possess the necessary discipline.
Drum row
Money is not the only thing Norway excels at. What has emerged in the study of the football team is a country adept at disguising how right-wing some of its instincts are: things disguised by its taxes and the application of soft power. Following each victory, the Norwegian team of 2026 engages its supporters in a Viking Row, a tribute to their heritage, as is the Icelandic Thunder Clap. Their American hosts find this awesome, as they should.
In the debate on peak athleticism and its constituent parts, the 6’5 fixture of the sublime Erling Haaland is revealing. If you isolate him, you could be forgiven for thinking that he tends to loaf around sometimes, looking a bit weird. Then there’s a burst of speed coupled to dazzling, precise brilliance. Suddenly, Norway has another goal.
The English rugby team tends to eat crap, then does not play very well. Haaland on the other hand goes the full Viking in his diet: eggs, raw milk, grass-fed beef, etc. Our great Tim Noakes will tell you that this doesn’t just result in enduring form, but an enhanced mental capacity with the ability to overcome pain. Behind the Erling Haaland façade of a man not taking himself too seriously sits the mind of an icy killer. He is also a follower of the health influencer Sol Brah, who advocates sunning one’s testicles.
The millennial mind in Great Britain can no longer comprehend such things. In 2019, Goldsmith’s University, the most demented academic institution in the world, banned meat from its campus. Perhaps one day it will ban testes too.
Entrenched cohesion
Imagine living in a country with high levels of prosperity and productivity, scant youth unemployment, a media that doesn’t call you bigoted every day, your safety and wellbeing assured and an entrenched cohesion between generations? Nice surprises too. Twenty-eight years after the sovereign wealth fund was established, the country reported an 18% rise in disposable household income among the young. In the same year, 2018, a canyon started appearing between England’s young people and the property ladder. It has widened considerably since.
Making comparisons between England and Norway ends in despondency. Norway played their oil and their relationship right with the European Union, which they keep at arm’s length. England didn’t. A high cost of living in Norway comes with guarantees. England just has the former. And that’s why England needs the World Cup more.
So much more. Because there are still people within commentary who are enraged that the team no longer kneels for BLM, or doesn’t champion the cause of Palestine enough by kissing each other passionately after the final whistle. In the country’s beautiful heatwave, the question of whether air-conditioning is racist has been asked.
And if air conditioning is racist, then England’s departure from the World Cup could potentially be attributed to the country’s unwillingness to impose Sharia Law. And that will be, on top of everything else, a bit too much.
[Image: by alonesbe]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.