Svein Gjedrem: Economic perspectives Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the meeting of the Supervisory Council of Norges Bank, Oslo, 16 February 2006. The Charts in pdf-format  can also be found on the website of the Norges Bank. *  *  *  1. Introduction On the way into this building, we pass a statue of the nineteenth century Norwegian actor Johannes Brun. He performed at Christiania Theatre, which once stood in the square in front of the main entrance. Brun was an acquaintance of Henrik Ibsen, who also worked at the same theatre for a period – part-time as dramatic consultant – when the theatre he had been directing closed. This was a difficult time for our great dramatist, both personally and financially. He was struggling to overcome writer’s block and the public’s preference for the mediocre and the trivial. 1 Nineteenth-century Christiania (now Oslo) was described as “O great and little city! What a cold and surly sky broods over you!”. 2 A bleak time for Ibsen, perhaps. But the Norwegian economy was not faring all that badly. The economic expansion that had begun in the 1820s gathered momentum from the middle of the century. The British navigation acts were repealed in 1849 and the Norwegian fleet was permitted to transport other countries’ goods to and from England. Norway had suddenly become a major exporter of services. The tonnage of the Norwegian commercial fleet increased almost six-fold from 1850 to 1880. 2.
The use of the Fund’s return must therefore be smoothed over time in order to prevent events in international capital markets from spreading to the Norwegian economy. 6. Conclusion In the character of Peer Gynt, Ibsen drew a rather unflattering portrait of the Norwegian man who travelled out into the world and became rich - but who had no concern for others. At the end of the play, Peer is penniless. Ibsen himself left Norway, and although the Norwegian landscape and his Norwegian identity were at the core of his writing, it was his encounter with other ideas and thinking that enabled him to reshape his experience into world-class literature. In the asylum in Peer Gynt, where “man is himself to the uttermost limit” and “no-one considers another’s ideas” but “encloses himself in a barrel of self”, Peer Gynt is crowned “Emperor of Self”. When the roles are reversed and the asylum’s keepers protest at being caged instead of the inmates, the director of the asylum, Begriffenfeldt, answers: “When the world’s in a whirl, then we must whirl with it”. 13 We do not share this attitude. We must not whirl helplessly along with the world. We should take advantage of the opportunities globalisation offers, but also contribute to those changes ourselves. Thank you for your attention. 13  Henrik Ibsen: Peer Gynt. Translated by Peter Watts. Penguin Books, London, 1966. BIS Review 10/2006  9