Norway is profiting embarrassingly from war in Europe

Europe have an unexpected way of drifting up to Norway, its northern frontier. The most literal example came in 1870, when two French soldiers sought to elude a months-long Prussian siege of Paris by using a hot-air balloon to deliver battle plans to troops outside the city. It did not go well. What was meant as a brief hop to the countryside became a 19-hour windswept odyssey over land and sea. The duo ultimately crashed into an icy mountain west of modern-day Oslo, some 1,400km from their intended destination. Locals dazzled by the flying contraption rushed the frozen Frenchmen to the capital. Parties were thrown in their honour, poems written, much champagne consumed and a passion for France proclaimed. The thawed soldiers left a week later with 23,800 francs in public donations, a sizeable sum. The incident, according to Paal Frisvold, a political analyst, showed that Norway’s people had “a keen desire to show sympathy and support to resolve conflicts in Europe”. Does this passion still stir in Norwegian hearts? For months, as Ukrainians have fought and Europeans shuddered at the prospect of opening their energy bills, the continent’s richest country (bar Luxembourg) has been getting conspicuously richer. Supplying energy to Europe was always lucrative for Norway, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of natural gas. It has become indecently so since Russia, once its rival in keeping Europe warm, turned pipelines into weapons. As the war and ensuing power crunch drag on, the sums flowing north are proving embarrassing. A place keen on its image as a force for good in the world is having to fend off charges of war profiteering.