The First Eurovision Song Contest

Four years earlier the Great Smog of 1952 darkened the streets of London and killed approximately four thousand people in the short time of four days and a further eight thousand died from its effects in the following weeks and months.  In 1956 the Clean Air Act introduced smokeless zones in the capital.

Consequently, reduced sulphur dioxide levels made the intense and persistent London smog a thing of the past. It was after this the great clean-up of London began and buildings recovered their original stone façades which, during two centuries, had gradually blackened.

By all accounts the summer of 1956 was truly abysmal: rain, hail, lightning, floods, gales and miserable cold. It was the wettest July in London since records began, and August was one of the coldest and wettest on record across Britain, as barrages of depressions swept the country.  But there was a silver lining to this cloud and September was such an improvement it was warmer than August, a very rare occurrence, and the rest of autumn turned into a glorious Indian summer.

In the 1950s, as Europe recovered after the Second-World-War, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) based in Switzerland set up a committee to examine ways of bringing together the countries of the EBU around a ‘light entertainment programme’.

What was needed was something to cheer everyone up.  At a committee meeting held in Monaco in January 1955, director general of Swiss television and committee chairman Marcel Bezençon conceived the idea of an international song contest where countries would participate in one television programme to be transmitted simultaneously to all countries of the union. The competition was based upon the existing Sanremo Music Festival held in Italy, and was also seen as a technological experiment in live television as in those days it was a very ambitious project to join many countries together in a wide-area international network.

The concept, then known as “Eurovision Grand Prix”, was approved by the EBU General Assembly in at a meeting held in Rome on 19^th October 1955 and it was decided that the first contest would take place in spring 1956 in Lugano, Switzerland.

It was held on 24^th May 1956. Seven countries participated, each submitting two songs, for a total of fourteen. This was the only Contest in which more than one song per country was performed as since 1957 all Contests have allowed one entry per country. The 1956 Contest was won by the host nation with a song called ‘Refrain’ sung by Lys Assia.

The United Kingdom first participated at the Eurovision Song Contest in the following year. The BBC had wanted to take part in the first contest but, rather like trying to get into the Common Market, had submitted their entry to the after the deadline had passed. It hasn’t made the same mistake again and the UK has entered every year since apart from 1958, and has won the Contest a total of five times. Its first victory came in 1967 with “Puppet on a String” by Sandie Shaw.

There have been sixty-two contests, with one winner each year except the tied 1969 contest, which had four.  Twenty-five different countries have won the contest.    The country with the highest number of wins is Ireland, with seven.  Portugal is the country with the longest history in the Contest without a win – it made its forty-fourth appearance at the 2010 Contest.  The only person to have won more than once as performer is Ireland’s Johnny Logan, who performed “What’s Another Year” in 1980 and “Hold Me Now” in 1987.

Norway is the country which holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record!

For many years the annual Eurovision Song Contest was a big event in out house usually with a party where everyone would pick their favourite and would dress appropriately to support their chosen nation.  In later years no one ever picked the United Kingdom because the only thing that is certain about the competition is that being the unpopular man of Europe we are unlikely to ever win again and every year there is a ritual humiliation with a predictable low scoring result.

Age of Innocence – 1960, Lego and Lady Chatterley

1960! And so the famous decade began, pop music, mods and rockers, flower power and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, or CND for short.  The 1950s had been a steady decade not so different from those that had gone before but the 1960s were about to change the world forever and there would definitely be no going back.

In 1960 there was an event which I suppose stimulated this part of my story.  In November John F Kennedy was elected the thirty-fifth President of the United States, the youngest ever at forty-three and the first Roman Catholic.

He didn’t become President in 1960 because America has a curious system whereby the winner has to wait two months before officially taking office, that is two months being paid for doing absolutely nothing but I suppose this at least gives time for the outgoing Chief Executive to clear his personal possessions out of the White House.

Also in politics it was in 1960 that the British Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan gave his “Wind of Change speech” to the Parliament of South Africa, on 3 February 1960 in Cape Town at the end of a month spent in Africa visiting a number of British colonies, as they were at the time.

The speech sent a clear signal that the British Government intended to decolonise and most of the British possessions in Africa subsequently became independent nations in the 1960s.  The South Africans, sensing a loss of white supremacy, didn’t approve of this and the speech led directly from their withdrawal from the Commonwealth and their continuing support for the apartheid system.

Another significant event of 1960 that was to have far reaching consequencies was the formation of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.  This was an event that would leave the west dependent on the Middle East for its oil and has resulted in a succession of international difficulties in the region.

1960 saw the introduction to Britain of two new must have toys:

The first was the Etch-a-Sketch, which was a big bag of aluminium dust behind a plastic screen that you scraped doodles into, like you would on the window of a steamed-up car.  But rather than use your finger you had to demonstrate enormous amounts of patience and dexterity and twiddle two knobs which was an action that required almost impossible eye to hand co-ordination.  Etch-a-Sketch was invented by a man by the name of Arthur Granjean who developed L’Ecran Magique, The Magic Screen, in his garage.  After several years of being ignored as a load of magnetic rubbish L’Ecran Magique was eventually bought up by an American toy firm and renamed Etch-a-Sketch.

Actually Etch-a-Sketch was really hopeless and it was impossible to draw anything really creative.  The box suggested all sorts of drawing possibilities but in reality although it was alright for houses or anything else with straight lines beyond that it was excruciatingly frustrating to draw anything that anyone would be able to meaningfully identify.

Much more important was the introduction of Lego which was seen at the Brighton Toy Fair for the first time in 1960.  Lego is a Danish company and the name comes from the Danish words ‘LEg GOdt’ meaning ‘play well’.  Now this just has to be one of the best toys ever and when it was first introduced the brightly coloured bricks sold by the bucketful.  Pre-Lego I had a construction set called Bako, which was a set of bakerlite bricks and metal wires that could be used to construct different styles of houses but nothing more inspired than that.  Lego changed everything and the only restrictions on creativity thereafter were the number of bricks in the toy box and our imagination!

Others agree with me about the importance of Lego and the British Association of Toy Retailers named Lego the toy of the century.

From Lego to leg over because 1960 was a big year for literature when the book ‘Lady Chatterleys Lover’ was published by Penguin books and whipped up a legal storm.

‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ is a novel by D. H. Lawrence that was written in 1928 and printed at that time privately in Florence.  The publication of the book caused a scandal due to its explicit sex scenes, including the use of previously banned four letter words.  When it was published in Britain in 1960, the trial of the publishers, Penguin Books, under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 was a major public event and a test of the new obscenity law.

The 1959 Act had made it possible for publishers to escape conviction if they could show that a work was of literary merit and Penguin books took up the challenge.  At the trial various academic critics, were called as witnesses, and the verdict, delivered on November 2, 1960, was not guilty.  This resulted in a far greater degree of freedom for publishing explicit material in the United Kingdom.

A nice story about the trial which illustrates just how big a watershed 1960 was in terms of changing social attitudes was when  the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked the jury if it were the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read“.

Much later than 1960 I found a copy of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ on the top of my dad’s wardrobe and was able to go immediately to the offending chapter because the book fell naturally open at exactly the right spot.

I suspect most of it had not been read at all but the few pages of dirty words were well thumbed and dog-eared and over the next few weeks I contributed to this by sharing it with all of mates whenever they came around to the house when my parents were out.  It made a change from looking up rude words in the dictionary.  This all stopped when one day when the book had gone from the top of the wardrobe and although nothing was ever said I knew that I’d been rumbled.

One final thing about 1960 is that John, Paul, George and Ringo became the Beatles and the world of popular music would never be the same again and Russ Conway never had another number one hit!

Facts about 1960:

Best Film Oscar – The Apartment

FA Cup Winners – Wolverhampton Wanderers

Miss World Winner – Norma Gladys Cappalgi from Argentina

World Motor Racing Champion – Jack Brabham ofAustralia

World Series Champions – Pittsburg Pirates

Eurovision Song Contest Winner – Jacqueline Boyer, France

Age of Innocence, 1956 – The Eurovision Song Contest

Four years earlier the Great Smog of 1952 darkened the streets of London and killed approximately four thousand people in the short time of four days and a further eight thousand died from its effects in the following weeks and months.  In 1956 the Clean Air Act introduced smokeless zones in the capital.

Consequently, reduced sulphur dioxide levels made the intense and persistent London smog a thing of the past. It was after this the great clean-up of London began and buildings recovered their original stone façades which, during two centuries, had gradually blackened.

By all accounts the summer of 1956 was truly abysmal: rain, hail, lightning, floods, gales and miserable cold. It was the wettest July in London since records began, and August was one of the coldest and wettest on record across Britain, as barrages of depressions swept the country.  But there was a silver lining to this cloud and September was such an improvement it was warmer than August, a very rare occurrence, and the rest of autumn turned into a glorious Indian summer.

In the 1950s, as Europe recovered after the Second-World-War, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) based in Switzerland set up a committee to examine ways of bringing together the countries of the EBU around a ‘light entertainment programme’.

What was needed was something to cheer everyone up.  At a committee meeting held in Monaco in January 1955, director general of Swiss television and committee chairman Marcel Bezençon conceived the idea of an international song contest where countries would participate in one television programme to be transmitted simultaneously to all countries of the union. The competition was based upon the existing Sanremo Music Festival held in Italy, and was also seen as a technological experiment in live television as in those days it was a very ambitious project to join many countries together in a wide-area international network.

The concept, then known as “Eurovision Grand Prix”, was approved by the EBU General Assembly in at a meeting held in Rome on 19^th October 1955 and it was decided that the first contest would take place in spring 1956 in Lugano, Switzerland.

It was held on 24^th May 1956. Seven countries participated, each submitting two songs, for a total of fourteen. This was the only Contest in which more than one song per country was performed as since 1957 all Contests have allowed one entry per country. The 1956 Contest was won by the host nation with a song called ‘Refrain’ sung by Lys Assia.

The United Kingdom first participated at the Eurovision Song Contest in the following year. The BBC had wanted to take part in the first contest but, rather like trying to get into the Common Market, had submitted their entry to the after the deadline had passed. It hasn’t made the same mistake again and the UK has entered every year since apart from 1958, and has won the Contest a total of five times. Its first victory came in 1967 with “Puppet on a String” by Sandie Shaw.

There have been fifty-seven contests, with one winner each year except the tied 1969 contest, which had four.  Twenty-five different countries have won the contest.    The country with the highest number of wins is Ireland, with seven.  Portugal is the country with the longest history in the Contest without a win – it made its forty-fourth appearance at the 2010 Contest.  The only person to have won more than once as performer is Ireland’s Johnny Logan, who performed “What’s Another Year” in 1980 and “Hold Me Now” in 1987.

Norway is the country which holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record!

For many years the annual Eurovision Song Contest was a big event in out house usually with a party where everyone would pick their favourite and would dress appropriately to support their chosen nation.  In later years no one ever picked the United Kingdom because the only thing that is certain about the competition is that being the unpopular man of Europe we are unlikely to ever win again and every year there is a ritual humiliation with a predictable low scoring result.

Scrap Book Project – The Eurovision Song Contest

In the 1950s, as Europe recovered after the Second-World-War, the European Broadcasting Union based in Switzerland set up a committee to examine ways of bringing together the countries of the EBU around a ‘light entertainment programme’.

At a committee meeting held in Monaco in January 1955, director general of Swiss television and committee chairman Marcel Bezençon conceived the idea of an international song contest where countries would participate in one television programme to be transmitted simultaneously to all countries of the union. The competition was based upon the existing Sanremo Music Festival held in Italy, and was also seen as a technological experiment in live television as in those days it was a very ambitious project to join many countries together in a wide-area international network.

The concept, then known as “Eurovision Grand Prix”, was approved by the EBU General Assembly in at a meeting held in Rome on 19^th October 1955 and it was decided that the first contest would take place in spring 1956 in Lugano, Switzerland.

It was held on 24^th May 1956. Seven countries participated, each submitting two songs, for a total of fourteen. This was the only Contest in which more than one song per country was performed as since 1957 all Contests have allowed one entry per country. The 1956 Contest was won by the host nation with a song called ‘Refrain’ sung by Lys Assia.

The United Kingdom first participated at the Eurovision Song Contest in the following year. The BBC had wanted to take part in the first contest but had submitted their entry to the after the deadline had passed. The UK has entered every year since apart from 1958, and has won the Contest a total of five times. Its first victory came in 1967 with “Puppet on a String” by Sandie Shaw.

There have been fifty-five contests, with one winner each year except the tied 1969 contest, which had four.  Twenty-five different countries have won the contest.    The country with the highest number of wins is Ireland, with seven.  Portugal is the country with the longest history in the Contest without a win – it made its forty-fourth appearance at the 2010 Contest.  The only person to have won more than once as performer is Ireland’s Johnny Logan, who performed “What’s Another Year” in 1980 and “Hold Me Now” in 1987.

Norway is the country which holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record!

For many years the annual Eurovision Song Contest was a big event in out house usually with a party where everyone would pick their favourite and would dress appropriately to support their chosen nation.  In later years no one ever picked the United Kingdom because the only thing that is certain about the competition is that being the unpopular man of Europe we are unlikely to ever win again and every year there is a ritual humiliation with a preditable low scoring result.

Norway – Europe’s Most Successful Country

One of the reasons that we have tended to avoid travelling to Scandinavia is because of the notoriously high cost of living and the lofty prices relative to southern and eastern Europe but with flights at just £12 return (ok, plus the ludicrous £10 administration fee of course) we calculated that we could afford a couple of days of sky high northern European alcohol and restaurant prices without too much pocket pain.

The reason that Norway in particular is so expensive is that after World War Two, thanks to shipping, the merchant marine industry and a policy of domestic industrialisation the country experienced rapid economic expansion.  Then, from the early 1970s, there was further accelerated growth as a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea.  And not being in the European Union probably helps because on 28th November 1984 the Norwegians rejected membership in a referendum for the second time.

Today, as a result Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation.  It is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its gross domestic product. Norway has rich resources of oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power, forests, and minerals, and, after the People’s Republic of China is the second largest exporter of seafood in value.  Following the financial crisis of 2007–2010, World bankers declared the Norwegian krone to be one of the most solid and reliable currencies in the world.

Because of this happy position Norway is one of the priciest countries to live in or visit and regularly features in the top five places where you can quickly run up an overdraft.  For residents a high proportion of income is spent on housing and the monthly groceries for example for a typical family costs roughly £1,000. For Visitors dining out is an expensive luxury and a typical three star hotel in Oslo costs a whopping £150 a night, starting at the smallest hotel room and definitely without a balcony or a view.  Alcohol, however, is the real killer (financially not medically) because the Government slaps on punitive taxes to stop people from drinking and the price of a bottle of spirits is four times that of the United Kingdom.

It’s not all bad news for Norwegians however because high prices go hand in hand with the country’s standard of living. Hourly wages are extremely high to attract workers that would get the same pay in Norway’s oil or fishing industry and consequently products in the shops and supermarkets are expensive but, to Norwegians, their pricey lifestyle is just something that they have come to terms with.

The prices were not really a surprise and we could tell of course that we were in a special place because from 2001 to 2007 Norway was ranked highest of all countries in human development and, overtaken briefly for a short time by Iceland, then again in 2009, 2010 and 2011.  The Index ranks countries by level of ‘human development’ and the statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita gross national income.

Also in 2010, as well as being top in the Human Development Index, the World Economic Forum deemed Norway the fourteenth most competitive country in the World and in a separate exercise the country was rated the fifth most peaceful country in the World in a survey by Global Peace Index although that has now slipped to eighteenth  as a result of the terrorist atrocity in July 2011 carried out by Anders Behring Breivik.  Iceland is currently top and not unsurprisingly Iraq is bottom.

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, King Harald V is the head of state and according to the Democracy Index Norway is also the World’s most democratic country.  The index is compiled by the United States based Economist Intelligence Unit and measures the state of democracy in one hundred and sixty-seven countries and is based on sixty indicators grouped in five different categories: electoral process, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture.  No surprises again down at the bottom but this time it was North Korea.

But let me now bring the Norwegian people back to earth and remind them that, despite these impressive successes and accolades, the country also holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last eleven times, which is also a record.

 

Slovakian Pop Star – Braňo Hronec

Bargain flights to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, was all that it took to persuade us to visit one of Europe’s newest sovereign states.

Hotel No. 16 was a curious place; in a Swiss chalet style building that is shared with the Liberian Embassy and had an intriguing collection of expensive furniture, cheesy bric-a-brac and a ceramic wood-burning stove that was providing far more heat in the reception area than was really necessary.  The rooms were excellent however (except for Micky’s which was a bit small) and had wooden beams and tasteful décor, which probably explained why it was a bit more expensive than I usually like to pay for a room.

The owner of the hotel is a man called Braňo Hronec who was a Czechoslovakian jazz musician and pop star in the 1970’s and there were some heavily moustachioed Brotherhood of Man look-alike photographs of him on one wall of the hotel reception.  Apparently he recorded three long play records before fading into obscurity as a conductor of the Slovak Television Dance Orchestra in the 1980s and finally becoming a hotel proprietor of the Hotel No. 16.

As a pop star he is remembered in Slovakia chiefly because in the mid 1960s he established his own jazz sextet, pioneering the use of the then rare and expensive Hammond organ, and for releasing a couple of singles of his own compositions as well as some cover versions of popular songs like Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In, but most of all for a version of Christie’s smash pop hit Yellow River with Slovak lyrics.  I bet that was good, but I’ve been unable to locate a copy, even on e-bay!

Interesting trivia: Slovakia is not well known for pop music evidenced by the fact that it has only made the Eurovision song contest finals five times and it has never finished higher than eighteenth.

http://www.hotelno16.sk/

Norway and Impressive World Performances

One of the reasons that we have tended to avoid travelling to Scandinavia is because of the notoriously high cost of living and the lofty prices relative to southern and eastern Europe but with flights at just £12 return (ok, plus the ludicrous £10 administration fee of course) we calculated that we could afford a couple of days of sky high northern European alcohol and restaurant prices without too much pocket pain.

The reason that Norway in particular is so expensive is that after World War Two, thanks to shipping, the merchant marine industry and a policy of domestic industrialisation the country experienced rapid economic growth.  Then, from the early 1970s, there was further accelerated growth as a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea.  And not being in the European Union probably helps because on 25^thSeptember 1972 the Norwegians rejected membership in a referendum.

Today, as a result Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation.  It is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its gross domestic product. Norway has rich resources of oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power, forests, and minerals, and, after the People’s Republic of China is the second largest exporter of seafood in value.  Following the financial crisis of 2007–2010, World bankers declared the Norwegian krone to be one of the most solid and reliable currencies in the world.

Because of this happy position Norway is one of the priciest countries to live in or visit and regularly features in the top five places where you can quickly run up an overdraft.  For residents a high proportion of income is spent on housing and the monthly groceries for example for a typical family costs roughly £1,000. For Visitors dining out is an expensive luxury and a typical three star hotel in Oslo costs a whopping £150 a night, starting at the smallest hotel room and definitely without a balcony or a view.  Alcohol, however, is the real killer (financially not medically) because the Government slaps on punitive taxes to stop people from drinking and the price of a bottle of spirits is four times that of the United Kingdom.

It’s not all bad news for Norwegians however because high prices go hand in hand with the country’s high standard of living. Hourly wages are extremely high to attract workers that would get the same pay in Norway’s oil or fishing industry and consequently products in the shops and supermarkets are expensive but, to Norwegians, their pricey lifestyle is just something that they have come to terms with.

The prices were not really a surprise and we could tell of course that we were in a special place because from 2001 to 2007 Norway was ranked highest of all countries in human development and, overtaken briefly for a short time by Iceland, then again in 2009 and 2010.  The Index ranks countries by level of ‘human development’ and the statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita gross national income.

Also in 2010, as well as being top in the Human Development Index, the World Economic Forum deemed Norway the fourteenth most competitive country in the World and in a separate exercise the country was rated the fifth most peaceful country in the World in a survey by Global Peace Index.  New Zealand was top and not unsurprisingly Iraq bottom.

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, King Harald V is the head of state and according to the Democracy Index Norway is also the World’s most democratic country.  The index is compiled by the United States based Economist Intelligence Unit and measures the state of democracy in one hundred and sixty-seven countries and is based on sixty indicators grouped in five different categories: electoral process, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture.  No surprises again down at the bottom but this time it was North Korea.

But let me now bring the Norwegian people back to earth and remind them that, despite these impressive successes and accolades, the country also holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record.

Eurovision Song Contest

In the 1950s, as Europe recovered after the Second-World-War, the European Broadcasting Union based in Switzerland set up a committee to examine ways of bringing together the countries of the EBU around a ‘light entertainment programme’.

At a committee meeting held in Monaco in January 1955, director general of Swiss television and committee chairman Marcel Bezençon conceived the idea of an international song contest where countries would participate in one television programme to be transmitted simultaneously to all countries of the union. The competition was based upon the existing Sanremo Music Festival held in Italy, and was also seen as a technological experiment in live television as in those days it was a very ambitious project to join many countries together in a wide-area international network.

The concept, then known as “Eurovision Grand Prix”, was approved by the EBU General Assembly in at a meeting held in Rome on 19^th October 1955 and it was decided that the first contest would take place in spring 1956 in Lugano, Switzerland.

It was held on 24^th May 1956. Seven countries participated, each submitting two songs, for a total of fourteen. This was the only Contest in which more than one song per country was performed as since 1957 all Contests have allowed one entry per country. The 1956 Contest was won by the host nation with a song called ‘Refrain’ sung by Lys Assia.

The United Kingdom first participated at the Eurovision Song Contest in the following year. The BBC had wanted to take part in the first contest but had submitted their entry to the after the deadline had passed. The UK has entered every year since apart from 1958, and has won the Contest a total of five times. Its first victory came in 1967 with “Puppet on a String” by Sandie Shaw.

There have been fifty-five contests, with one winner each year except the tied 1969 contest, which had four.  Twenty-five different countries have won the contest.    The country with the highest number of wins is Ireland, with seven.  Portugal is the country with the longest history in the Contest without a win – it made its forty-fourth appearance at the 2010 Contest.  The only person to have won more than once as performer is Ireland’s Johnny Logan, who performed “What’s Another Year” in 1980 and “Hold Me Now” in 1987.

Norway is the country which holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record!

For many years the annual Eurovision Song Contest was a big event in out house usually with a party where everyone would pick their favourite and would dress appropriately to support their chosen nation.  In later years no one ever picked the United Kingdom because the only thing that is certain about the competition is that being the unpopular man of Europe we are unlikely to ever win again and every year there is a ritual humiliation with a preditable low scoring result.

Age of Innocence – 28th November, Norway, Fish, Oil and Gas

One of the reasons that we have tended to avoid travelling to Scandinavia is because of the notoriously high cost of living and the lofty prices relative to southern and eastern Europe but with flights at just £12 return (ok, plus the ludicrous £10 administration fee of course) we calculated that we could afford a couple of days of sky high northern European alcohol and restaurant prices without too much pocket pain.

The reason that Norway in particular is so expensive is that after World War Two, thanks to shipping, the merchant marine industry and a policy of domestic industrialisation the country experienced rapid economic growth.  Then, from the early 1970s, there was further accelerated growth as a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea.  And not being in the European Union probably helps because on 28th November 1984 the Norwegians rejected membership in a referendum for the second time.

Today, as a result Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation.  It is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its gross domestic product. Norway has rich resources of oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power, forests, and minerals, and, after the People’s Republic of China is the second largest exporter of seafood in value.  Following the financial crisis of 2007–2010, World bankers declared the Norwegian krone to be one of the most solid and reliable currencies in the world.

Because of this happy position Norway is one of the priciest countries to live in or visit and regularly features in the top five places where you can quickly run up an overdraft.  For residents a high proportion of income is spent on housing and the monthly groceries for example for a typical family costs roughly £1,000. For Visitors dining out is an expensive luxury and a typical three star hotel in Oslo costs a whopping £150 a night, starting at the smallest hotel room and definitely without a balcony or a view.  Alcohol, however, is the real killer (financially not medically) because the Government slaps on punitive taxes to stop people from drinking and the price of a bottle of spirits is four times that of the United Kingdom.

It’s not all bad news for Norwegians however because high prices go hand in hand with the country’s high standard of living. Hourly wages are extremely high to attract workers that would get the same pay in Norway’s oil or fishing industry and consequently products in the shops and supermarkets are expensive but, to Norwegians, their pricey lifestyle is just something that they have come to terms with.

The prices were not really a surprise and we could tell of course that we were in a special place because from 2001 to 2007 Norway was ranked highest of all countries in human development and, overtaken briefly for a short time by Iceland, then again in 2009 and 2010.  The Index ranks countries by level of ‘human development’ and the statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita gross national income.

Also in 2010, as well as being top in the Human Development Index, the World Economic Forum deemed Norway the fourteenth most competitive country in the World and in a separate exercise the country was rated the fifth most peaceful country in the World in a survey by Global Peace Index.  New Zealand was top and not unsurprisingly Iraq bottom.

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, King Harald V is the head of state and according to the Democracy Index Norway is also the World’s most democratic country.  The index is compiled by the United States based Economist Intelligence Unit and measures the state of democracy in one hundred and sixty-seven countries and is based on sixty indicators grouped in five different categories: electoral process, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture.  No surprises again down at the bottom but this time it was North Korea.

But let me now bring the Norwegian people back to earth and remind them that, despite these impressive successes and accolades, the country also holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record.

A Life in a Year – 25th September, Norway and Impressive World Performances

One of the reasons that we have tended to avoid travelling to Scandinavia is because of the notoriously high cost of living and the lofty prices relative to southern and eastern Europe but with flights at just £12 return (ok, plus the ludicrous £10 administration fee of course) we calculated that we could afford a couple of days of sky high northern European alcohol and restaurant prices without too much pocket pain.

The reason that Norway in particular is so expensive is that after World War Two, thanks to shipping, the merchant marine industry and a policy of domestic industrialisation the country experienced rapid economic growth.  Then, from the early 1970s, there was further accelerated growth as a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea.  And not being in the European Union probably helps because on 25^th September 1972 the Norwegians rejected membership in a referendum.

Today, as a result Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation.  It is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its gross domestic product. Norway has rich resources of oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power, forests, and minerals, and, after the People’s Republic of China is the second largest exporter of seafood in value.  Following the financial crisis of 2007–2010, World bankers declared the Norwegian krone to be one of the most solid and reliable currencies in the world.

Because of this happy position Norway is one of the priciest countries to live in or visit and regularly features in the top five places where you can quickly run up an overdraft.  For residents a high proportion of income is spent on housing and the monthly groceries for example for a typical family costs roughly £1,000. For Visitors dining out is an expensive luxury and a typical three star hotel in Oslo costs a whopping £150 a night, starting at the smallest hotel room and definitely without a balcony or a view.  Alcohol, however, is the real killer (financially not medically) because the Government slaps on punitive taxes to stop people from drinking and the price of a bottle of spirits is four times that of the United Kingdom.

It’s not all bad news for Norwegians however because high prices go hand in hand with the country’s high standard of living. Hourly wages are extremely high to attract workers that would get the same pay in Norway’s oil or fishing industry and consequently products in the shops and supermarkets are expensive but, to Norwegians, their pricey lifestyle is just something that they have come to terms with.

The prices were not really a surprise and we could tell of course that we were in a special place because from 2001 to 2007 Norway was ranked highest of all countries in human development and, overtaken briefly for a short time by Iceland, then again in 2009 and 2010.  The Index ranks countries by level of ‘human development’ and the statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita gross national income.

Also in 2010, as well as being top in the Human Development Index, the World Economic Forum deemed Norway the fourteenth most competitive country in the World and in a separate exercise the country was rated the fifth most peaceful country in the World in a survey by Global Peace Index.  New Zealand was top and not unsurprisingly Iraq bottom.

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, King Harald V is the head of state and according to the Democracy Index Norway is also the World’s most democratic country.  The index is compiled by the United States based Economist Intelligence Unit and measures the state of democracy in one hundred and sixty-seven countries and is based on sixty indicators grouped in five different categories: electoral process, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture.  No surprises again down at the bottom but this time it was North Korea.

But let me now bring the Norwegian people back to earth and remind them that, despite these impressive successes and accolades, the country also holds the unfortunate distinction of having scored the most ‘nul points’ in Eurovision Song Contest history – four times in all, and that is what I call humiliating. They have also been placed last ten times, which is also a record.