Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

From the moment they met, Jonas knew that Viktor was girding himself for a decisive strike against the automobile and above all against what he called road traffic’s ‑ of the cities. Their target was chosen with care. Was there one spot in Oslo which illustrated the whole society’s lack of resolve and want of co-ordinated planning and also told an outsider pretty much everything about the Norwegian cultural mentality? Yes, there was: Rådhusplassen — the Town Hall Square — not for nothing the natural last stop on the Norwegian version of the Monopoly board, as well as the most expensive property.

Since a lot of people have already forgotten, I’m sure, that there was a time when all Norwegian shops closed at five p.m. and there were no newspapers on Sundays, it seems necessary to remind readers of how Oslo’s Town Hall Square looked at the time when Viktor Harlem planned to put a spoke in as many wheels as possible. Some have most likely forgotten the dominant presence of a huge and fully operational shipyard right next door to the Town Hall, and the minor, cartoon-style detail of the never-ending goods train escorted by a man with a red flag and a whistle, which caused traffic jams every single day as it chugged slowly across the square. A few may even have managed to suppress the worst memory of all: that for decades the fjord was separated from the town by a six-lane carriageway cutting right across this charming part of the city. To Viktor Harlem, the Town Hall Square epitomised the very worst of all civic stupidity. What, he demanded to know, was the absolute height of lunacy? They build the city’s finest building on the city’s finest site. And then what do they do? After filling the mid-section of the area between the harbour and the Town Hall with splendid fountains and lovely sculptures, they filled the remaining space with cars. They built a grand square, then dumped a whole load of rubbish in it.

Right from the start the authorities had, of course, been considering plans to channel traffic through a tunnel running under the square. And did anything come of it? The way Viktor saw it, this said everything about Norway. After all, how was it that in a country where bridges were built to just about any island with more than ten people living on it, though with little or no economic benefit, and where tunnels of record-breaking length were blown through mountains here, there and everywhere in next to no time, and to hell with the cost — how was it that such a country was incapable of building something as glaringly essential as a tunnel to bypass this magnificent square, Norway’s face to the world. We said no to Europe, but for thirty years we allowed a European E-road, the main artery from the south carrying tens of thousands of cars every day, to run right through the capital’s front room.

Like hurricanes, demonstrations ought to be given a name, and the heretical triumvirate called their protest against Norwegian inertia after the artist responsible for the sculptures in the exhaust-choked middle of the square. The ‘Emil Lie Demonstration’ got under way in the middle of the rush hour one September evening in the early seventies, and created an unheard-of commotion. And who knows, perhaps Jonas Wergeland had a premonition of his future as the creator of the television series Thinking Big — a man who endeavoured to take as distanced a view as possible of his native land — as he screamed furiously in Anglo-Indian, while being sternly marched off by the police, that they had no bloody right to lay hands on a māyā shaman like Vinoo Sabarmati, the world-famous film director from Bombay.

Jonas ought possibly to have had an even earlier premonition of his future career in television, thanks to something he experienced with his grandmother when he was eight, an incident which might also explain why Jonas Wergeland did not think twice about laying his life on the line in the defence of a mere square in the city centre.

Until that day, Jonas had always regarded his maternal grandmother as a pretty ordinary granny. There were aspects to her character which were a mystery to him, it’s true, like the fact that she was quite liable to pay a lot of money for paintings which nobody wanted, or that she was sometimes wont to mumble incomprehensible sentences in English while making the V-sign with her fingers, but for the most part, as far as Jonas was concerned, she was an indomitable farmer’s wife who had moved from Gardermoen to the city, where she now sat in a throne-like armchair, attending to her main occupation: being a grandmother. To Jonas, Jørgine Wergeland was like a fireplace, a source of warmth, a person whom he liked being around. It was enough just to be with her. When he stepped through the door of the cigar-scented flat in Oscars gate he also slipped into a particular mood; it was like entering another world, another century, a sensation which was reinforced by the glitter and the faint tinkling of the fabulous crystal chandelier.

It was a Saturday evening, late on. Jonas was spending the night at his grandmother’s, and one of the great fringe benefits of staying at Granny’s was that you were allowed to stay up outrageously late. He had been supping bananas with cream and sugar when he happened, just by the way really, to ask his grandmother whether she didn’t get a bit bored in the evenings when she was on her own. Why didn’t she get a television? This was just around the time when television-viewing was becoming an everyday thing.

His grandmother’s response surprised him. She disappeared into the hall as if she were deeply offended. Jonas heard the murmur of her talking on the telephone, thought maybe she was sending for his parents. Then she reappeared and ordered him to put on his outdoor things. She was already wearing a hat which made Jonas think of something live, an animal or a bird. ‘I’m going to show you something better than television,’ was all she said. At moments like this Jonas could see that his mother was right. Once, when there had been a picture of Winston Churchill in the newspaper she had laughingly pointed out to him that it could easily have been a picture of his Granny’s face.

How could anyone have missed seeing it? Over the past couple of decades, few lives have been subjected to as much scrutiny as Jonas Wergeland’s and yet no one has ever mentioned the occurrence which represents the foundation stone, as it were, of this edifice of stories.

It was the tail end of April, the sort of spring night that made you lift your chin and sniff the air like an animal. Granny cut through the palace gardens and down towards the city centre. Jonas had no idea where they were going, a state of ignorance which he took a moment to savour just before they reached the junction of Karl Johans gate and Universitetsgaten, a crossroads which, for him, had always been the very best spot in all Oslo. He had never forgotten the first time he had stood there, as a five-year-old, on the corner next to the Studenten ice-cream parlour with his grandmother; how she had pointed up the street towards the University and the Palace, then across to the National Theatre, while telling him, the child, what he was looking at, what these buildings contained, before letting her eager finger travel down to Fridtjof Nansens plass, then the Parliament building and finally, still patiently describing and explaining, turning his face the other way, back towards the National Gallery, thus completing the circle. From this spot, with one sweep of the eye one could take in the finest and most eminent buildings in Oslo, this was the capital’s bull’s eye. Every child should have the chance to stand with a grandmother at the junction of two main streets and have pointed out to them the central axes of their city as well, you might say, as the central axes of their lives. For Jonas this was as fundamental a lesson as learning the points of the compass — or looking down four arms of a fjord at the same time.