For several years the Nordic countries have dominated the top spots on the UN’s World Happiness Report. I decided to find out the truth behind the lauded “Nordic lifestyle” by persuading 350 Norwegians to tell me about their lives… on tape. Almost without exception, they described how great it was to live in Norway. I listened politely … and then I asked them to tell me the truth. What they told me will shock you… In 2019 I interviewed over 350 people in Oslo, Tromso, Svalbard and a total of fifteen cities across Norway. I also travelled to over 50 smaller locations, including Sogndalstrand, Averoy, Romsdalen and more. The conversations were recorded. I interviewed the Prime Minister, doctors, teachers, students, scientists, hotel workers and people from all walks of life. I persuaded them to tell me the truth of what life is like in Norway. Over 500,000 words of transcripts and hundreds of hours of recordings. This is a behind the scenes look at some of those conversations and locations. All footage and conversations in this documentary were recorded by myself. Certain details of these edited excerpts have been disguised and answers replaced by voice actors. The audio distortion and drop off is inherent to the recordings and is necessary to retain their anonymity. My book series ‘The Secret Norwegian’ contains the original disguised and redacted transcripts. I hope that somebody daring to reveal the truth will make it easier to reject the unspoken ‘rules’ of oppression: Janteloven … not only in Norway but in the whole of Scandinavia. A Norwegian oral history 2018 -2020, in the words of Norwegians themselves.

Filmed and Directed by Anthony King Music by James Sanger Copyright Anthony King 2019 – 2023