On a two-week trip to Norway that ended on Thursday, Idecided that the country was the only sane, trouble-free place on theplanet, a gorgeous retreat, as secure and peaceful as high-walledfjord, where people leave their laptops and car keys untended, neverlock their doors, and follow the ethic of cooperation they learned athousand years ago while sailing and fishing for cod in the harshNorwegian Sea.
In Norway I saw a country cushioned by oil money yet vividlyconscious of environmental change; communitarian if not socialist andyet brimming with energetic entrepreneurs; concerned aboutimmigration, yet still suffused with an ethic of welcome.
And now, not even Norway is safe. Which means that no place is.Which means that the society is under increasing pressure everywhere.
From what I saw, there is -- or was -- no more open and trustingplace left in the West, if not the world. And that made it tragicallyeasy for a madman or madmen to wreak havoc in Oslo this week.
Up and down the western Norwegian coast, I saw evidence of thealmost innocent openness and trust that so characterizes the cultureof the North.
In the busiest restaurant in Alesund, the picturesque capital ofthe cod-fishing industry, I did in fact see a woman rush off to run anerrand -- and leave her open laptop, car keys AND wallet on the bar.
When I pointed out to her that no one would be that casual inthe US, she shrugged and then smiled. "Maybe I shouldn't here, but Ido. It's Norway."
Farther north, where it is colder yet in the winter, people often leave the keys in their cars -- and their cars running -- while doingchores elsewhere.
The sense of trust extends to public behavior in public places.In the Hanseatic Museum in Bergen -- a 400-year-old wooden home filledwith priceless artifacts -- visitors are allowed to roam the premisesvirtually without supervision, and are allowed to open and closeclosets and doors with ancient paintings and hinges that would beencased in plastic or under armed guard elsewhere.
There have been occasional thefts in recent years from some ofthe 800-year-old wooden "stave" churches that dot the countryside, butthey are still largely approachable at all times of day and night.
In Oslo -- a national capital that still feels like an overgrownsmall town -- there is no thicket of bollards and guard shackssurrounding the government buildings.
And that made it so easy for a man with a witches' brew offertilizer chemicals to do his deed.
I'm sorry to say that while Oklahoma City was a horrible shock,it did not seem entirely foreign to the soil on which it wasperpetrated.
I know the age-old history of the Vikings, and they were afearsome and bloody lot, and Europeans further to the south used topray that the North Men would not ever come their way.
But that was so a millennium or more ago. The Oslo Rampage doesn'tseem in any sense Norwegian. Or it didn't until this week.