Anniversary. Is there a more faithful reader and subscriber in Norway than Einar Krogh Grimsgaard (84), the veteran of the Socialist People's Party (SF), so SV? Hardly many.

In just over two weeks Grimsgaard has been a paying subscriber Orientering, later New Time, for a full 60 years. Not only has he kept the newspaper since the first regular edition of Orientering came out 19. February 1953. He has in his living room and associated rooms also the complete vintages of boats Orientering and Ny Tid, which he still gets home in the mailbox at Nesodden every week.

- I liked the newspaper as soon as it came out in 1953. I was involved in foreign policy, and Orientering was, after all, the only newspaper that questioned what happened, says Grimsgaard, where he sits with two bound vintages of Orientering and the latest New Time ahead of him on the dining table.

Facsimile: New Time February 1, 2013.

Trial version of Orientering, from December 1952, he also quickly got hold of. And even as he worked two years as an architect for Norad in Nairobi, Kenya, at the beginning of the 1970 century, he got the newspaper read weekly in East Africa. Now he looks forward to the celebration of Orienterings 60th anniversary at the Literature House on February 7, there earlier OrienteringContributors such as Torild Skard, Erling Borgen, Lars Alldén, Hilde Bojer, Lise Winther, Tore Linné Eriksen and Gro Standnes will be present:

- It will be great to see so many celebrities again, says Grimsgaard. He also showed up when Ny Tid celebrated its five-year anniversary as a news magazine two years ago. In addition to Ny Tid, he only likes newspapers Dagens Næringsliv and Dagsavisen.

Like Galtung

Grimsgaard is called a "watch SF". Not only did he join from the first spade roof for SF in the spring of 1961. He started his radical political work back in the late 1940s, before Orienteringcircuit was intended.

Grimsgaard then studied mathematics at the University of Oslo and ended up in the same colloquium group as the two year younger Johan Galtung. Together with, among others, later Professor Erik Alfsen, they became actively involved in international issues.

OVERALL: Grimsgaard presents his newspapers: Latest issue of Orientering (left) from 13 August 1975, first edition of Ny Tid – in which occupied Orientering – two days later, as well as New Time from last Friday.

The plan was to become a mathematician, if he became the best in the litter. Only Norway's later math student, Alfsen, came before him for the exam. Galtung and Grimsgaard came equally in writing, with 1,5 in grade. But the later peace researcher and debater Galtung had an advantage during the oral exam. For he was a rhetorician even then:

- Galtung beat me with a tenth in mathematics orally. So then I became an architect, says Grimsgaard.

Thus, the choice fell on architectural studies in Trondheim, but the political activism from the Blindern era he took with him. He helped start the student group Radical Socialists.

- It was a tough time politically for those who were radical in foreign policy. What is special about the group I belonged to at the time is that everyone is still an equally radical socialist. No one has taken a right turn.

- Because not everyone from the SF / SV era has remained on the left, or has it at least taken the step to the Labor Party?

- Yes, but I remember well when people like Paul Chaffey, now the Conservatives, and Raymond Johansen, now the Labor Party, as young people started in the party and joined SV's foreign policy committee. I immediately understood that these were actually Labor Party people. So the fact that they later go to the Labor Party, or like Chaffey to the Conservative Party, was not surprising, rather natural, says Grimsgaard.

NATO bombing

He believes there are several parallels between the issues at Orienterings birth in 1953 and the ones Norway faces in 2013: The split at the time was primarily about Norway's NATO membership, now it is Norwegian military effort – or war – in Mali, Libya and Afghanistan.

- And the right wing in the Labor Party is no better today than then, Grimsgaard adds. He is referring to Jens Stoltenberg, Minister of Justice Grete Faremo and Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide.

- The difference between then and now is that the discussions have a different value. At that time it was a denomination of the Cold War. It was on top then Orientering started, but I am as much an opponent of NATO today as I was then, says Grimsgaard.

At the same time, he emphasizes that the Vietnam War meant that he could no longer declare himself an eternal pacifist. Grimsgaard doubted SV's choice to support NATO's bombing of the Milosevic regime in the spring of 1999. But he opposed the Libyan war. And he still wears the Palestine scarf. Grimsgaard was central when SV's radical Palestine statement was adopted in 1977.

During the 60 years since the first edition of Orientering – which was formed on the basis of the radical wing of the Labor Party – a lot has happened: In 1961, the Socialist People's Party emerged, after Orienteringcircle was excluded from the Labor Party. OrienteringThe circle's opposition to NATO, atomic bombs and armaments became too great for a Labor Party with Haakon Lie. In 1975, SF was closed down, and SV continued the legacy – while Orientering was closed down and occupied in Ny Tid.

Various political battles have been won and some lost, while foreign policy debates have taken new forms, while the wall between East and West has fallen. Grimsgaard believes the changes have been both natural and correct:

- It is only natural that things change. I myself supported, after much thought, that SF should go over to the association SV. And that Orientering should go over to New Time. There is no fixed iron bar between the newspapers then and now, nor should there be, but there is clearly a common thread from Orientering in 1953 and to Ny Tid of today, says Grimsgaard.

He reads each issue critically. He has, for example, noticed in Ny Tid's mainly a few weeks ago about LO leader Flåthen, who is criticized both for being involved in the arms industry and for the oil industry in Lofoten.

facsimile: Orienterings first edition 19 February 1953.

- Flåthen did not understand the problem in the case when he answered. But I did, Grimsgaard smiles wisely. – It is clear that Flåthen should be aware of his responsibility as LO leader and resign from the board of KongsbergGruppen. In my time, the "broken rifle" was still a natural symbol for working people. This is clearly no longer the case, he says.

Stef-election

Ahead of the celebration of the 60th anniversary, he advises Ny Tid not to choose the alleged articles. He believes some of Ny Tid's articles from opposition figures in Cuba have been.

- It is important to avoid assertiveness. Rather seek it for discussion. That's why I do not read some other daily newspapers on the left. I still notice this assertion, says Grimsgaard.

As a grown man, he often discussed politics with young SUF (ml) members in the late 60's, but he did not understand them when they joined the AKP (ml), broke out of SF /Orientering in 1969 and formed its own newspaper. In practice, Grimsgaard stood on Sigurd Evensmos and Orienterings line to seek the "third way" between the power blocs, but without falling into the trap of cultivating totalitarianism like Stalin or Mao, as was otherwise popular for young radical students to do in the 70's.

In the Palestine issue, for example, the AKP (ml) was most concerned with fighting for its own ideological allies. Here, too, a clear distinction

- For many today, it is perhaps difficult to see the differences between the "third way", the SF line and more left-wing directions?

- No. I can not see that at all. The differences are then crystal clear, Grimsgaard answers.

Grimsgaard was also the pragmatist, who worked for the former NKP leader Reidar Larsen to become parliamentary leader of SV in the Storting after the merger:

- I had doubted that a party formation was right in 1975. There was a lot of disagreement about whether we should include the Communists, but when we had first decided that they should be included in the new party, I thought it was right to give Reidar Larsen , the place as parliamentary leader in the parliamentary group instead of Finn Gustavsen. When I explained my position, it agreed that others were in favor of the same. Gustavsen was furious at me and asked what I had done, but I still think it was the right decision, Grimsgaard concludes.

He is probably ready to discuss that decision and others at the House of Literature on Thursday 7 February from 18 pm and into the evening. ■

- Paternity leave goes beyond mother

Torild Skard believes that today's men forget that equality is not the same as women's liberation. She is playing up for a new debate in the voting year 2013.

BY TORBJØR TUMYR NILSEN torbjorn@nytid.no

Female Kamp. – I have difficulty breathing when people talk about Norway being the «gender equality country».

That is what Torild Skard says, while she is preparing her post for the 60th anniversary celebration Orientering. Skard is a trained pedagogue and psychologist and has been a parliamentary representative for SV. She has fought for women's and children's rights through politics and in the UN system, and has been director of women's issues at UNESCO. She has also been the Regional Director of UNICEF in West and Central Africa. Today she is the leader of the Norwegian Women's Affairs Association.

Skard meets SV leader Audun Lysbakken and SV politician Gülai Kutal for a conversation about the role of women, during Orienteringanniversary at Litteraturhuset in Oslo on 7 February.

ENGAGED: Torild Skard believes that many of today's politicians mix a diluted concept of gender equality with the fight for women's rights.

- I have gone from being a writer in Orientering to prepare women's policy for SV, to now through my work in the women's association to be partly in opposition to the red-green government's women's policy, says Skard.

She believes the current government, led by very progressive men, promotes more equality than women's issues.

- Gender equality is not the same as women's liberation. The concept has become very diluted and in politics one often ignores the real differences between women and men, whether they are biologically or socially determined, for example in connection with maternity leave, says Skard.

- You are welcome to give men a 12-month father quota, if women also get it. But now there is a tendency for the father's leave to go beyond the mother. Especially with the child in mind, we must not pretend that there is no difference between mother and father in the child's first year of life, says Skard.

Male Dominated

Skard is also in the middle of planning the anniversary for women's suffrage in Norway, but:

- I'm looking forward to Orienteringanniversary, says Skard.

She notes that the presentation of OrienteringThe circle and the newspaper often give the impression that only men contributed. She was herself the woman who probably wrote the most for the magazine.

- And it was a male-dominated environment, but there were some ladies there as well. We must remember that in the early years Orientering started, it was ice age for equality. It was the great housewife era, and the Labor Party reckoned that they reached the women through their spouses. In general, the working women were happy to be at home and get rid of the heavy industrial work, says Skard. She says that it was not until the 1960s that politicians began to ask themselves where the woman's place should be. Then there would have been a need for more labor, says Skard.

At first, the debate was mostly about social policy, and it was not until the second wave of women's issues, in the late 1960s, that the women's struggle became more explicit. Then women's liberation and the struggle against the oppressive patriarchy became important concepts. According to Skard, this match is not over yet.

- The impression is given that there is nothing more to fight for when it comes to the «gender equality country». But there is still a long way to go.

- But Norway has come a long way in this area, hasn't it?

- Yes, we have come a long way in several areas compared to other countries, but it is still a long way to go before we can say we are really equal and that the women's struggle is over.

- What do women still need to fight for?

- I will come back to this Orienteringanniversary on February 7, but it is about the fact that we still carry with us patriarchal traditions without us necessarily being aware of it. There is still a downgrading of women's lives and work, she concludes without being specific.

But she promises to be specific to those who come and listen to her on February 7. ■

PhD on Orientering

newspaper Orientering place in Norwegian post-war history will be the subject of a new doctoral degree. Erling Borgen confesses: – What I learned from journalism, I learned in Orientering, says Borgen to Ny Tid.

BY TORBJØR TUMYR NILSEN torbjorn@nytid.no

Orientering. – I'm looking forward to Orienteringanniversary and is proud to be able to contribute.

It says documentary filmmakers and earlier Orienteringjournalist Erling Borgen, when we call him just over a week before the anniversary. On February 7, he will sit in a panel with Ny Tid writer Mina Adampour and Hallgeir Langeland (SV) and discuss the party SV's government participation in the last eight years, as well as various strategies for the parliamentary elections this autumn.

CASTLE: Erling Borgen will not leave Orienteringthe ideas die, but have a new, foreign policy debate.

- SV has in reality been in a government that has administered the war in Afghanistan for eight years. It will be exciting to hear what lessons the party has learned and what can be the way forward, says Borgen.

He believes that with SV in government has marginalized the Norwegian peace movement without political representation in democratic Norway.

Sociologist, media researcher and former Ny Tid journalist Birgitte Kjos Fonn will hold a doctoral dissertation on Friday 15 February on Orientering – The Rebels' newspaper at the University of Oslo.

Against closure

The doctoral degree is based on Fonn's book of the same name from 2011. She takes the historical doctoral degree only four days before it is 60 years since the newspaper came out with its first issue.

- Orienterings history is an exciting and important part of Norwegian post-war history. By looking at Orienteringcircle, gets an insight into political and journalistic currents that characterized Norway for several decades in the 1900th century and until today.

- Why did the small newspaper become so important?

AGAINST THE USSR. Orientering was critical of the Soviet Union, as well as the United States. Here the newspaper protests against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

- It became a place where opposition figures could speak on the side of what was common in foreign policy. A place where radicals could seek the public, now a larger audience and with it be something more than a closed debate forum for a few insiders, says Kjos Fonn.

Erling Borgen still remembers with sadness that Orientering was discontinued in 1975 and became part of SF / SV's party newspaper project Ny Tid, which only in 2006 became completely free from party political ownership and again became independent.

The closure in 1975 was difficult for Borgen and several of his colleagues to swallow:

- I was strongly against the change and still think it was a serious mistake. There were few in the editorial office who supported the idea that a free, radical and independent newspaper should become a party organ governed by ideological documents. ■

This is the introduction to the main issue in the weekly magazine Ny Tid's issue 05 01.02.2013. Read more in this week's issue, on sale in stores across the country. Get the edition sent for free by subscribing (Abo@nytid.no)or click here.