(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[Lindberg case] "You should have beaten!"
The about 50 year old man speaks Østfold dialect. The threat came this weekend just three weeks ago. Odd F. Lindberg and his wife Marith walk across the parking lot outside the Nordby Center in Sweden after shopping for food.
Even not abroad, Lindberg in 2006 will be at peace for aggressive Norwegians. The disputed seal catch report from Spring 1988 and the nicknames "Sel-Judas", "country falcon" and "quisling" have not yet been forgotten.
The powerful man extends his right hand in a blow straight to the temple of the Ministry of Fisheries' former seal hunting inspector. Lindberg quickly jerks his head back – the clenched fist hits the glasses and the nose instead. The glasses thaw in the asphalt right next to the car. One of the spectacle lenses is broken. The attacker runs back to his car and drives off.
- I do not want to report such. I do not want to be perceived as a complainant, Lindberg says today.
Take the case
We meet him at home in the house outside Fredrikstad. A few months ago, he and his wife moved back after twelve years abroad in Sweden. They have been low, the threats have been many. But now they have decided to tell their story in Ny Tid. The first time we meet Odd and Marith Lindberg is at the Old Town Conditori in the center of Fredrikstad. The same café where Lindberg has met people who have threatened his life several times recently.
Killing threats do not come from the regular Norwegian. We think. Or as Nils Torsvik, editor-in-chief of Fiskaren, says:
- I do not think there are so many who want such strong opinions about Lindberg today. The seal hunt is now conducted without much public debate. The catching methods have been improved, and there is a widespread recognition in Norway that we should tax marine mammals. I therefore believe that Lindberg will not face such strong reactions if he moves back to Norway, says Torsvik.
But Lindberg can document another story. As late as December, a muscular man walked over to him in the middle of the room at Old Town Conditori and exclaimed, rubbing his hands:
'If I meet you alone in the evening, I'll take you. I look forward."
Lindberg saw the license plate on the car and found the name of the owner. He reported the threat, but the police closed the case.
At Lindberg it's cold. The house is now run down, partly because it is old and has been left unused for many years. But also because vandals have destroyed the roof, windows and fixtures.
- Now we have made the decision that this is where we will stay. We love Norway and want to live here, says the insulted seal hunting inspector.
Odd F. Lindberg has become a term in modern Norwegian history. With the help of the state, he and his family were in practice chased out of Norway. 18 years after the disputed tour with M / S Harmony, he is back. But to what?
- It is tough to have to back off all the time for those who challenge and pursue you. Every day I get remarks like "shut up, I know who you are. You have endangered Norway's reputation. You are a traitor ", says Lindberg.
- Do you regret anything?
- No nothing.
- But if you in 1988 had known how much noise and threats would come, would you do the same thing again?
- Yes, I would do the same. I have only been concerned with informing as conscientiously as possible about what I have seen.
- So you did not make any mistakes?
- Yes, of course. I could have been far more tactical, especially towards the media. I was not aware that they were more looking for person than cause, so I was an easy prey, I was untrained. Today I would respond differently, think strategically. But I could not know that as an inspector at the time. I was simply naive, Lindberg answers.
Not any more. Now he and his wife have engaged a security company to look after them, while also installing internal and external surveillance.
Lindberg was given the role of a national enemy in Norway after he pointed out in 1988 what he believed to be illegalities during the seal capture. Abroad, he has been considered a hero.
British writer and filmmaker Stephen Mills, who has made nature films for BBC Wildlife, stated in 1990 that Odd F. Lindberg was "The Rushdie of the North". Mills compared the threats to Salman Rushdie with the threats that caused Lindberg to move from Norway:
"A nation with a complex that has made Odd Lindberg the most hated man since Quisling," he said.
security police
- We still experience that someone does not want us back, but there are also many who support us and are positive that we have moved back home, Lindberg says.
His history of seal hunting shook Norwegian as well as the international community. With the help of the state, he and his family went wild. They fled to a life of exile at a secret address in Sweden. There, Swedish security police were called in, and the Lindberg family was taken care of around the clock. They still have a secret address.
He is in regular contact with the police and gives numbers on cars that keep an eye on them.
The story begins in 1987 when Lindberg got the opportunity to join the ship "Harmoni" on seal hunting in Vestisen – the drift ice outside East Greenland. It was the same ship that he was to return to the following year, but then as the Ministry of Fisheries' inspector.
Until the voyage in 1988 Lindberg was regarded as a recognized and respected polar whiter. Among other things, he had an agreement to deliver reports to Aftenposten from the first Harmony tour:
Norwegian media at this time referred to Lindberg as "researcher". Lindberg had broad experience from the Arctic. He made documentaries and worked as a journalist, writer and photographer.
There was a lot of wind around Lindberg in 1986, the year when Norway celebrated that it was 75 years since the polar hero Roald Amundsen managed to reach the South Pole. When Monica Kristensen tried to copy the feat in winter 1986 / 1987, Lindberg was one of the supporters. In June 1986 tells Aftenposten's journalist excited about the cabin in Polaris V, where Kristensen and Lindberg tell about the million plans for the Antarctic voyage: researcher, Odd F. Lindberg.
And when Kristensen went on his much-talked-about Sydpol journey, it was Lindberg's Norwegian media contact for comment. "The Norwegian Amundsen expert", Lindberg was referred to as in the Aftenposten. The Norwegian news agency NTB sent a comment to all the country's editors 12. December 1986. It was written by Odd F. Lindberg, and the title was "Respect secured Amundsen South Pole."
In the last few years before the famous journey as a seal inspector, Lindberg was closest to a people hero. It was Lindberg who launched the idea for the Amundsen exhibition at the Ski Museum on the occasion of the 75 anniversary. As early as the middle of the 1970 century, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry had contacted Lindberg to arrange an international exhibition about Amundsen.
Lindberg was then also raised near the Amundsen homestead in Østfold, and had devoted many years of his life to the polar hero. He wrote books about Amundsen, and these were translated into Swedish.
But then everything changed. The next journey of "Harmony" ended the harmony once and for all. Lindberg went from being a hero to a people's enemy.
From 12. March to 11. April 1988 he left again for seal fishing at Vestisen, but now he was appointed as the Ministry of Fisheries Inspector. During the inspector's stay at "Harmony", he carefully noted down what he saw. He took just over 5000 photos during the month-long sailing trip outside Greenland. And he submitted a report on 33 pages to the Ministry of Fisheries. In comparison, the previous seal catch reports on the 1980 number were often below one page. Some reports were on a couple of lines, in practice a report that one had a good trip.
Lindberg's report was registered in the Ministry of Fisheries' archives on 11. July 1988. It was immediately stamped, even though the ministry had announced in advance that the report would be public. The report sent shock waves through the ministry, which was immediately put into emergency.
Lindberg, on the other hand, believed that the report should belong to the public sphere – and therefore sent it to the newspaper Tromsø, which printed it immediately after the ministry had removed it from the public eye. That was when the commotion began. Lindberg was referred to as "Sel-Judas" in VG. The children were called Quisling pups. Swastikas were painted on the house. As many as eight lawsuits followed in the wake of the report.
In 1992, Avisa Tromsø was convicted by Norwegian courts for publishing Lindberg's report. However, the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg overturned this judgment in 1999 for reasons of freedom of expression.
It turns out that the content of Lindberg's report was not very different from what previous inspectors had reported about the shooting and other violations of the regulations. Eva Munk-Madsen, who participated as a seal-catching inspector at Arnt Angel in Vestisen in 1987, had reported that at least three cases had been shot at seals in the sea. She also reported on episodes where the protected seal was shot. A lot of damage was also reported in 1985. Common to these reports was that none of them led to police reporting.
In a message from NTB the 10. February 1989 points out that Lindberg deviates from what others have reported on only two points. No other inspector should have claimed that the seals were floated alive, and no one else has claimed that the trappers have intentionally inflicted the harness on the seals.
- I reported what I saw, and I could also document my claims with photos and film. As an inspector, the state should believe my words, and initiate necessary investigations if I make allegations of illegality, Lindberg says today.
But the state chose to turn its back on Lindberg. Even the country's foreign minister, Thorvald Stoltenberg, got involved in the case. He personally called Lindberg home to make him turn around. And in 1989 he sent the government lawyer to NRK to stop Lindberg's films from Vestisen.
Not an opponent
But for those who read Lindberg's report from 1988, it turns out that he was not against Norwegian seals:
"I assume that Norwegian seal fishing will continue to go unabated in the future, and I will not make a decision here or not," Lindberg writes.
He has no comments on the method of killing and the regulations, as they can hardly be better designed. The actual problems surrounding the killing are that the regulations are easily broken ”.
The problem he pointed out was not the seal catch itself, but the fact that time pressure means that the seal catchers do not always comply with the regulations. Therefore, in the report, he proposes several changes to "make it easier to put your finger on clear abuse".
According to the Commission's report in 1992, the catch regulations in Norway were changed. At several points, today's rules have been changed in line with Lindberg's proposal, but without the seal of capture being granted any public honor for this process.
In connection with a meeting in the Northern Lights Planetarium in Tromsø, in February 1999, Lindberg was in many ways rehabilitated in the Norwegian press. In several media he was positively mentioned, and even a few months earlier a Fiskaren had a leader who called for "a open-minded debate" also about seal hunting. Yet today he lives in fear.
- Do you think the reactions would have been as strong on such a seal catch report in 2006?
- Yes, maybe worse. Norwegian nationalism has become more aggressive in recent years. But at the same time, the media has become more nuanced, more critical also of the state's version.
READ MORE ABOUT THIS IN THE PAPER EDITION OF MODERN TIMES NO 6 – 2006. It is available for purchase in most kiosks, grocery stores and petrol stations.
