The Prime Minister’s speech at The Government’s luncheon for Iceland’s President

As delivered (checked against delivery)

President Halla Tómasdóttir
Your Majesties
Your Royal Highnesses
Excellencies,

It is such a great pleasure to welcome you here – on behalf of the Norwegian Government – on day two of the State Visit – and as I told you, Madam President, on the other side of the building I have my residence, where I see my family – and now today, when Iceland is here, I see “my extended family” in you; we are brought together in history.

Now, as the weather has become so nice lately, I walk to the office and I walk through the park, and I can think of no more beautiful scene now than the Norwegian and Icelandic flags side by side. I think the colors, how they mix and, as we saw yesterday, Your Majesties, how it all looked in front of the Royal Palace – it was a strong testimony.

So, in short, I would salute Iceland through you, Madam President – by saying that Iceland is our history. There are many versions of that; I think we heard beautiful words by His Majesty and you yesterday about our common history.

But the fact is that you wrote down the history – your ancestors – and it became our history and it became our identity. – While we, Norwegians, we were busy with other things, fighting about land, ships, women and politics. – Some still do, I regret that. But you wrote it down. And on the way coming in to greet you yesterday, all the guests were passing the bust of Snorre Sturlason outside His Majesty's office – and, that’s such a fascinating story, and there is a children's version of Snorre’s the Kings’ Sagas – which my wife and I keep up in the mountains at our cabin – to read for our children. It was the most popular book every time we came up; can we read the Olav Trygvasson chapter, or can we read the Olav Haraldsson chapter, they asked, and now we read for our grandchildren, that is absolutely fantastic. And we read about their identity – and our identity.

And it's all about culture; as I told the Foreign Minister yesterday, I have this tradition – you know – when I come to Iceland; I have these early mornings because we have the benefit of a couple of hours extra when we wake up early. Then I go down to the heitur pottur, to the Sundhöll Reykjavikur – that’s where the ambassador takes me.

So, it happened once I was there, I was sitting – now, this was when I was Foreign Minister – I was sitting along two men – and it was 40 degrees, close to boiling – and we started to talk and those two men turned out to be the editor of Morgunbladid and the archbishop of Reykjavík. So, it really tells us about what it means, what luck you can have when you go there in the morning. And that's what I appreciate, really – and let me be personal; when you stand there at 6:30am in the shower with Icelanders of all sizes – to put it that way – you really get close to that common culture and the way you are safeguarding it; you are safeguarding the language and you have taken care of so much of our identity that is admired far beyond the Norse part of the world.

I think we are really impressed and we admire the way Iceland is carrying that – and you know, as the new President, you carry it with the same kind of – as His Majesty said yesterday – there is again a woman president; and how much that is needed today; to have a clear voice from the Head of State, who will talk about identity, who will talk about diversity and not be put under any heel. And I think that is something we strongly salute.

There is the ocean, there is the Arctic, there is everything that we work on together – Norway and Iceland – and I think that we are reminded of – as our two foreign ministers work on – that, you know, these are the days where we need to take care of the UN. We need to take care of some of the basic rules and conventions that give us freedoms. And we have to speak out about it because it has become an everyday current to turn it down. People try to be smart and say that we will not raise these issues because it may be looked at from a different angle from powerful people. Now, we need brave people who will not work that way.

I am very happy to work closely with the Government of Iceland. I was in Brussels on Monday, talking about how to protect that relationship, and I know your Prime Minister is in Brussels today. We coordinate, we exchange views afterwards, and this gives us also security. And there is so much coming together now – also within the new technologies, green technologies, new industries, and you are moving on to Trondheim tomorrow, to the technological hub there – so, things are really going in the right direction.

This is a special day, Madam President; not only because you are here but because we have the April 9^th. As His Majesty reminded us in his New Year speech – he is part of a generation that can remember what happened in 1940, when Nazi German soldiers were marching up the Karl Johan Avenue and Oslo was invaded. The royal family had the wise instinct to start their long flight and they became a symbol of resistance which still – I think – stands as a very strong and proud memory of our history.

The occupation lasted for five years. There are a few days more coming now and then we have the May 8th which is the Liberation Day, 80 years ago, and it is also the Veterans’ Day. We will mark that this year as we do every year, but of course 80 years is special.

I mention this today because we are reminded that this is not something we can take for granted. Just south of here we have full-fledged war going on, in Ukraine. We have hosted President Zelensky here in Oslo just a few weeks ago. We met him in Iceland last fall. So, these values are worth fighting for and they pay a terrible price. As the defense minister knows and as we know when we go in there, we come out pretty shell-shocked from what we see. And still they resist.

I think we now have Ukrainians in almost every Norwegian municipality, in more than 300 municipalities, close to 90,000 living there; but the people down there they are standing up for these values that we have to protect. And I think there is no better partner for us in these issues than Iceland. I am very happy to see that Iceland is part of this broad coalition now supporting Ukraine in every possible way that we can do.

Coming back to today, there are so many Icelanders we could salute. Thorir (Hergeirsson), of course, is one of them we have to remember; I was at the Olympics watching the women’s final where we won against France, in France, which is just an extraordinary experience. And Thorir has this sentence saying that success depends on “involvement and shared responsibility”. I think this is the balance – and this is what we really experience in our relationship, and you have also written about that, Madam President, in your book – you have written about the courage to make a change.

So, I would like to raise our glasses to this special relationship, to the extended family that we have across the Atlantic. You say “skál”, we say “skål”; I understand that "skál" comes from “the bowl”, and basically, in the old days we were kind of drinking from the same bowl. – We don't do that anymore – the pandemic, you know – but I would like to express my strong greetings to President Halla and to Björn; you are welcome to Norway and we really admire and appreciate our friendship. Skål! Skál! Thank you.