From Necessity to Choice: Social Change in Norway 1930-1980.

The article comments on social change in Norway during 1930-1980. A major difficulty arises in tracing social change over a given historical period. People must step into history at what will inevitably be an arbitrary point in time in the sense that conditions at the beginning of a period inevitably will be colored by what went on before. This is particularly striking in the case of Norway in and around 1930. The years corresponding to the First World War represented an economic boom in Norway, since its exports were in great demand by the warring nations. But the bubble burst in 1920 and from then until well into the 1930s, the economy went into a decline. During the late 1920s and 1930s, Norway experienced a return to the primary sector, after an earlier period during which industry and services had grown at the expense of the primary sector. Here it is important to distinguish between what the figures used by economists in their construction of economic history show, and what people learn by looking at information concerning individuals and households. The growth in the Norwegian economy, when measured in monetary units, continued to take place in industry and services, but the primary sector did not lose population to the rest of the economy in a corresponding fashion.