First today, let me congratulate my fellow Norwegians on the 17th of May, the National Day of the country, also called Constitution Day. My good wishes also go to the some fifty thousand Pakistani-Norwegians, plus all the other immigrants, refugees, and foreigners, one million in all in a total population of five and a half million in a little land far to the north, not as cold as one might think thanks to the Gulf Stream, the warm current that warms up the Atlantic Ocean and Scandinavian waters. The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico; well, now Trump says it should be called the American Gulf.

The Gulf Stream has less effect on Svalbard Island, the northernmost part of Norway, in the Barents Sea, closer to the North Pole than the mainland. There are only two and a half thousand inhabitants on Svalbard, most of them living in the town of Longyearbyen. A week ago, the last coal mine was closed, after a one-hundred-year history, having been the soul of Longyearbyen, but now it has become environmentally and politically unacceptable. The coal industry was important for long, but now it is only the Russian settlers in Barentsburg who continue some mining activity on Svalbard. The future lies in fishing, Arctic research, tourism, media work, and some new forms of on-land and offshore mining for oil, gas, and minerals. Already today, it is possible to carry out studies and research for university degrees in Longyearbyen, supported by distance education contact with the University of Tromsø on the mainland.

A few years ago, I remember that the son of the then EU Ambassador to Pakistan, about a decade ago, the Frenchman Jean-Francois Cautin, was pursuing a degree in Longyearbyen, enjoying the stay and saying he did not feel cut off from the rest of the world in a remote town. His parents took advantage of travelling from Pakistan to Svalbard to visit........

© The Nation