I've been to Hell and back... twice

Hell is a small town approximately 30 km from Norway’s second largest city Trondheim. There isn’t much there to be honest. It’s adjacent the airport and consists of a small mall and car park that has a sort of blue theme to it, a few dozen houses and a railway station that has definitely seen a bit more traffic in times gone by.

Hell Shopping Centre - Devil Outfit optional

 I’ve actually spent a lot of time in Norway over the last four months. That is because despite living in Sweden, I am not working on a single project based anywhere but Norway; and that’s a common theme for most people in the office. Why not live and work in Norway then. Well, it works like this. We (in Sweden) are to Norway like a call centre in India and a production line in China are to the Western World… cheap. Yes that’s correct, Sweden is being used as a source of cheap labour. If you had told me that several months ago I would not have believed you - Sweden does not exactly have a reputation for being cheap, it isn’t trust me. However it just so happens that our neighbour… coincidentally given its independence by Sweden as late as 1905, is currently riding a boom and has overtaken Sweden in many ways, labour rates being among one of them. This therefore makes it viable for foreign based companies (like us) to use their pool of ‘cheap’ labour to undercut the local Norwegians. It’s called the global market economy. As a result, many Swedish based companies have set up shop (in paper only) in Norway and are offering their services are very competitive prices on the local market.

 

Lamp at dodgy Norwegian Hotel - Kristiansand

I work in the Soil and Water team for my company, which as always will remain anonymous and will be referred to simply as U*S. Working in the soil and water industry in Norway is ironic in itself as Norway doesn’t have any soil – well there doesn’t seem to be much on the coast where I’ve been working, and the authorities don’t care about water – they have too much of it. You therefore may be asking the question “What on earth do you do there then?” which I will answer simply as “Mind your bloody business, but we’re cheap so who cares”.

 

Typical work scene - somewhere on the Norwegian Fjords

Anyway, back to Hell. There is something else in Hell apart from the mall, houses and train station and it’s very large and very well hidden. So well hidden in fact I’m not too sure many of the locals even know of its existence. It is actually a piece of cold war heritage and due to its location being entirely underground, it is in amazing condition for its age. In the 1960’s, the Swedish Government, nervous about their supply lines throughout the Baltic being cut off in case the Soviets flexed their muscle, built a series of huge underground petroleum depots on the Norwegian coast. Most (if not all) have sat idle and unused for some time now and they are slowly being decommissioned. Which is of course where we come in. Well, if I say any more I’ll either be in trouble or recruited as a spy by Putin so I’ll spare any more details.

 

Underground at Hell... don't light a match

My trips to Norway have taken me literally all over the place really… I’ve done a ridiculous amount of flying and the sight of Swedish King and Queen and the tennis player Björn Borg welcoming me back to Sweden at Arlanda airport has become a common sight.

One of my clients in Norway particularly likes my visits… because it’s always sunny when I’m there. Apart from my first hour on my first work trip to Norway when it poured down – this coincided with the pilot parking the plane on one side of Trondheim Airport away from the arrival gates, and forcing us hapless passengers to walk around the entire mass of airport buildings before we were allowed inside sopping wet, barely a drop has fallen from the sky. It’s actually been remarkably warm at times. Locals have commented frequently that this is not normal behaviour from Norwegian weather (I know I was there 15 years ago and it rained a lot), but I guess I have just been lucky recently. In a few weeks, I plan to cycle to Bergen (supposedly Europe’s wettest city) for a weeks exercise, I’m sure the weather will then turn to custard then, it definitely has in Stockholm!

 

Me... working for once. Well, I have a hard hat and clip board.