Climate change in Norway: Destabilized social imaginaries of welfare,growth,and nature in a rich oil state

Abstract

We explore ambiguities and conflicts attached to climate change, taking a narrative approach to analyse varying representations within a media article on oil drilling in new and ecologically fragile areas on the seabeds outside Northern Norway. We explore how two narrators actively negotiate dominant Norwegian social imaginary significations of the welfare state, economic growth, and nature protection, creating narratives to negotiate changes to wider cultural, economic, and ecological agendas, to cope with the liminality of climate change. Where earlier narrative approaches to climate change have tended to focus on the whats (for example the contents, structures, or sequences of climate change narratives), our approach focuses on the hows of climate change narratives, investigating climate change as a liminal phase and tracing how social imaginaries are destabilized through narrative work.

Whenever previously existing borders or limits are lifted away or dissolve into fundamental doubt, the liminal presents itself with a challenge:

How to cope with this uncertainty?

Who can lead us out of here?

How so?

What is my own role in this chaos?

- Bjørn Thomassen in Liminality and the modern

Climate change is an environmental issue that also has social and cultural dimensions. Nonetheless, its study has not adequately included social and cultural perspectives (Hulme, 2009; Urry, 2011; Arnold, 2018). In this study, we turn to social imaginary theory to explore a critical moment in Norwegian history – a conflict between Norwegian labour unions about the future of the oil industry. This moment engendered emergent narratives that reflect the many ambiguities arising from the pressing issue of climate change in a rich oil state. We look at a specific case where two unions under the same umbrella confederation entered a heated conflict about whether to open a new area for oil drilling in 2017. We coin the emergent narratives ‘liminal narratives’, as they surface in a liminal phase (climate transition) and condition (the oil workers’ roles and statuses at play), that do not necessarily take root.

Social imaginary theory can be instrumental in understanding why liminal narratives emerge and whether and how they prevail in the discourse. We argue that liminal narratives are signalled by relevant actors attaching new meanings to time and/or space and identity. Instead of turning to disputes over (scientific) knowledge, liminal narratives turn to various broader social imaginaries as resources, thus linking them to emotions, values, and identities.

Norway is an excellent case for exploring the de-stabilization of social imaginaries in a climate change or energy transition context. In the face of climate change, Norway experiences ambiguities at several levels. At a national level, the notion of the ‘Norwegian climate paradox’ has gained much attention from researchers across fields ranging from sociology (Norgaard, 2011), political science (Handeland and Langhelle, 2021), media studies (Eide et al., 2014) to literature studies (Rosenbæk, 2023). The fact that the country both aims to be a climate leader and is one of the world's largest exporter of oil and gas is at the core of the paradox. To account for the relative stability (Bang and Lahn, 2020) of the Norwegian climate paradox in facing climate change, formal structures and traditional power aspects are indeed important: studies have pointed at the separation of climate and oil in policy contexts (Bang and Lahn, 2020) – as well as the power of the ‘oil industrial complex’ (Sejersted, 1999).

Grace Blakeley's (2024) ‘Vulture Capitalism’ also offers a compelling framework to analyse the intricate relationship between state and capital in modern economies (Blakeley, 2024). Rather than viewing state control and capital control as separate entities, she argues, they are deeply intertwined, forming a complex system that simultaneously perpetuates economic inequality and environmental degradation. This perspective is interesting to explore within a Norwegian setting, given its tripartite ¹ system of governance, made up of the government, labour unions, and employers’ organizations. The governance system, which provides the most powerful unions and business organizations in Norway access to national policy making processes (Mildenberger, 2020: 70), has been credited with maintaining a high degree of equality among citizens, for bringing about a range of benefits and rights for workers, as well as for keeping unemployment rates low. The interests of the workers and the owners in maintaining the petroleum sector tend, however, to overlap, with the sector thus wielding ‘double representation’ and exercising strong influence both on the left and the right of the political spectrum. Thus, the very conditions that provide for strong social rights in Norway may also ‘complicate efforts to guarantee climate safety’ (Mildenberger, 2020: 78). However, given a more pronounced climate crisis, conflict arises from within the unions and the fragile compromises making up this balance are threatened.

To better understand the underlying conditions and dynamics that inform possible change and that might ultimately provide an avenue for climate action, we take into account how climate change is connected to (or disconnected from) Norwegian social imaginaries.

Theoretical approach

Social imaginaries are ‘the shared collective imagination distilled in specific institutions, which operates as the “glue” that holds a society together by being a representation of it’ (Varvarousis, 2019: 499). Such imaginaries are socially maintained by people within specific contexts through significations, ‘the entire set of tools, language, skills, norms, and values (…) everything that with or without formal sanctions, imposes ways of acting and thinking’ (Castoriadis 2010: 46 in Varvarousis, 2019). Such significations are embodied in specific institutions. As social imaginaries are subject to reflectivity, particularly in autonomous societies, they have the potential to change (Varvarousis, 2019).

In the context of the Greek crisis, Varvarousis (Varvarousis, 2019) theorizes that crisis forces relevant social imaginaries in a state of flux or liminality. Well-established social imaginaries are challenged or come into conflict with each other, and thus they must change. Through ethnographic fieldwork, Varvarousis studied processes of change in crisis ridden Greece and found that in the wake of crisis, new social imaginary significations had emerged. For instance, whereas pre-economic crisis imaginaries in Greece focused on ‘individualization’, ‘growth’, the ‘the public’, ‘consumerism’, ‘family,’ and ‘political party’, post-crisis imaginaries include ‘commons’, ‘degrowth,’ and ‘solidarity’. We here build on this ontological and theoretical approach but turn to a different ‘field’ for data – that of news stories, as they are presented in the drama of the moment – to consider how narratives in the public debate about the climate crisis may be similarly useful in understanding conditions for change.

The stubborn continuity of the Norwegian climate paradox has been linked to the hegemony of the oil industrial complex in Norway (Ytterstad, 2012), implying that not only structural, but also cultural and psychological aspects are involved. Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1993) identifies key values connected to the Norwegian national identity: ‘Connection to nature’, ‘A connection to rural life’, ‘Egalitarianism and Humanitarianism,’ and ‘Simplicity’. Kari Marie Norgaard (2011) argues that this set of values, which she coins ‘Mythical Norway’, may act as a ‘tool of order’ that is reinforced when people partake in rituals like mountain excursions, and as a ‘tool of innocence’ to assert that Norwegians are inherently nature loving (Norgaard, 2011). These functions can, indeed, serve to deflect attention from the problematic relationship between Norway's simultaneous commitment to climate science and its oil industry (Norgaard, 2011).

Looking more specifically at the question of ongoing oil extraction, Ingvild Straume (2017) points to four strongly established dichotomies that frame our thinking about this activity and that offer set narrative ‘options’ for the oil industry: (a) Brown growth versus green growth, the transition from oil to alternative energy sources; (b) ‘clean’ North Sea oil and gas versus ‘dirty’ coal; (c) the risk of Norway extracting oil versus extraction by other states; and (d) the economic feasibility of making expensive emissions cuts domestically versus making cheaper cuts abroad (21f). Straume underscores that all the options operate safely within the social imaginary of growth, which is difficult to alter.

These narrative functions operate to uphold the climate paradox, and the Norwegian social imaginary within which it is situated was certainly still relevant at the time of our 2017 case. Nonetheless, following the 2015 Paris Agreement, a growing challenge to the hegemony of the oil industry increased pressure to take climate change into account (Bang and Lahn, 2020). The adoption of the Paris Agreement significantly influenced Norwegian union discussions about climate change, particularly during the 2017 meeting of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LO), Norway's largest and most influential umbrella union and one of the major players in Norway's tripartite system (Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, 2017; Nergaard, 2020). As Norway grappled with its dual identity as both environmental leader and a major oil and gas producer, unions were compelled to confront the implications of international climate commitments on domestic industries. The Paris Agreement intensified debates within the labour movement about balancing economic growth and job security with the urgent need for environmental stewardship. Union representatives discussed strategies for a just transition that would protect workers in fossil fuel sectors while promoting sustainable development (Fagforbundet, 2017). This period marked a critical juncture where unions began actively negotiating the tensions between maintaining the welfare state – deeply tied to oil revenues – and embracing the transformative changes demanded by global climate initiatives (Ryggvik, 2010).

Destabilized imaginaries of growth and nature preservation

In Norway, traditional faultlines have long existed between the dimensions of ‘economic growth’ and ‘preservation of nature’ (‘vekst og vern') (Tjernshaugen et al., 2011). Such dimensions have been strongly connected with- and strengthened by the strong links between the Norwegian welfare system and its longstanding ‘tripartite’ system of cooperation between employer organizations, employee labour unions and the government. The case of climate change challenges this terrain, signalling a rupture in long stable structures in Norwegian political practice and discourse (Gullberg and Aardal, 2019) and representing a possible ‘discursive window’ for unions to take climate change into account (Houeland et al., 2020).

Connected to these, ‘the Norwegian oil adventure’ has been a significant narrative deeply ingrained in Norwegian culture (Simonsen, 2008; Ruud, 2019), portraying a story of how Norway successfully and democratically distributed the tremendous income generated from its abundant natural resources, considerably contributing to the renowned welfare system (Government.no, 2021). The oil adventure serves as a central element within the social imaginary of the Norwegian (welfare) state, encompassing both economic and social dimensions of a sustainable future. Economic growth through oil extraction and the preservation of nature have been reconciled in the third pillar of the UN Brundtland Commission's sustainability concept (United Nations, 1987), where nature is protected by carefully assessing the impacts of oil extraction on the local environment and employing scientific impact assessments (IAs), including on the future livelihood of fish and the risk of oil spills (Andersen, 2017). Such measures have been imagined to ensure a harmonious ‘co-existence’ between offshore petroleum activities and the natural surroundings (Ihlen, 2007).

Nonetheless, the burning of fossil fuels such as oil is a main source of CO₂ emissions, threatening societies and ecosystems globally. The climate crisis and emerging climate policies challenge and force the longstanding balancing act between nature and growth into a state of flux or ‘liminality’. Ambiguities arise at several levels, as the crisis reveals how Norway's economy, moral status, and oil-related employment sector are increasingly at risk. Such tensions are felt particularly hard within LO, particularly as the union organizes employees in the oil and gas sectors, among others.

We investigate the liminal narratives presented in a media article focused on oil drilling, within the context of a broader debate on climate change at the LO annual meeting in 2017, asking:

How do the narratives investigated demonstrate a shift in meaning attached to the pre-existing social imaginaries of growth and nature preservation in Norway?

A focus on the hows of liminal narratives enables us to better understand the strategic and unconscious acts of narrative production – as they are connected to changing broader (social, economic, ecological) contexts. Our objective is not to identify new imaginaries, but rather to observe the dynamics in action as existing imaginaries are destabilized. The study at hand highlights not only the specificities of the Norwegian case but is also relevant to studies of rich, democratic states heavily engaged in extractivist activities at home and abroad (Gubrium, 2024), such as the US, Canada, or France.

Liminal narratives

In this study, ‘liminality’ is approached as an ontological aspect – a focal point from which it is fruitful to examine crises and transitions cast between structure and actor (Thomassen, 2016; Varvarousis, 2019). The concept of liminality originates from studies of ritual and refers to the middle part of transition rituals (rites de passage) (Thomassen, 2016). Liminal narratives may thus reveal the emotional experiences of being ‘betwixt and between’ and can be unsettling, revelatory, or both. However, Thomassen suggests a broader use of the term in the social sciences and argues that liminality can be traced at various levels, including group, national, and civilizational (2016).

The term ‘liminal’ harkens back to the Latin word ‘limen’, meaning ‘threshold’. A state of liminality is one that is in transition between two phases, where participants are no longer in the old phase but have not yet begun the transition to a new phase, marking the completion of transition. Thus, liminal states have a quality of ambiguity or disorientation. In the context of the narratives or larger stories we tell about our lives, ‘liminal narratives’ occupy a similar transitional or in-between space, exploring concrete themes of change, transformation, or boundary-crossing. Study of the hows – on what goes on in this transitional stage – is fruitful for understanding processes of meaning making as well as historical change (Thomassen, 2016). In liminal situations, meaning making activity is intensified to make sense of and grapple with the arising ambiguities (Gubrium and Holstein, 2009), thus a focus on liminality also highlights narrative creativity and potential, which again can inform our understanding of the space of opportunity for change.

We argue here that the growing crisis of climate change has provoked such a liminal phase in Norway. Through narrative analysis, we explore how this crisis has, as a result, begun to shift social imaginary significations in emerging, ‘liminal’ narratives, where old rules and structures have begun to break down and new ones have not yet been established. More specifically, we trace the liminal narratives of climate change within a Norwegian context, exploring how the social imaginary significations of ‘economic growth’, ‘nature protection’ and ‘welfare’ are negotiated and destabilized in the narratives of two stakeholders – young unionists, in a featured debate about whether or not to open up for oil drilling in the environmentally fragile area of Lofoten, Vesterålen, and Senja archipelago (hereafter, LoVeSe), in Northern Norway.

Through a lens focused on liminality, we study changing narrative linkages within the context of the emerging crisis of pronounced global climate change, exploring the changing social imaginary significations attached to the production of Norwegian oil. For several decades, climate change has been analysed across fields like environmental communication, media studies, and journalism as a communication problem in which ‘language constructs the spaces in which different forms of political actions take place’ (Hulme in Flottum, 2017: xxi). Focus has primarily attended to the linguistic aspects of such communication, including how climate change and climate change narratives are framed. The literature has focused mostly on the structure and content of such narratives, analysing the whats of climate change by tracing its themes, ideas, words, and phrases that have emerged at both macro and micro/linguistic levels.

Such a focus on the whats of language limits, however, our ability to acknowledge the fluidity and impermanence of conceptions of reality. Studies that merely identify which media narratives on climate change are present at a particular moment may lead to ‘an underestimation of the import of latent meaning’ (Ytterstad, 2015), as the focus on salience and cultural resonance hinder the identification of newly emergent meanings. Our focus is on how changes in social imaginary significations have begun to emerge in these stakeholder narratives, and the implications of such changes.

Moreover, the ambiguity of liminal conditions might also be a creative asset. As suggested by Straume (2017), ‘In many classical formats, such as fables, riddles, myths, or fairy tales, the paradox serves as the gateway to new insights and innovative solutions’ (Straume, 2017: 167, our translation). This perspective aligns well with the idea of using narrative liminality as a lens to study transformative processes.

Methods

Our analysis of the social imaginary connected to the ideas of the Norwegian welfare state, economic growth, and nature protection assesses and compares the narratives taking place within a selected news article. Our analysis follows a case study design (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2009). We selected a news item for analysis based on our aim to highlight prevailing narrative connections made between these ideas – a news item from a 2017 edition of the open online trade union news site FriFagbevegelse, focused on working life issues and owned by LO. ² The chosen article was published on 9 May 2017 and is headlined ‘Two youths in fuming disagreement about whether to look for oil in LoVeSe. See the duel here!’ (Nielsen, 2017). It presents interviews with respondents, Mats Monsen (25), deputy leader of the young worker's division of the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees (MGE) (Fagforbundet Ung, hereafter ‘Public sector unionist’), and Richard Storevik (29), leader of the young worker's division of the United Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) (Fellesforbundets sentrale ungdomslag, hereafter ‘Industry unionist’). The Norwegian Union of MGE is the largest union under the LO confederation and the largest union in Norway, organizing 370.000 workers, mainly from the public sector. ³ The United FTU is the largest union in the private sector, organizing 160.000 workers within industry, construction, hotels and restaurants, transport, automotive, and other industries. ⁴ The news item represents dominant ideas in these two union sectors on the topics of welfare, economic growth and protection of nature, within the context of climate change.

The news item has two elements: a text article and a filmed interview. In the article, the journalist introduces the film, summarizes the views of the two interview respondents, and provides several quotes from each. In the film, the two respondents discuss the future of the oil industry. Although the film is also edited, the conversation runs much more freely here than in the news text, providing room for more detailed and coherent narratives to unfold. Our analysis treated the two sequences as part of a whole.

Our study employed a specific type of narrative analysis focusing on ‘liminal narratives’. These mark how actors reframe issues considering newly acquired information, here, within the context of a pronounced climate change crisis. We focused on narrative processes, which enabled us to identify the mechanisms by which social imaginary significations were destabilized and the nature of such a transformative process.

Aided by narrative analysis focused on the hows, we explored the active (re)construction, negotiation and reconciliation of climate change-related narratives along central dimensions (Borgen-Eide and Ytterstad, 2023). Our how approach merged linguistic and sociological aspects of climate communication, seeing language as practice. We traced how two stakeholders – interview respondents in a news story – actively developed their specific standpoints in relation to an anticipated audience that was increasingly disunited. Rather than categorizing these actors according to static roles or frameworks of meaning (Ytterstad, 2015), we explored the active production and assembly of meaning by the narrators for specific audiences and within specific narrative contexts (Gubrium and Holstein, 2009; Holstein and Gubrium, 2011). The stakeholders involved in our case were two unionists and a journalist. These actors follow, in part, routinized ways of producing narratives according to well-established roles, but the climate crisis also attached liminality to these roles.

In a first round of analysis, we traced how each respondent developed and maintained specific standpoints and connections in relation to strategic frameworks of meaning, for specific audiences, and within specific narrative contexts (Yanow, 2007). In a second round of analysis, we analysed the narratives with comparative focus on their connection to emerging social imaginaries, marked by new sorts of narrative linkages made by the two respondents ⁵ between the narratives concerning oil, nature, welfare and growth and notions of time, space and identity, in contrast to longstanding social imaginaries concerning the same themes. For instance, we analysed liminal notions of time, space, and identity as instances where former linkages made with narratives concerning the themes were thrown into flux, and the narratives were linked to new aspects of temporality (e.g. new time scales, paces or configurations of pasts-presents-futures), new ways of defining spaces (e.g. waters, fields, states), and new identities (e.g. heritage keeper, welfare state builder, existential threat).

The analysed article represents a critical moment in Norwegian contemporary history: a moment where the unity of the LO is threatened by a conflict based on the pressing issue of climate change. Combined with the layered contextualization enabled by the linkage approach and supported by social imaginary theory, the empirical part contributes to the understanding of the continuity as well as emerging cracks in the ‘Norwegian climate paradox’ and the discursive space for Norwegian unions in the context of climate change and oil. Although highly context sensitive, the research design explored here could be useful in a broad range of issues related to processes of change, crisis, and transitions. A similar study in other wealthy, oil dependant democracies would – through comparison or case study – further highlight the important societal factors at play in the multi-faceted and urgent energy transitions currently unfolding at a global scale.

To analyse what happened with the narratives of the two respondents ‘in liminality’, we next contextualize the situation. We outline central aspects of the role of labour unions and their relations to the oil and gas industry and the LoVeSe debate in Norway. Subsequently, we present longstanding Norwegian social imaginaries concerning fish, oil, and the welfare state. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how the liminal narratives present in the news item we have analysed represent a shift in social agendas and understandings cutting across science, history, and society.

Climate change, the Norwegian petroleum industry, and the unions

Climate change is a complex issue, where the stakes are high and decisions urgent (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). The communication of climate change science has proven difficult due to its scale, complexity, and troublesome relationship to democratic politics (Kunelius et al., 2016). This brings about challenges for scientists, journalists, and unionists alike, many of them related to conflicting professional and organizational identities and values.

The main approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation, with agreement across the political aisle, has been to maintain the status quo at home – preserving a large petroleum sector, while contributing to CO₂ cuts abroad (Hornmoen, 2016). Smaller, environmentally concerned parties supporting the leading government coalitions have opposed what they see as a short-sighted strategy. The case analysed below represents an instance in which such smaller parties have been able to stop or postpone pro-petroleum policies.

The risks of an oil-dependent economy have long been debated among the major Norwegian political parties. The debate came to a head ⁶ with the 2015 ‘oil break’, where a drop in Norwegian oil prices was subsequently followed by a rise in unemployment rates, tied in large part to job loss in petroleum-related sectors. Given the urgency attached to climate change, there is broad public recognition of the need for a so-called ‘green transition’ of the Norwegian economy. However, different actors attach different meanings to what such a transition entails. The idea is not typically linked to the climate crisis itself and the direct risks of a warmer climate, but rather to the prospects of maintaining the national economy in the face of implementing future climate policies and a growing renewable energy market (Bang and Lahn, 2020)

Norway, with a population of just over 5 million, is today one of the world's richest states. Its residents also possess among the lowest differences in living standards. ⁷ The strong Norwegian welfare state is, in part, financed through general taxes and a tax system that is redistributive in nature (Kuhnle, 1994: 81). Notably, however, Norway's petroleum industry is broadly regarded as one of the main guarantors for the welfare state. This has led to a situation in which the continuation of redistributive public welfare provision is, ironically, tied to a heavily commodified and environmentally hazardous sector (Gubrium, 2024). Annually, the so-called ‘oil fund’ channels up to four per cent of its enormous surplus into the Norwegian national budget, which at the date that the article in focus was published, in 2017, meant that 17.2% of the total expenses of Norway's national budget were paid by oil fund money (Norli, 2016).

National union confederations such as LO are seen as prime locations for ‘reconciling fractions of labour and constructing climate solidarity’ (Houeland et al., 2020: 2). Yet a prevailing ‘issue ownership’ principle means that only those sectors affected by a specific policy are entitled to speak out about the policy. Thus, most LO representatives, attached to sectors outside the oil industry, have not actively cast votes to protect the LoVeSe from oil exploration.

A ‘climate change crisis’ emerged in the build-up to the LO Congress of 2017. For the first time, the idea that climate change had become an ‘overreaching problem’ trumped longstanding issue ownership and a ‘discursive window’ was opened within the LO confederation for a new climate agenda (Houeland et al., 2020). A ‘knowledge war’ developed (Sæther, 2017), revolving around whether to conduct a so-called ‘IA’ of LoVeSe – an evaluation of the potential economic, social, and environmental consequences of beginning oil and gas activity in the region (Andersen, 2017). In 2016, three unions, representing over half of LO's membership and focused on climate change mitigation, voted against conducting the assessment. At its 2017 Congress, the LO was called to question about whether the confederation would support the decision. In response, unions representing the petroleum sector threatened to leave the LO to form their own union if the confederation did not give a green light to start the assessment (Birkelund, 2016). We investigate the changing narrative connections made by two stakeholders at the LO Congress considering a pronounced climate change crisis and the LoVeSe conflict, exploring how these represent movement away from pre-existing social imaginaries and towards something new.

Longstanding imaginary significations

The LoVeSe debate began in the 1970s and has historically played out between two competing sides: Those focused on the societal and economic benefits of petroleum extraction (growth) and those focused more on the need to protect Norwegian waters from potentially harming (but also potentially containable) incidents such as large-scale oil spills (preservation of nature). It is our contention that the Norwegian social imaginary that enabled these two sides to co-exist represent an earlier phase that has since been disrupted by the crisis of climate change. A full description of Norway's dominant social imaginary is beyond the scope of this article. However, the significations at play in the LoVeSe debate may arguably be seen as comprising some of the main elements of the social imaginary of the historical evolution of ‘Mythical Norway’. This is said to have arisen from a hardscrabble and simple past, marked by a deep connection to nature, and is imagined having led to a smoother, more efficient welfare state today, marked by egalitarianism and humanitarianism (Eriksen, 1993; Gubrium, 2024; Norgaard, 2011).

Rising from an impoverished national past through welfare and oil

Dominant narratives within Norway have placed the country among the poorest countries in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tying the country's economic strength to post-WWII development of the welfare state and to the discovery of oil (Brox, 2013; Myhre, 2021). The notion of a national Norwegian economy is, in fact, relatively new. Before 1900, Norway consisted of multiple, local economies that participated in the international economy. Heterogeneous elites were both involved in international trade capitalism and were working for regional, rather than national, interests. National economic integration was only a product of economic development after 1814 (Brautaset, 2021). The historical record also shows that at the turn of the twentieth century, Norway was in the midrange comparatively in Western Europe in terms gross national product (Grytten, 2015). It had one of the world's largest fleets of carrier ships, and regional business leaders made riches from fish export, forest products, and metals. Additionally, the narrative represents a sort of ‘oil blindness’ with the idea that Norway was relatively poor before we had oil income. Yet together with shipbuilding and forestry, fishing was a thriving industry in the 1800s, and dried fish had been sold across Europe since Medieval times (Kurlansky, 2002; Røed, 2020). The period from 1875 to 1905, commonly pitched as a time of poverty, saw a significant advancement in export of shipping, fish, and timber. In the years between 1905 and 1914, Norway's GDP rose approximately 30%, to become among the highest in Europe. Norway was especially strong in hydropower and other power-associated industries, but also had made progress in land use, industry, shipping, whaling and fishing. By 1920, Norway was Northern Europe's 8th richest country, on par with Sweden, France, and Germany (Sandvik, 2021). Before the discovery of oil in the late 1960s, Norway was Europe's fourth richest country, behind Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark (Myhre, 2021).

Many grown-ups today have heard stories from their grandparents of the harsh lives of fishermen and of the women and children staying at home, waiting for their husbands and fathers to return safely from sea. Despite increasing industrial activity, many Norwegians nonetheless still lived off the land. According to Brox, however, this was not an unambiguous sign of poverty. High literacy levels due to good access to primary and higher education helped improve agriculture (Myhre, 2021), and along the vast coastline, the waters were rich in wild fish. Continued self-sufficiency of food access as the industrialization process escalated substantially lowered the risks for people in Norway compared to those in England, for example (Brox, 2013).

When oil was discovered outside the coast of Southwestern Norway in the late 1960s, some central governing principles were soon established: a nationally owned and managed oil company, a stable policy framework (which also meant constant access to new areas), and moderation in extraction pace to secure industrial development both on and offshore, as well as better economic stability (Andersen, 2017). While environmental considerations were an important principle, over the years, the discovery of more and larger oil fields than could have been imagined in the infancy of the industry resulted in a high extraction tempo and a continuous search for new oil fields (2017). Norway became a rich, technologically advanced oil state, which the petroleum industry and politicians often set in contrast to a national romanticist past that was imagined as humble, but proud (Myhre, 2021; Sæther, 2017).

When Norway's ‘oil adventure’ took off in the early 1970s, the culture of the oil platform was characterized as a ‘wild west’ or ‘cowboy’ culture, marked by reliance on capital and competence from the US (Houeland and Jordhus-Lier, 2021; Ryggvik, 2018). Nonetheless, it was the strong position of unions in Norway from the late 1970s on that was crucial in ensuring that oil jobs were both well paid and safe (Houeland and Jordhus-Lier, 2021; Ryggvik, 2018). Oil workers were on the one hand considered overpaid lykkejegere (happiness hunters), creating trouble for other industries, and on the other hand, the safety policies pushed collectively by the workers’ unions helped also to improve conditions in other Norwegian industries.

Fish and oil: Norway's seafaring traditions

The Arcto-Norwegian cod that spawns in the LoVeSe enter the waters around Lofoten in the mid-winter to spawn. They are also presented in restaurants and finer groceries as having particularly firm and delicate flesh texture, a characteristic that is linked to its active life and long journey from the ice-cold waters of the Arctic Barents Sea.

The wild fish industry in Norway has changed over the last century and the image of local fisherman providing for his family belongs to a bygone time. A main divide today is between small and large fishing enterprises, where the former to a larger degree resembles the old image of local fishermen, while the latter can be large foreign owned trawlers that do not even anchor up in Norwegian harbours, but freeze the fish onboard and ship them directly to global markets (Røed, 2020). The public image of Norwegian cod has been further disturbed in later years as different media in Norway and abroad revealed that some of the ‘Norwegian fish’ in the freezer of the local grocery had been cut and packed in China before being shipped back to Europe. This image leaves little of the idea of sustainable and clean cod in terms of CO₂ emissions. Nonetheless, in spite of challenges, both biologically and with public perception, fish are increasingly pointed out as ‘what Norway shall live off after oil’ (Røed, 2020).

A main concern to Norway's natural resources from the very start of oil discovery, including to Norway's fishing industry, has been the risk of oil spill. Several accidents in Norway and abroad heightened these worries (Andersen, 2017; Ihlen, 2007), and images of seabirds draped in oil came to symbolize this looming hazard. From the mid-1970s, environmental organizations, fishermen and the public in general began to pay closer attention to the risk of oil spills (Ryggvik, 2021), placing borders on the debate that were regional, with risks that were materially and locally containable. Thus, a ‘co-existence’ frame was actively used in the oil industry's strategic work. This depicted a harmonic relationship co-existing between oil and local marine life/fishermen/fisheries (Ihlen, 2007). In the arguments to expand oil exploration further north into the Barents sea, the oil industry and its political allies pointed to the many years of safe operation in the North Sea and their good dialogue with the fishermen's union. According to the industry, not only would oil expansion be carried out within the frames of co-existence; oil and fish together created a ‘sea culture’ with positive synergies that provided jobs and economic growth to local communities and regions (Ihlen, 2007).

Media article analysis: liminal narratives from climate change

The crisis of pronounced climate change has disrupted formerly stable social significations of Norway's past, present and future concerning oil, welfare, nature and growth. The question in 2017 of whether to open for oil drilling outside the LoVeSe islands, an area particularly rich in fish resources in the northern part of the country, sparked intense discussion within the LO. Leading up to the Congress, Fagforbundet took a stand on the side of ‘nature protection’, referencing the Paris agreement and emphasizing the importance of scaling down Norwegian oil and gas production to protect ‘fragile areas’ (Windstad and Rønning, 2017). Petroleum business owners and employee unions, on the other hand, were keen to avoid connecting oil and gas production to global warming, continuing to use a ‘co-existence frame’ to simultaneously focus on the much needed jobs brought by new petroleum fields and on the idea that the oil and gas industries were not a threat towards the fish or the environment (Ihlen, 2007), and were, rather, ‘environmentally friendly’ (Hornmoen, 2016). In this way, the industry presented itself as part of a homegrown solution to climate change, providing much needed energy that was cleaner than other market actors.

The emergence of climate change as a new dimension in the debate destabilized former social imaginary significations in several ways, and several tendencies marked the ways in which the two interview respondents ‘acted liminally’ in relation to climate change. These included shifting notions of time, of the meaning of the LoVeSe regional space, and of the identity of oil workers and fishermen.

The past, present and future of work

A central theme represented in the discussion between the two unionists is the preservation of jobs and the future sustainability of the welfare state, acknowledging a uni-directional co-existence formula in which the welfare state is dependent in large part on petroleum money. However, each unionist links these elements to different longstanding traditions within the LoVeSe, and to varying future risks.

Since the 1970s, the importance of fish and fisheries has been mainly cast in a stable co-existence frame with oil over time, and this as a necessary ingredient for Norwegian welfare state sustainability and prosperity. Climate change disrupts this. The public sector unionist, begins by avoiding direct referral to oil drilling, instead arguing for the need to keep Norway's ecosystem in balance to preserve the waters for LoVeSe fishermen in the future. His arguments thus take up only a portion of the social imaginary significations described above. His sole focus is on a longstanding past fishing tradition, whose destruction could bear serious future economic and cultural implications. He nostalgically describes the current cod stock spawning in the LoVeSe as the ‘last’, signalling the end of a long tradition. His ‘past-tradition-and-for-the-future’ narrative makes a direct link between preserving a long tradition of fishing for the future, with the implicit context that protecting the climate outweighs the current economic benefits of oil. As he notes, ‘it's fish that we will live off far into the future, and here there are also important jobs to protect. …We must have decent restructuring and secure jobs, but we need to keep climate in mind for the future’. Notably, through his ambiguous balancing act and without reference to oil, he is also not able to pose a direct critique of the oil industry, but rather, must argue against it by not including it in a co-existence frame aimed at the future. His passive strategy reflects a union climate debate that is still in a transitional stage.

The industry unionist representing petroleum workers, uses a similar strategy. However, he drops any reference to Norwegian fishing as a past form of livelihood, instead referring to a past Norwegian poverty that was only relieved by the discovery of oil. In a ‘present-to-future’ narrative he links past oil discovery to current prosperity. Using an argument of economic risk aversion, he connects the need to save present industry jobs to both maintaining and strengthening the broader rights and services offered by the Norwegian welfare state in the future. Such rights and services are threatened if the petroleum industry is shut down. As he argues,

(…) as for today, nothing else can replace the income this sector provides for the country … the oil and the supply industry, that is, three hundred thousand jobs and every fifth Norwegian krone in the national budget.

The industry unionist further emphasizes that it is the public sector union that is disturbing the current co-existence formula and thus, the continuation and extension of prosperity. Drawing on the reciprocal nature of the long-lasting linkage of oil with welfare, he links disturbance of the oil sector to a threat to the co-existence tradition and to future expansion of welfare state offerings. He further takes care to note the irony that it is the public sector union, Fagforbundet, that is disturbing in such a way that it acts against its own agenda to reduce work hours. The disturbance results in a dilemma: he notes that given the possible shut down of oil fields ‘(…) and adding onto that the six hours day (…) what do we do, then, with the economy?’

In response to the industry unionist's challenge to his union's role in maintaining strong welfare offerings, the public sector unionist quickly shifts tactics. He moves focus from the past to the present, agreeing with the industry unionist's concern with downscaling, moving back to the co-existence frame, and accommodating the need to maintain present petroleum activity. He ‘underscores that he does not want to shut down all petroleum activity in the North Sea, but that it is unsustainable to open up new fields’ [author's emphasis]. Thus, Monsen concertedly does not make narrative links to a future and expanding relationship between oil and welfare.

The narrative ambiguity of the respondents reflects a situation in which two formerly parallel societal connections – those between cultural tradition, livelihoods and fishing, and those between the petroleum industry and the welfare state – have now come into direct conflict, resulting in an uncertain path ahead. Despite traditional conflict lines and disagreements between the fishing industry and the petroleum industry, local environmental issues were ‘before’ acknowledged by both sides as relevant when referencing expansion of the petroleum industry; in fact, earlier IAs of oil drilling concluded that co-existence of petroleum and the fisheries was possible. The new fuzziness of conflict lines reflects new ruptures in former understandings about how fishing, oil, the economy and the welfare state relate to each other, still at a stage of fluidity and disrepair.

Liminal notions of space: the meaning of the LoVeSe

The reality of pronounced climate change destabilizes the imaginary significations of both ‘economic growth’ and ‘nature protection’, as these are firmly cast within a national frame, rather than as a global phenomenon. Still, the transition to a new, possibly globally oriented, imaginary is not finished. The public sector unionist (supporting fisheries/fishermen) and the industry unionist representing the petroleum sector largely cast narratives along traditional fault lines and thus keep the debate at the local level, with no reference to global impact. The two nonetheless begin to move beyond traditional social and cultural meanings of the LoVeSe space and its surrounding seabeds. The unionists, however, convey the meanings of these spaces in differing ways, each narrative offering different political implications.

The public sector unionist describes the LoVeSe seabed as a sacred and inert space, where one of the worlds’ ‘last and largest cod stocks’ lays its eggs. He repeatedly notes, ‘some areas are just too vulnerable’ and emphasizes the risk of disturbing such a space. He refuses the traditional frame of oil and nature ‘co-existence’, narratively linking the special and fixed character of LoVeSe with a heightened need for protection – from anything but fishing activity. In the middle of the filmed portion of the interview, he underscores this narrative link, suggesting that carrying out petroleum activity in Lofoten, a part of LoVeSe, would be like drilling in the mountain plateau of Hardangervidda, a national park in central Norway that holds a key position in the Norwegian tradition of outdoors activity. As he notes:

I do not wish to compromise in this case, I want us to be able to say that there are some areas that are just too fragile. It is a little like, if we found oil on Hardangervidda, should we just open for test drilling? (The industry unionist laughs and rolls his eyes in response) Seriously!

The link between LoVeSe, to many in Norway a relatively remote and abstract body of water, and Hardangervidda, which many see as a location that is at the heart of the Norwegian soul, is strategic. Using this connection, the public sector unionist draws on Norwegian romanticism and brings this ‘sacred’ space closer to the audience, making it more real and meaningful.

The industry unionist maintains the ‘co-existence’ frame, linking it to an uncertainty about ‘facts’. He challenges the sacredness of the LoVeSe, noting that, ‘we do not know’ if the seabeds are the ‘last spawning place’, because ‘the cod move all the time. They have not always been in Lofoten’. By emphasizing the mobility and dynamic conditions of the fish, he suggests that the seabeds are not stable and fixed, but rather fluid and acceptable for change. In this narrative, the exact location of the fish and fishing has always changed – it has not necessarily been stably tied to LoVeSe – and it is, thus, naturally unpredictable.

The industry unionist also creates a new image of co-existence, contrasting the fluidity and instability of the fish with the stability of the petroleum platform, emphasizing this at two levels. First, he notes the productive, stabilizing function the platform plays in the natural environment. He invites his counterpart to see for himself ‘all the cod that spawn there [under the platform], more than you have ever seen!’ Second, he narratively links the platform to future macroeconomic stability, describing the petroleum fields as a structure that ‘provides income…to this country’, provides ‘three hundred thousand jobs’ and represents ‘every fifth kroner in the national budget’.

The respondents both operate safely within the established competing narratives of economic growth and nature protection. What has changed in the narratives they offer related to spatial dimensions is, the knowledge drawn from biological and geophysical research and how this research is used by the two ‘camps’ when discussing the risks of oil exploration and extraction in the area.

Liminal worker identity: flexible heroes of the welfare state or climate villains?

As with the traditional seafaring work of shipping and fishing, since the 1970s, Norwegian petroleum workers have been seen as a mainstay of the nation's economy. In keeping with the spirit of ‘adventure’ and ‘hardscrabble living’ imagined with the life of a fisherman, petroleum workers have been seen as the ‘seat of your pants cowboys’ of the work world. Part of this identity has been the expectation that their careers may be restructured according to ups and downs in the petroleum market, by the introduction of new technology and mitigation policies and by being able to change work positions and tasks (Houeland and Jordhus-Lier, 2021). The idea of an end date for the petroleum industry in the face of climate change is, however, read by many as a loss of jobs in the sector and is therefore, something beyond the usual life on the edge. It is broadly recognized that current petroleum workers must secure work in other sectors and perhaps attain re-education or continuing education. The themes of a move outside the ‘normal’ circumstances for these workers frequently emerge throughout the news article. Both respondents agree that a green transition – a reorganization to account for new ecological realities – is necessary. However, both make different meaning of what such a ‘transition’ means. From these different points of departure and levels of focus, different implications emerge.

When discussing the role of petroleum workers and work life with respect to the idea of a transition, the public sector unionist moves outside the co-existence frame and links such a process to responsible actions still to be taken by the industry. He emphasizes the traditional union focus on protecting workers – preserving jobs is still important, just not petroleum jobs. He notes that it ‘is important to start restructuring Norwegian work life’ to take steps towards a low carbon future and preserve LoVeSe. Furthermore, he connects the idea of worker protection and security to those workers in the fishing sector, noting that keeping ‘climate in mind for the future’ requires that ‘we … secure jobs within fisheries’. His ‘restructuring’ narrative links to both social and environmental concerns, but it does not mention petroleum workers.

The industry unionist still narrates within the frame of co-existence. He describes the green transition as something already under way, given the actions already taken by the industry. He emphasizes narrative links to petroleum workers, focusing on respect for the individual worker over industry-level responsibility for a green transition. He harkens back to the longstanding Wild West signification of the workers, noting that his members have therefore long accommodated needs for change. He adds that it is ‘an insult towards his members in the industry to say that they must restructure (themselves)’, arguing that this is ‘something they are continuously doing and have been doing for a long time’. His expression of outrage recurs throughout the debate. He is insulted by Fagforbundet's LoVeSe policy, indicating that it is a violation to the strong tradition of internal union solidarity not to stand up for the workers in other sectors.

The public sector unionist's union members are not in danger of job loss from green transition restructuring. We might say that the liminality of climate change transition does not affect this sector in the same way as it does the petroleum sector. As such, he can navigate his union around and beyond the disrupture that climate change represents, to narratively challenge the traditional lines of consensus. The industry unionist and the petroleum workers he represents are, however, caught in a liminal position where they must face uncertainties and ambiguities about their identities as workers and about the reputation of their sector. At stake is the former public image of petroleum workers and the petroleum industry as technologically advanced, with a great ability to readjust and as the guarantors of the welfare state. The new reality they face is one in which the sector and its workers are accused of being backwards and ignorant about the global challenge of climate change, and one in which the future of the sector itself – and its workers – is up for debate.

Conclusions

Discussions about climate change often feature ambiguous or paradoxical narratives. Our analysis reflects that the growth and nature protection fault lines of the Norwegian social imaginary make strong narrative links to a framework of coexistence, in which nature and growth can both be maintained. While Norwegians are likely to be intrinsically concerned about climate change and motivated to act, the framework serves to deflect attention from the problematic relationship between Norway's commitment to climate science and its oil industry (Norgaard, 2011). Narratives that step outside this framework have, however, begun to destabilize the existing social imaginary.

In Norway, the crisis of global climate change has forced/enabled a critical stage or turning point of change and the beginning of a transition away from former social imaginaries. Such liminality and discomfort with established frameworks emerge in the narratives of the featured protagonists. Regarding the temporal dimension, the two unionists demonstrate continuing diverging outlooks on the past, the present and the future, but where they earlier relied on scientific IA reports and traditional labour union values to settle issues of future petroleum expansion, climate change has entered the picture and disturbed this balance. While keeping the discussion within the growth vs nature protection fault lines, the looming threat of climate change creates a crisis that forces the protagonists to link their narratives to deeper cultural and emotional aspects, evoking feelings of nostalgia and dystopian futures. From the perspective of identity, the two unionists’ have uneven starting points, where what is at stake for the industry union's members is not only their jobs, but also their status as ‘flexible heroes of the welfare state’.

At the spatial level, the protagonists remain closer to the traditional ‘economic growth’ vs ‘nature protection’ conflict lines. The dilemma faced by Norwegian unions in addressing climate change becomes particularly interesting in this context, as they must navigate between protecting workers’ immediate interests and advocating for long-term environmental sustainability. Yet their narrative linkages have evolved beyond connection to the ‘knowledge war’ and include broader historical and cultural themes linked to fish, oil, and welfare. New meanings may also be ‘ushered in’ as formerly nationally bound imaginaries have reckoned with global connections and effects (Varvarousis, 2019: 495). Notably, however, all the emerging narratives represented by the two Norwegian unionists play out within a national frame. Thus, the imaginaries are disconnected from what may arguably be the most natural theme in a climate change context: global solidarity with those most vulnerable to climate change.

By drawing causal links between present actions and future impacts in emotional and value-laden terms, storytelling becomes argument, indicating the persuasive potential of policy narratives (Gjerstad, 2017: 47). The new narrative linkages made by both protagonists in the face of a heightened focus on climate change place less emphasis on ‘believing in science’, and more on emotionally gauged and identity-related challenges to longstanding traditions, places, statuses, agreements, and securities. It is these underlying elements of meaning that must be attended to by scholars of climate change and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies.

It is important to note, however, that de-stabilization of longstanding narratives does not automatically mean the emergence of a new social imaginary or new social imaginary significations. For instance, although new de-growth-oriented imaginary significations emerged in the wake of the Greek crisis and became part of the culture, the broader pre-crisis growth-oriented national imaginary prevailed (Varvarousis, 2019). In the case analysed, there is not yet explicit recognition of the paradox that the strongly entrenched growth paradigm places on the climate discussion (Blakeley, 2024). The seemingly separate parts of Norway's tripartite system might be better understood within this context as a ‘chimeric entity’ that shares a common dependence on economic growth, which is also deeply rooted in the country's oil-based economy. This shared growth ethos creates a paradoxical situation where these entities, while ostensibly working towards social welfare and equality, must continue to perpetuate a system that contributes to climate change. Nonetheless, emerging liminal narratives do mark the possibility for an expansion of the discursive space of actors and thus have implications for the public debate.

Highlights

The fault lines of growth vs nature protection have been disrupted by climate change in Norway, challenging longstanding social imaginaries.

Ambiguity in climate debates can lead to new insights, a process we call narrative liminality.

While not necessarily creating a new social imaginary, the climate crisis has expanded the discursive space in public debate.

Unionists’ narratives in the article reflect the liminal state brought about by climate change, incorporating deeper cultural and emotional aspects.

Despite new narratives, discussions lack a global perspective, focusing largely on national concerns.