ABSTRACT
In a retrospective and partly autobiographic text, this chapter argues that rural people in Norway feel their communities are being drained and left to die alone. The politicians that grew up in the 1980s and onwards do not reach them anymore, and people are feeling powerless and betrayed. The traditionally strong Norwegian rural policy has gone slowly from a rural policy where the state took responsibility to a systematic individualisation of the responsibility for the rural communities’ own success. Together with less attention to rural issues, more professionalised politicians and an active degrading of the national state, a feeling of mistrust has started to grow. But there is still time to slow down, observe and listen. Maybe that will help us to rediscover the importance and the mutual benefits of both urban and rural prosperity.
