Over 50 unge ukrainere fra hele Norden har i helgen 14-17 februar, deltatt på seminar på Nansenskolen. På åpningsdagen ønsket rektor Signe Strøm ungdommene velkommen til Lillehammer og daglig leder i Folkehøgskolerådet hilste velkommen på vegne av Nordisk Folkehøgskoleråd. Her kan du lese Signes tale til ungdommenene:
It's an honor to stand here today and welcome you to this seminar, as well as to Lillehammer and the Nansen Academy—or, as we say in Norwegian: Velkommen til Nansenskolen!
My name is Signe Strøm, and I am the director of the school. I am grateful for the opportunity to host this seminar, which I hope will lead to many fruitful conversations and discussions.
You come here with different experiences, and, I am sure, different emotions. However, I am also certain that all of you are motivated to discuss how empowerment is crucial for Ukrainians today when they think about tomorrow. You have relatives and friends in a home country devastated by war. Most of the Norwegians you meet here do not share that experience. Yet, in our school’s history, peacebuilding and empowerment have always been important.
Our academy was founded in 1938 as a protest against Nazism and totalitarian ideologies. Norway was occupied by German forces in 1940, and the occupation lasted for five long years. During that time, the school was taken over and used as the headquarters of the Wehrmacht. While the occupation continued, the Norwegian resistance movement kept fighting, with some of its leaders hiding in this district. As the war was coming to an end in 1945, they decided that upon liberation, they would reclaim this building as the Headquarters of Peace, a term they used for the Nansen Academy. When the German forces left, the resistance fighters replaced them and began working on rebuilding Norway.
One of the majors in the resistance movement who led his men to the Headquarters of Peace was Molberg Nilsen from Lillehammer. When he turned 100 years old, we celebrated his anniversary by engraving the words “Headquarters of Peace” on a plaque on the rock by the flagpole in front of the main entrance. Today, that inscription is covered by snow.
The war deeply affected the lives of the academy’s founders, Kristian Schjelderup and Anders Wyller. Schjelderup, a theologian and pacifist, was imprisoned in Norway by the Germans. Wyller fled to England, where he worked for Norwegian radio. The academy’s first teacher, Henriette Bie Lorentzen, was sent to a concentration camp for her involvement in the resistance movement. In a 1995 interview, she said:
“Young people shall not forget that in every country, on every continent, even where war and genocide are taking place, there are people fighting for tolerance, human dignity, freedom of expression, and peace.”
The academy’s founders never returned to work here after the war, but their values and anti-totalitarian ideology have remained at the core of our work. In the 1980s and 1990s, the school became involved in interreligious dialogues and peace initiatives in the Western Balkans, with participants coming here as well. This work led to the establishment of the Nansen Dialogue Network and later, in 2010, the founding of the Nansen Centre for Peace and Dialogue, which is now located on the first floor of this building.
Tomorrow, you will learn more about our history from former director Inge Eidsvåg, who will speak about Fridtjof Nansen and why our academy is named after him.
Our school is not only a humanistic academy, as it was originally founded in the late 1930s. Since the 1950s, it has been run as a folk high school.
The folk high school movement originated in Denmark in the 1840s and remains an important tradition in the Nordic countries, though it is not widely known internationally. A key principle of folk high schools has always been the formation of students with the aim of fostering active participation in society. The pedagogical focus is on student motivation—there are no exams or grades. Teachers believe that students learn best when they want to learn, rather than when they have to pass an exam. The primary group of students at folk high schools consists of 19- and 20-year-olds who enrol immediately after graduating from high school.
As a folk high school, the main goal of the Nansen Academy is to inspire independent thinking and reflection as a foundation for active participation in society. Our five different study programs focus on social and humanistic sciences, including philosophy, art history, and international relations.
Like most Nordic folk high schools, the Nansen Academy is a boarding school. Living together 24/7 can be both a blessing and a challenge, requiring students to balance their need for privacy with the needs of the community. A folk high school cannot function well if everyone stays in their own bubble—each person must contribute to the community.
The Nordic folk high school tradition is characterized by informal relationships between students and teachers and places great value on dialogue and democracy. Asking meaningful questions that encourage reflection, and discussion is more important than simply teaching facts. We do not only teach the theory of democracy—our students actively participate in it. They elect a student council, which is part of the school council, and the student-elected leader is a full member of the school board with voting rights.
As I mentioned, folk high schools emphasize active participation in society. This is also reflected in our teaching methods. Through workshops, role-playing, and various classroom activities, students develop skills in dialogue, rhetoric, and debate.
During this weekend, we hope you will experience, even on a small scale, the spirit of folk high school life in addition to engaging in workshops and other program activities.
Once again: Velkommen til Nansenskolen!
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