BOOKS
’’
as a defiance of common sense.
The sensible thing, as he was told by
the King of Sweden, was simply to
give up. But the story of the Second
World War is one where doing the
sensible thing usually led to disaster.
France did the sensible thing in the
summer of 1940 and gave up on the
struggle. The British, utterly routed
in Northern France, and with no
powerful allies, defied common
sense and refused to stop fighting.
Mons Urangsvåg’s Norwegian
pine was not a sensible thing. It
was, however, a palpable, organic
part of Norway. It had grown out
of Norwegian soil and was now
making its way to Norway’s King,
the man who had demonstrated the
unconquerable potency of not doing
the sensible thing.
The tree was taken to Foliejon
Park [in Berkshire] where the King
was now living.
George VI remarked, ‘I so wish
dear Auntie Maud could have lived
to see this beautiful tree, which
seems, in a strange way, a symbol of
all our hopes in these dark days.’
It was Haakon who thought, after
taking appropriate consultations
from the British Government and
the Greater London Council, of
passing the tree on to Londoners.
So it was first erected in Trafalgar
Square in the middle of the war.
No electric lights—there was still
a blackout—but evergreen with
defiant hope.
And the name of the author is...
Stephenie Meyer—
whose vampire-romance
Twilight series is informed
by her Mormonism, with
no smoking, drinking or
sex before marriage. It
has sold more than 100
million copiesThe Feeling is Mutual: Britain’s
Wartime Gratitude to Norway126 • DECEMBER 2021
“I often wonder how things would have
gone if Norway had not resisted German
occupation—if Norway had done as
stronger nations did, and said: ‘What’s
the use?’ I can well imagine that Great
Britain would not have been able to hold
out when things were at their worst,
if it had not been for the help from the
Norwegians, not least from the
Norwegian Merchant Navy... I know
what dangers the Norwegian crews
are exposed to, and I also know that
two fifths of the petrol that reaches
the country comes in Norwegian
tankers. I know that Norwegian tankers
are playing the same role in the Battle of
the Atlantic as Spitfires played in the
Battle of Britain. Great Britain will never
forget what Norway has done.”
— Philip Noel-Baker, British Ministry
of War TransportNoel-Baker, incidentally, is the only
person in history to have won both an
Olympic medal (1500m silver in 1920)
and a Nobel Prize (for Peace in 1959).