Space Between Sessions

Nansen Academy's Lillehammer campus is made up of a few buildings slightly downhill from the road. The roads here not being large. We share rooms in the dormitory, and the salmon on the lunch menu makes us want to cry. In a good way.

Leaning over tables at breakfast time. Huddled outside and lighting someone else's cigarette. Haunting the coffee room on break between sessions. Dragging our feet when it's time to head back to our seats.

Some might say we need to manage these moments so they don't disrupt the real work of a seminar. But Steinar Bryn, our facilitator at the Nansen Center For Peace and Dialogue (NCPD), says this is an important part of the real work.

From Steinar's account of the original Lillehammer sessions:

The participants could not sit in the classroom all day long. The program developed included an understanding of social, physical and cultural needs. The face-to-face meeting became important also in various social activities. It is important to deal with difficult issues in dialogue. But it can be equally important to know when to take a break and go bowling or swimming. This can help release tension but it also provides new arenas where people get to know each other in new ways. We deliberately used the opportunities Lillehammer provided for skiing, dancing, cultural performances, museum visits or just going out for a beer. Slowly the others grew out of being the representatives of other ethnic groups, and showed the human range of multiple identities. Some even fell in love across the ethnic divide.

In a fairly natural way, people would form friendships according to interests in music, sports, culture, outdoors, drinking, and bashing the Norwegian ways. These relationships were brought with them back home, and became a backbone in the soon to be Nansen Dialogue Network. This experience of the importance of building relationships has influenced the work of the Nansen Dialogue over the last ten years in such a dramatic way that we can say we do not work from the political paradigm of power, but from the paradigm of building relationships. Politics is not about getting the access to power, but about securing the equal distribution of resources and opportunities among people who live in relationships marked by mutual respect for each other.

Steinar invites us to his family house in the middle of the week for a barbecue. Most of us still don't know each other very well, but we don't say no to the ridiculous view of the lake or the garden party or a sun that almost doesn't set or a Norwegian alcohol that most of us will never try again. It's made from potato, but definitely not vodka. I mention to one of the guys that I collect stories on the road and he asks to sit down later. People start putting together playlists. Some of them can really, really move.

Some of us haven't relaxed in front of the other yet - even the words we use can be interpreted politically. But it's hard to be defensive when people are doing line dances, salsa or a cheesy sprinkler.