Newsletter Dear reader!

Dear Reader! 

We humbly continue to provide our readers with a daily online newspaper, even when society is put to a harder test than any of us have experienced. Humbly, because we are navigating waters between politics and medicine, unchartered waters where all construed understandings of how our society is built are put to shame.

Humbly, because business and people around us are gradually broken down.

Humbly, also because political processes, alongside the fight against infection, are conducted without the attention and control it normally deserves.

In my commentary today, I write about how this is no time to be cocksure, nor a time to bend over for any proposed political solution. When Norway introduces a proxy law setting our constitutional democracy aside, it happens at a scary pace and without the required debate.

I also worry about those of us who had the worst starting point even before the crisis hit. Substance abusers are amongst those who stand at the end of the line, this time too, when the state hands out its economic life vests at a fast pace.

That is also why we continue writing about Norwegian fisheries policies. The new fisheries quota whitepaper is politically processed and there are huge protests. [Norwegian only]  
The democratic debate is nevertheless lacking, because we are focusing on something entirely different.

However, we also write about the spreading of the virus. Every day, High North News provides you with updated figures saying how the infection is spreading in the Arctic. We are the only ones to do so, and we provide figures on both state and regional levels.

We could tell you that Canada is deferring the cruise season, and for its Arctic ports even deferring it for the entire year. North Norwegian businesses say the situation is radically changed following the corona virus pandemic, Greenland has seen its first corona virus infection cases and takes crisis measurements, and education institutions in the Arctic are forced to go virtual to a much higher degree than ever before.

In the middle of all this, and many other stories that we bring you, we also pay our tribute to Norwegian musher Thomas Wærner, who this week won the Iditarod in Alaska – the world’s longest sled dog race – participating only for the second time ever. Commendable.

Congratulations, Thomas, and welcome home.


And to you, our faithful readers, take care of each other, and of those who struggle now.
Arne O. Holm
Editor-in-Chief, High North News