Ibsen calls for a national scandal - Foreign Minister's hometown Skien got the money - NRK Vestfold and Telemark

She is equally fascinated every time she visits Henrik Ibsen’s apartment at Arbins Gate in Oslo.

– I have never seen her as beautiful as she is now, says the actress, entering dark places.

Visitors who want to experience Oslo’s Ibsen Museum face closed doors. This has been the case since 2019, when the museum closed its doors to the public due to construction work.

The museum is furnished as it was when Henrik Ibsen lived there. It houses, among other things, the desk the artist used when he wrote many of his plays.

I’m sorry, Liz Feldstad.

Scandal is almost too weak a word. This is completely absurd. It is clear that the government is not interested in our cultural heritage.

Businessman and art collector Christian Reingens owns the farm where the Ibsen Theater and Museum is located.

He does not understand that the state will spend 16 million rent and get nothing for it.

– She’s completely stupid. When you’ve already set aside so much money to rebuild here, you couldn’t set aside a little extra to honor perhaps our greatest artist of all time.

– Can’t you lower the price a little bit then?

– To put it this way, we’ve been involved in the biggest transgressions and all kinds of weird stuff. We don’t make any money from this anyway so now others can play.

– You don’t have money to work

Norsk Folkemuseum is responsible for operating the Ibsen Museum and Theatre.

Director Nina Refseth says they simply don’t have the money to keep the museum open to the public.

– The support we get now is less than the rent. She says we don’t have money to work.

Refseth requested NOK 17.6 million to operate the museum and the new theater project in connection with the museum.

Disappointed that they did not receive the money. She says the museum could have been reopened for NOK 6 million.

– We are very pleased that there is an investment in Ibsen in Skien, but we would like people to see the importance of having this investment in the capital as well, says Revseth.

In an article in Dagsavisen, Refseth goes to great lengths to suggest that the grants to Skien are linked to the Secretary of State’s ambitions to become mayor in his hometown.

– You mentioned it. It’s a status report. “There is nothing worse than that,” says Rfseth.

Bustle in Skien

In Skane, they are preparing for the poet’s chief jubilee in five years.

In the year 2028, it will be two hundred years since Henrik Ibsen was born.

Then perhaps the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture, Odin Adelsten Onan Bohman (AP), is the mayor of the city.

At least he’s betting on it.

In the 2023 state budget, Skien will receive NOK 25 million for Ibsensatsing. Similar grants can be expected in the coming years.

Skien received the money as part of a budget settlement between SV and the government.

The amount will be used to publish Ibsen’s drama and history.

The new Ibsen Library will be completed by the anniversary. The buildings where Ibsen grew up in Venstøp in Skien will be shiny, new and beautiful.

Bohmann realizes that more money is needed for the Ibsensatsing company in the capital.

On a tight city budget, he’s proud to have secured funds for the Peer Gynt conference in Gålå and two major projects in Skien.

If there is any writer who has won on this budget, it is Henrik Ibsen.

But he categorically refutes that the money lavishly lavishly on Ibsen’s investment in a knife had nothing to do with his desire to be mayor.

– He has nothing to do with this at all.

Ibsen’s irony

Ibsen’s old furniture now stands in darkened quarters at Oslo’s Arbenz Gate.

No one knows when or if the museum will reopen.

Lise Fjeldstad thinks this is reminiscent of Ibsen’s irony.

– We have a Minister of Culture who would not have taken such a position if it had not been for Ibsen to pave the way for us women. You may have to write that behind your ear.