Oslo is not usually the center of excitement, but last week seemed to be an exception. On Thursday evening while I was at my norskkurs (Norwegian class), a pro-Israel demonstration was interrupted by a pro-Palestine group that turned violent. Apparently Molotov cocktails were thrown, windows smashed, police injured, and tear gas used repeatedly to break up the mob. A couple of my coworkers were in the downtown area and... encountered... tear gas. It was apparently a rather unpleasant experience.As for me, I was headed home after my class and started heading down Parkveien (the road behind the palace), when I started noticing a log of police cars and some sort of barricade down the road. Needless to say, I had to backtrack and walk through the park around the palace to get home, and I saw that the police had a couple of roads blocked off in the area around the Israeli embassy. Apparently officials estimate the damage to be in the millions of Kroners (broken windows, damaged police cars, etc.).
On Friday there was a more peaceful protest that went past work - lots of shouting and a police escort, but no rioting. And on Saturday a window was broken at a McDonalds - apparently there was a rumor that they were donating a day's profits to support Israel (yeah, like a company would do that, but it just goes to show how stupid people can be).
Note: Photo credit listed as AFP.
I thought Norway was a peaceful country and I feel stunned on reading your post that there were riots taking place in Oslo. Are there many immigrants from other countries to Norway? It seems that the whole world is in a state of confusion. Economic downturn, wars, riots and disasters.
Norway is a peaceful country. This was the worst riot they've seen since the 70s I believe (and really, it wasn't a huge riot). But they do have a significant immigrant population, and even without them, there will always be people who are looking for trouble.
On the whole, Norway is weathering the current economic crisis much better than many nations, so I don't expect to see much unrest here beyond the Israel/Palestine thing. The sad thing is that the people who rioted probably don't even realize that Norway has been contributing relief efforts to Palestine.