When Norwegians voted on European Union membership in 1994, opponents offered the vision of Norway as an “Otherland” – a society where things are done differently from the rest of Europe. They won the referendum; their dream also seems to have come true. Norway has hardly noticed the financial crisis, and this week Norwegians bucked another European trend by reelecting their left-of-centre “red-green” government.

In fact opposition parties tallied a slightly higher number of votes than the ruling coalition, which nonetheless scraped a majority of three seats in parliament. Even so, Labour’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, has won an impressive victory, and not only by European standards. In this country used to minority coalitions, no government has survived an election since 1993, and it has been four decades since a government retained a majority in parliament.