{"id":1125,"date":"2024-02-06T14:56:37","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T13:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nb.no\/en\/?post_type=story&p=1125"},"modified":"2024-09-02T12:28:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T10:28:36","slug":"when-norway-got-internet","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.nb.no\/en\/story\/when-norway-got-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"When Norway got Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When the Internet feaver arrived in Norway<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live Vedeler Nilsen (text)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

10.12.2021<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

The Internet was long reserved for researchers and academia. But when it became Friday night entertainment on TV in 1995, interest exploded among Norwegians.<\/p>\n\n\n

On December 12, 1991, in a seminar room at the Department of Informatics in Oslo, 16 computer scientists were eating pizza. Many of them had been involved in setting up Internet infrastructure at the University, allowing scholars to communicate with fellows all around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was soon to be known as the “pizza meeting” resulted in the founding of a brand new company: Oslonett. This company came to play a crucial role in early Norwegian Internet history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 We acknowledged that the Internet carried a potential that could be utilised commercially by businesses. We thought that we could demonstrate how useful this technology could be, says Steinar Kj\u00e6rnsr\u00f8d, one of the Oslonett founders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Steinar Kj\u00e6rnsr\u00f8d looks at the Olympic Games web pages from 1994 in the exhibition ‘Enlightened. Glimpses from a Cultural History’ at the National Library in Oslo. Photo: Live Vedeler Nilsen\/National Library of Norway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the second country in the world, after the USA, Norway was connected to the Internet (Arpanet) already in 1973. Norwegian universities gained access in 1983, as a result of collaboration between researchers at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and researchers in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the development of the World Wide Web started at the physics institute CERN in Switzerland in 1989, it took several years before the information system became available to the general public. Before 1994, the World Wide Web, email, and file sharing were only available to academic environments, such as the one at the University of Oslo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Some imagine that the Internet was simply imported from abroad, fully developed. However, that was not the case. The technology and services were rather developed in dialogue, across national borders and academic disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is stated by Jon Carlstedt T\u00f8nnessen, Research Librarian at the National Library. Trained as a historian, he wrote his Master’s thesis on Oslonett and early Norwegian web history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

T\u00f8nnessen explains that several actors in Norway were interested in how the World Wide Web could be utilised by businesses and private individuals. Oslonett was among the first to offer Internet services and set up their first website in August 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lillehammer Olympics Going Viral<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Oslonett’s “1994 Winter Olympic” web pages are exhibited in ‘Enlightened. Glimpses from a Cultural History’ at the National Library in Oslo. Photo: Live Vedeler Nilsen\/National Library of Norway. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer holds a special place in the collective memory of Norwegians. Those old enough to remember often highlight the athletic achievements of stars like Johann Olav Koss and Stine Lise Hattestad. But the Lillehammer Olympics also proved that the Internet was on the verge of breaking through as a medium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In collaboration with the Norwegian News Agency (NTB), Oslonett set up an instant news service, with automatic publishing to the web. This was a huge success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many internet-savvy Americans were thrilled that they could get the results from the events in real-time, several hours before the American TV stations broadcast news from the Olympic events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The front page of Oslonett’s Olympic pages, as they looked after the games. (Emulated using “Old Web Today”). Emulation: Jon Carlstedt T\u00f8nnessen\/National Library of Norway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Oslonett’s Olympic pages were accessed more than 1.3 million times. That number broke all records in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With success also came the first experiences of what can happen when a great number of people visit a website at the same time: Oslonett’s site was overloaded, as was the transatlantic Internet connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The service attracted international attention, and inspired the creation of more content for a general audience, says T\u00f8nnessen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broadcasting Internet in Prime Time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For many Norwegians, ‘The Yellow Booklet’ became the first introduction to understanding the new digital world. Written by Oslonett co-founder Gisle Hannemyr, the booklet not only provided technical instructions for how to connect to the Internet. It also introduced norms and social expectations that applied within the internet community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Using simple letters and symbols, one can ‘draw’ various facial expressions. \ud83d\ude42 means ‘I’m smiling’, and is used to make sure you understand what they write is meant as a joke. These small symbols are called ‘smileys’ or ’emoticons’ in English, and in Norwegian, we called them ‘facings’.<\/p>\nHannemyr, “Unix og Internett” \u2013 to many just known as “The Yellow Booklet”<\/span><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Two of Oslonett’s founders participated in the WWW’94 Conference, later known as ‘The Woodstock of the Internet.’ The conference took place at CERN in Switzerland, where the World Wide Web was first invented. Photo: CERN. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But what ironically would pave the way for Norwegians’ understanding of the Internet was the TV show Rondo<\/em> (1993-1995). Broadcasted in prime time on Friday night, hosted by the extremely popular Petter Nome, Rondo<\/em> had more than a million viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rondo was the first Norwegian TV show to have their own web pages, created by Oslonett. And since NRK did not have their own web server yet, it was hosted on oslonett.no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Many competitors envied us for the good PR of having our domain all over the screen. In that sense we had some luck, says Oslonett co-founder Kj\u00e6rnsr\u00f8d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rondo’s web pages from 1995, emulated with ‘Old Web today’. Reconstruction: Jon Carlstedt T\u00f8nnessen\/National Library of Norway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rondo<\/em> became enormously popular and sparked an interest in the Internet which the daily press jumped on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This did not prevent sceptics from questioning the new ‘Internet fever’. ‘The Internet is a Flop,’ read an infamous headline in the debate columns of Dagens N\u00e6ringsliv<\/em>, August 1996. Other headlines at the time included ‘The Internet \u2013 Narcotic and Salvation’ (Helgeland Arbeiderblad), ‘The Internet \u2013 Useful or Not?’ (Eidsvold Blad) and ‘The Internet \u2013 a New Challenge for Schools’ (Aura Avis).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 During the mid-90s, the Internet transformed from a platform for scholarly communication to a popular multimedia, says T\u00f8nnessen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIDEO:<\/strong> Labour leader and soon-to-become Prime Minister Thorbj\u00f8rn Jagland sends a greeting to Bill Clinton through the White House website, during a Rondo<\/em> show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n