Moving to the big city?
Never in my life.
Roughly so, with variation in wording but not in content, has been a recurring answer when we traveled around to several places in Norway during the past week.
Not least in Finnmark, at the top of the north.
From the island of Söröya with small Hasvik as the largest municipality, it is far closer to icy Svalbard than to the capital and the political power that gathers there.
Broilers, as fisherman Kurt calls them.
Who, according to him, were brought up in their parties without ordinary jobs and without any idea of how people feel in the small municipalities.
Yes, as I said, there are at least so many people looking at the matter.
Dissatisfaction with the incumbent government's centralization policy does not make things better, and the Center Party has now aimed for that dissatisfaction with strong opinion figures as a result.
Populism, if you ask some of SP's critics.
But the feeling of growing distance between urban and rural areas is far from unique to Norway but is recognizable from countries in common, including Sweden.
Close but not the same
Of course, Norwegians vote based on their interests and values, as people in general.
In rural areas, it is also about the opportunity to live right there.
In the international media, great focus is placed on the climate issue.
Which is not unjustified.
The issue has taken place during the election campaign and we ourselves have reported on how the future of Norway's oil and gas industry is debated.
Because when you talk about climate in Norwegian politics, the petroleum industry is of course part of it.
It's not the same, but they are linked.
The effects of the oil and gas industry on Norwegian society are also much broader than narrowly cut climate or oil issues.
It affects most things because the socio-economic rings on the water go out over basically everything.
But the point is that people do not necessarily see themselves as an "oil people" just because they have oil.
Thoughts about where to live, financial gaps, proximity to police and medical care or school are something people generally think about.
In the long run, many of these things will still be affected by the climate.
Not even in the very long run.
But when people today go and vote, there are not so many reasons.
An acquaintance also pointed me to the results of the Norwegian school choice, which we have already concluded today.
There, the environmental party MDG is backing down, which according to him indicated that the climate is not the only issue even among young people who might otherwise be presumed to be more interested.
It's not all about oil
A possible partial explanation for the fact that the climate and thus also the oil and gas industry has been given so much space is that this is what is perceived from the outside as unique to Norway even next to Nordic relatives: its petroleum money.
It may be tempting to assume that what sets a country apart is also what determines voting.
The counter-argument would then have been that the more reasonable assumption, on the contrary, is that people have quite similar motives for their voting and that it is universal reasoning rather than the unique that plays the greatest role.
In foreign policy analysis of the Middle East, the lax casual analysis haunts that everything is really about oil.
Of course that is not true there.
Of course, this is not true in Norway either.
What people care about the most, however, can become clear when the dust has settled after the election and the result is clear.