“My night in the cabin of the famous Norwegian Nazi Vidkun Quisling”

Would you rent a vacation cabin built for a known Nazi collaborator? You can do it in Norway, and few people seem to care. Scottish novelist Ben McPherson, who lives there, found it odd that this should be so, so he wanted to investigate.

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“Don’t you think it’s strange,” I ask my Norwegian wife, “that I can rent her cabin?”

He looks at me suspiciously. It is she who told me about the cabin. And now I am accusing your country of a moral fault.

“It’s just a cabin,” he responds cautiously.

“It’s Quisling’s cabin!”

When Norway was invaded by German forces in 1940, Vidkun Quisling he was delighted to see them. He had based his National Union party on the Nazis and the occupiers duly installed him as a puppet leader.

His name gave English the word “quisling“, Which means lackey, traitor, bootlicker.

How can it be that your cabin is on sale for any visitor?

While in some places like the UK there are heated debates about what to do with the controversial statues, Norwegians tend to be more relaxed about Nazi buildings.

“That’s the difference between Norway and the UK,” says my wife. “People here don’t really see a cabin as a bad thing.”

The summer cottage is where Norwegians go to relax, and it enjoys an almost religious status: it is a place to fish, gather berries, chop firewood.

“Easily”, People say: simple and good.

It’s about reconnecting with nature, physically and emotionally.

The Aryan Ideal of Manhood

In his day, Quisling was considered a heroic and handsome man who enjoyed life in the great outdoors. For modern eyes that is difficult to understand: with his wrinkled suit, with his neat combed side, he looks like a filing cabinet. We don’t see the tall blond soldier and man of action that some saw then.

Quisling even managed to convince Adolf Hitler that he represented an ideal of Aryan virility.

In 1942, the Nazis installed him as prime minister. Once in power, he oversaw the deportation of a third of the country’s Jews to death camps. Many others escaped to other countries.

Quisling had his cabin made as a sauna, but no one seems to know when.

It is a small traditional structure, made of dark wood logs, with grass growing from the roof to insulate it.

However, he never used it. The war ended before he could light the embers, and he was executed by firing squad.

“I want to understand”

Modern Norway is the kind of rights-based social democracy that Quisling would have hated, with a progressive attitude towards gay rights and a large immigrant population.

Although now a new generation has started asking tough questions about the country’s wartime past, until very recently, the war stories that people wanted to hear emphasized Norwegian heroism and resistance.

Quisling was simply not part of the national conversation.

Still, in what possible world do you rent a collaborative leader’s vacation cabin in a tourist destination?

“I want to understand,” I tell my wife.

“Then go and stay there,” he says. “Go see for yourself.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

“No”.

But he is not opposed when I suggest taking our 12-year-old son. So I book and we go.

There it is, on an island, a simple log cabin on a rise overlooking the fjord.

It is pretty from afar; You would never know it was built by a murderous and ruthless Nazi.

“A national romantic experience”Says the description of the people who rent it. “A room. Sleeps four”.

I can’t find any reference to Quisling in your publicity material. They are not trying to profit from the association, but you could rent it and not find out.

That happened to my English friend Nick, who went with his two young children to stay there. By mistake.

“I just thought: nice place, a lot to do,” he tells me. “They loved the little beach. There are ducks and goats. It was great, until you told me what it was. “

Sanctuary?

On the other hand, not all Norwegians consider Quisling a traitor.

For Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011, he was a role model.

From that perspective, that short catchphrase – a “national romantic experience” – turns chilling. What if for some the place is like a sanctuary?

For my wife precisely the fact of using it as a cabin diminishes her power. When I ask Thorgeir, a Norwegian friend, what he thinks, he agrees.

“It is a perfectly good cabin. It would be a mistake to burn it to the ground ”.

Could it be that it remains as something in the air?

Well no… Quisling’s cabin is nothing short of exceptional.

It is true that it has a picture of a lumberjack carved on the front door, and that is the kind of Nordic folk art that the Nazis worshiped. But ordinary Norwegians also like those wood carvings.

Inside, the woodwork is clean, painted white.

There are cheerful carvings of crawfish in the kitchen area, and shelves filled with cleaning supplies and bug sprays.

A roll of toilet paper hangs on the wall along with a dustpan and brush for use in the outdoor bathroom.

My son paid no attention to my musing about the history this place represents: he spent time playing soccer with the children in the nearby cabins.

Meanwhile, I photographed the interior or sat down to try to find the dark soul of the place.

I could not.

No one came on a nationalist pilgrimage, at least while we are there.

When evening came, my son and I slept comfortably on our wooden bunks.

Upon our return, my wife stroked our son’s hair and asked, “How’s the cabin?”

“Boring,” he replied. “What is there to eat?”

Vidkun Quisling would have hated that.