In the Market's Place: Cultural Policy in Norway

The arts in Norway are considered a public good and are therefore heavily subsidized, in order to make them available to the greatest number of people, to maintain Norway's national cultural standard on a par with neighboring countries, and to keep cultural traditions unbroken by preventing sudden ruptures in cultural production. The criterion for state support is art and its position in the market. The state comes in whenever the market proves insufficient, partly through direct subsidies covering production costs and partly by buying a certain amount of the cultural product. Norway advocates a policy of strong cultural decentralization. Cultural budgets are channeled through the Norwegian Cultural Fund, and individual artists' incomes tend to be a mixture of collective funds and individual royalty incomes, with a gradual shift toward individual incomes, even if still state-derived. State spending on culture has increased since the 1960s, and it has played an essential role in maintaining continuity in the quantity of cultural production, if not always the quality.