Like most of Europe, Norway has been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. After several weeks of dragging its feet, on March 13, the government moved into action, following its neighbor Denmark in closing schools, kindergartens, and then the border. It made a list of those exercising “critical functions in society,” like nurses, transit workers, cleaners, and people working in grocery stores, who can still work and have daycare for their kids. The rest of the public sector has been sent home — and private-sector firms are strongly encouraged to follow suit.

Faced with this situation, many Norwegians withdrew to their cabins — either to enjoy an extra holiday or because they thought this was a smart place to isolate themselves. But these cabins are often located in small municipalities with limited resources — and local mayors started asking for troops to help chase out the new arrivals. Faced with this new kind of “cabin fever,” on March 15, the government wrote a new law to ban such trips, on pain of a €1,300 fine.

Yet the controversy also spread far wider — to the question of who will pay for the crisis as a whole. On March 10, the ruling right-wing coalition proposed a series of measures that focused on helping businesses suffering from the lockdown. This promised to make it easier, quicker, and cheaper for bosses to put employees “on leave” — without shifts. Normally a business can force staff onto leave because of seasonal work patterns — but would then need to pay them fifteen days’ full pay, after which social security would pay them 62.4 percent of their previous income. The government proposals would have slashed this full-pay period from fifteen days to two, after which a person on €2,500 a month (a low salary in Norway) would be left with just over €1,500.