He is charismatic and loved by the media. He is a master of rhetorics and is capable of making war sound like a humanitarian project. But who is Jonas Gahr Støre, this seducer of the masses, really?
At the age of fifteen Jonas was aggravated when the Soviet Union wouldn’t allow Andrej Sakharov to travel to Norway to collect his Nobel Peace Prize. Ten years later we find him smuggling information into dissidents behind the Iron Curtain, on behalf of the secret circle “Committee of the fifteen”. An international conscience has been awakened.
The writers follow Jonas from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (IEP) in Paris and summers spent at the Brundtland family’s holiday cottage to the shots fired at the Serena Hotel in Kabul and his Uriah’s post as Minister of Health. On a private plane, however, he insists on keeping everything the way it has always been: every holiday they recite Norwegian poems, no birthday is celebrated without crayfish on the table, no new friends are admitted into his tight circle.
The writers use their access to Gahr Støre and his closest circle to draw a surprising portrait of a political super star.
About the authors
Nina Stensrud Martin is a journalist and radio voice in NRK P2. Erik Aasheim is communications advisor for the Ministry of Climate and Environment. He also has journalistic experience from NRK.
