- guardian.co.uk, Friday October 6 2000 01.57 BST
According to opinion polls, the extreme right, anti-immigration, Progress party has outstripped the ruling Labour party to become the most popular political force with this affluent country's 4.5m people.
Its approval rating has soared as high as 35% and its charismatic leader, Carl Hagen - or "King Carl" - is being touted as the next prime minister.
With less than a year to go before parliamentary elections are held, alarm bells are ringing and Norway's reputation as a tolerant society is under threat.
The Progress party has won support by promising all things to all voters, and by promising to cut taxes and spend more of the country's oil revenue on improving the welfare state. It also wants to bundle the elderly off to Spain, where health care is cheaper.
As the party has become more popular, Mr Hagen has done his best to rein in some of its more outspoken members and play down its hardline immigration policies.
But his most radical ideas are unchanged. The party's manifesto advocates abolishing development aid to the third world because, it says, the money is spent on "arms and luxury goods" for the elite. Poverty, it argues, is a result of poor countries' inability to organise themselves.
Norway already operates a restrictive immigration policy but Mr Hagen would go further. A maximum of 1,000 immigrants a year would be allowed, and asylum seekers who broke Norwegian law would be repatriated.
The party also wants a national referendum on whether any more foreigners at all should be admitted - Norway has about 250,000 - and it is keen to test new arrivals for Aids.
The party is compared by some to Austria's far-right Freedom party and France's National Front, but it insists that it is not racist.
"We're a new political breed," says the silver-haired, rather portly, Mr Hagen, sitting in his smart office in the parliament building in Oslo.
"We combine the best from social democratic thinking and the best from conservative thinking."
Norwegian society is under attack, he warns, and too many immigrants will spark social unrest.
"Let's not be naive and blue-eyed. If you have too many immigrants you will get social conflict. You can like it or dislike it, but that's a fact."
And, he says, the problems have already begun, especially in eastern Oslo, known as Lit tle Karachi because it has so many Pakistanis.
"We have knives in schools, which we never had before, and we have gangs shooting at each other."
Asked if ordinary Norwegians feel as he does about newcomers, Mr Hagen is categorical. "Opinion polls for the last 10 years have shown that they agree with me."
Akhenaton de Leon, director of the Institution Against Public Discrimination, agrees that hostility against immigrants is widespread and says the rise of the Progress party is a symptom of this. "We have problems in paradise. Police harassment is rampant in this country, and racial discrimination in the housing and labour markets is widespread."
He says he has seen intolerance increase in the past few years. Clients have told housing agencies to let property to whites only, even the most menial jobs require unreasonably high language skills, and black people often find it difficult to get into to nightclubs and restaurants.
"Mr Hagen is a clever populist who is dangerous for society," Mr De Leon says. "If he enters into a coalition with the Conservative party it would be a disaster for the integration process in this country."
