ABSTRACT
Notions of “marked homogeneousness” of the population of Norway before the onset of overseas migration in the 1970s, found in current social scientific and historical research, have long historical roots. This chapter discusses how such notions have developed from the 1880s, and argues that contrary to such ideas, ethnic and cultural heterogeneity was acknowledged in early twentieth century policymaking and research – as a problem to be remedied through various means. The historical heterogeneity to which ethnic minorities, the indigenous Sámi and numerous “foreign-born” contributed, was however forgotten in the 1960s, precisely before the onset of new migration to Norway. In 1968, the social scientist Johan Galtung described Norway as “an unusually homogeneous country”, a characterisation at odds with contemporaneous social scientific scholarship. The chapter discusses several reasons for the historical amnesia of the late 1960s, as well as proposing reasons for why notions of “homogeneousness” are still repeated in current scholarship.
