On 2 April this year, a group of activists occupied an abandoned military barrack in Hurummarka, a region on Oslo’s fjord, just south of the Norwegian capital.
They had no access to clean water, and improvised a solar system for electricity to be able to stay in an old house on a shooting range that’s lain inactive for a decade.
All this because one of Europe’s leading arms manufacturers, and major Nato supplier, Norway’s Chemring Nobel, wants to build the continent’s largest explosives factory on that very land.
The area that has become its own minor conflict zone is nestled in a small valley in Hordaland – although the area for the complex’s feasibility study spans an enormous 22 square km.
Five months after occupying the space, the activists from Norway plus other Nato member states have been holding events for the public, dealing with occasional police interference, while maintaining anonymity.
