Leseambisjon
I hate the idea of reading for pleasure.
People talk a lot about reading for pleasure, and that's important. To get started you have to read a ton, and whether it's Donald Duck or the Bobbsey Twins or Detektivbyrå nr 2 doesn't matter (Donald actually has a much more varied vocabulary than a lot of the simpler children's books!) But …
It's so toothless, it's so empty of content, so ... unambitious.
It's about daring to try slightly harder texts, slightly older texts, texts about unfamiliar things, texts with more literary language. And that doesn't just go for kids.
The word that was missing →
Start here
ProjectsAll projects →
Kulturbase.no "But what a bad search — they have treasures, but they hide them well! That's exactly why I built Kulturbase.no." 2574 theater recordings · 1130 concerts · 207 opera and ballet Explore Kulturbase.no ↗
1814 day by day All the newspapers from 1814, read day by day through 2025: the war and the national assembly, but also what they saw at the theater, what books they read, and neighbors who were fighting. 37 issues · January–December 2025 How it all started →Latest issue →All the issues ↗
To useThe List and the places to go
The List · for kids, and for adults
Books that aren't at the front of the shelf Older children's books, operas, plays and film. Some of them you have to go down to the stacks to find, or order through interlibrary loan. All of it tried out on a ten-year-old.Where to go
You just have to know that it exists We are so incredibly lucky in Norway that we have access to pretty much everything that exists, through free interlibrary loans.Latest writing
- The ArgumentBut writing!?Writing in school: short reading comprehension answers, no whole stories, and what lots of practice has to do with it. From a letter to Skrivesenteret, August 2026.
- EssayENA map for one readerSicily in June with a guide that exists in no app store — and the Norman king, the Arab geographer and the Athenian actor who kept turning up in it
- The ArgumentHow to get startedI pick a few key episodes in history, and get into that moment as richly as I can.
A personal story · 1 July 2024
One thing led to another
In short - I've always thought of myself as someone who loved reading, learning languages, learning about society... Have traveled a lot, did a PhD in education (collaborative learning with technology for adults), thought I was pretty well informed.
And I got a kind of shock... I had lived and studied in northern Italy for two years, been to Venice many times, but never known that Venice had "colonies"!
Read the essay →If you …Six ways in · each with its own path and reading list
If you want the argumentPoliticsThe demands, the case file, and what NRK and the universities don't do.If you're wondering how it happenedBildung journeyOne thing led to another: Crete, first play, first opera, Athens, the Bible as literature.
For parentsParentsOld books, opera before bedtime, curricula you can read, and the question "what are you for?".
If you want the books behind itTheoryHirsch, background knowledge, Dickens, and the PhD self-criticism.
If you want to start yourselfPracticalWhere to go, how to start, interlibrary loans, theater at the cinema, parallel text.
For teachers and librariansTeachers and librariansCurricula, background knowledge, the library and interlibrary loans.My grandfather was reading a 1,000-page book about English history when he was 80. He was a very big inspiration to me, that you can learn throughout your life. And the question is not, "Do I like it or not?" It is, "Can I discover? Can I appreciate what it is about this work that has touched people?"
Voice recording · 1 September 2026
It's also totally fine to think "I'm not ready to get anything out of this text right now, but how can I get there". That's what I call reading ambition.
The Argument, in five partsThe whole Argument →
- Part 1The word that was missingI've been playing with the expression "leseambisjon" (reading ambition), which apparently doesn't exist on the Internet at all.
- Part 2Adult beginnersUneducated rogues, happy amateurs and a study that should have been done: how adults get started with literature, art and music.
- Part 3Cricket in AustraliaSome kids get it from home, and some don't. It's not enough that some teachers are heroic.
- The objectionAre you allowed to say this?The most condescending thing you can say about ordinary people is surely that world literature "isn't for them".
- Part 4Where is the knowledge strategy for adults?Why doesn't Teater Innlandet have a little lecture series on theater history? (Why doesn't NRK????)
- Part 5How to get startedI pick a few key episodes in history, and get into that moment as richly as I can.
Try it yourself
A Doll's House
I recently read A Doll's House again, for the first time since junior high (when I didn't get that much out of it), on the train on my way to a performance... And now I thought it was fantastically written - so many nuances I didn't catch before... It only took like an hour and a half to read or something. And it was a great experience.
Rabbit HolesNine essays from 2025, moved here in full →
1814 day by day: Here we go!6 January 2025
Kristofer Janson, historical novels, Jens Munk and the Northwest Passage11 May 2025
Tristan and Isolde - from Wagner to Old German, via Old Norse15 May 2025
Rette baker for smed, rhyme and rhythm19 May 2025
The theater of fear, first Ugolino in the tower prison30 May 2025
The Great Northern War6 June 2025