Stortinget is the seat of Norwegian political power in this episode, but its unassuming scale frustrates Mikael Bellman’s expectation of grandeur. The building’s modest approach, restrained interior, and charged history make it more than a backdrop: it becomes the setting in which Bellman measures the power he hopes to attain against the understated character of the institution.

Setting and Approach

Just before eight in the evening, Bellman walks down Karl Johans gate toward the center of Norway’s public life. The scene maps power through the city: the university and knowledge lie to his left, the National Theatre and culture to his right, and the royal palace behind him. Stortinget lies ahead. After roughly three hundred steps, at precisely eight, he climbs the stone stairs to the building.

The approach is notably modest. The building is neither particularly large nor imposing, and its visible defenses seem limited to two lions carved from Grorud granite, positioned on either side of the rise leading to the entrance. The door opens before Bellman can push it. Inside, a security officer directs him through a Gilardoni metal detector, which establishes that he is unarmed but has metal on his belt. The sequence sets the national seat of power against an ordinary, functional entrance rather than a show of intimidating grandeur.

Interior and Guided Visit

At reception, Rasmus Olsen is waiting for Bellman. Marit Olsen’s thin husband greets him with a handshake and leads him through the building, slipping into the explanatory manner of a tour guide. His account gives the institution concrete dimensions: Stortinget has 380 employees and 169 representatives, and the building was erected in 1866 from a design by Emil Victor Langlet, who was Swedish.

Rasmus points out the staircase and its stone mosaic, Society, made by Else Hagen in 1950, and begins identifying a portrait of the kings. In the gallery, Bellman recognizes the space from television, but not the people hurrying through it. Rasmus explains that a committee meeting has just taken place. The details establish the building as a working institution, where meetings and staff occupy the same corridors that television turns into a public image of political life.

Bellman’s Response to Power

Bellman barely attends to the tour. His attention is fixed on the fact that he has reached the corridor of power, and the setting disappoints him: gold and red provide some visual splendor, but he finds none of the imposing official magnificence he expected to inspire decision-makers with awe. To him, the all-pervasive modesty is a national affliction, one from which even a once-poor northern European democracy has not freed itself.

Yet disappointment does not weaken his ambition. Bellman has returned after failing to reach the top among the forces of Europol, and he is determined to succeed here, competing in a world he regards as full of people who understate themselves. The contrast between the plain institution and his appetite for advancement turns his visit into a study in political temperament: he reads restraint not as a civic virtue but as an obstacle, while treating Stortinget as a new arena in which to rise.

Historical Layer and Departure

During the visit, Bellman sees the office that belonged to Terboven, the former Reichskommissar of the German occupying power. The reference places the building’s present-day political work beside its history under occupation. At first Bellman does not linger there; he continues through the visit while focused on his ambitions and Rasmus’s explanations.

Later, after receiving a phone call that gives him the crucial words rope and Lyseren, Bellman tells Rasmus he must leave. On his way out, he pauses briefly to look around Terboven’s former office, then hurries on. The brief return of attention makes the old office the visit’s final image: Stortinget is at once the site of contemporary political power and a space marked by a previous regime, while Bellman leaves its corridors in pursuit of an urgent lead connected to Ytre Enebakk.