Norwegian oil funds cultural renaissance As savage cuts are being made to cultural funding across crisis-struck Europe, the art world in oil-rich Norway is finding itself flush with cash like never before. The Norwegian state has nearly doubled its arts funding since 2006 to €1.2bn and has plans to increase it by a further €100m over the next two years in its bid to spend 1 per cent of the total government budget on culture. The country has little exposure to the European sovereign debt crisis, is forecast to have healthy economic growth this year, collects around €30bn every year in oil revenues which goes into a €460bn sovereign wealth fund, and so has been one of the few countries in Europe able to indulge itself culturally since the crisis. Norway has already opened a €580m opera house in Oslo in 2008 and has been discussing either a new €500m waterfront museum to house the work of Edvard Munch, the country's best-known artist famous for his painting "The Scream," or a more simple renovation of the old museum. It has also started a new €7m-a-year philharmonic orchestra which is intent on "conquering the world from the north." The group suggests this could be made easier by the fact that "in other parts of the world philharmonic orchestras are being closed down." Under the government's Cultural Initiative new funds are also being made available for Norwegian dance, cinema and even a "Cultural Walking Stick" programme to encourage artistic expression among senior citizens. "The government's vision is that Norway will be a leading cultural nation in which culture is given prominence in all sectors of society," according to the ministry of culture. Allocations for art and cultural purposes will continue to be substantially increased in 2012. It is not just Norway where cultural funding is looking robust, but across the whole Nordic region where exposure to the debt crisis is low, budgets are mostly balanced and, with the exception of Denmark, there has not been a substantial fall in house prices. In Sweden, state cultural funding has risen 12 per cent from 2006 to €760m, or 0.8 per cent of the budget. The country has been investing particularly in the northern town of Umeå, which along with Riga in Latvia will be a European Capital of Culture in 2014. In Finland, where funding has also increased over the past five years to €430m, debates are ongoing about whether a Guggenheim museum will be built in Helsinki. The €140m building would be the same size as the one in New York, although smaller than the one built in Bilbao, Spain, in 1997. According to the Council of Europe, cultural funding as a share of total central government spending in 2009 was 0.7 per cent in the UK and 0.4 per cent in Germany. In 2008 in Italy, before the bulk of the cuts, it was 0.9 per cent. In the Netherlands, government financing for arts programmes has been cut by 25 per cent, while in Spain the budget for the education, culture and sports ministry was cut by 21 per cent earlier this month in the harshest budget for the country since the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.