Morten Wetland

Morten Wetland (born 12 May 1951) is a Norwegian lobbyist, jurist, diplomat and politician for the Labour Party.

[1] In 1992 Wetland was responsible for coining the phrase Det er typisk norsk å være god, which translates to "It is typical for Norwegians to be clever".

The phrase was used in a New Year's speech by then-Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland,[2] and quickly became famous in Norway.

In 1994 Wetland moved from the administrative to the partisan political stratum in the Office of the Prime Minister, as he was appointed State Secretary in the third cabinet Brundtland.

In the new cabinet Jagland, he was appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, but only lasted for less than two months, from 1 November to 18 December 1996.

[3] He worked briefly for the publishing house Gyldendal in 1997, before spending the next year as campaign leader for Gro Harlem Brundtland, who ran for the position as Director-General of the World Health Organization.

In 2005 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came under scrutiny for the handling of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, a natural disaster that gravely affected Norwegian citizens abroad.

[2][11] The foreign affairs administration had originally singled out another candidate, peace process veteran Mona Juul, who was the deputy leader of the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations at that time.

[13][14] Nonetheless, Stoltenberg, whose wife was a friend of Juul, chose to back out of the process in order to act "cautious".