Labor Shaken

Soviet nuclear tests produced an unexpected fallout over Norway last week, costing the Communist Party's representative his lone seat in the Storting (Parliament). After the votes were counted in the country's quadrennial election, Red Deputy Emil Lovlien exploded: "I have been bombed out of the Storting by Mr. Khrushchev!"

Deputy Lovlien was not the only one to be dislodged. Norway's long-ruling Labor Party found itself without a parliamentary majority for the first time since 1945. The vote was split, with 74 seats going to the Labor Party, 74 to the combined non-Socialist opposition parties, and two new seats won by the far-left, neutralist Socialist People's Party.

Once the enfant terrible of European socialism, the Labor Party calmed down after World War II, ran the country complacently as a heavily subsidized, part-free, part-controlled boom economy. During the election campaign, with all major parties agreeing on foreign policy, there were no issues except a dutiful conservative complaint about inflation. No one bothered to make a serious fight against the anti-NATO, ban-the-bomb mavericks, which may explain how they managed to grab their two seats. If the elections accomplished nothing else, they brought excitement to the country's long becalmed politics.

Consensus is that disappointed Labor Premier Einar Gerhardsen will soon resign, but that the Labor Party will manage to hang on. Likely compromise: Laborite Nils Langhelle, president of the Storting, will take over a minority government with tacit conservative support. One thing was certain: in view of the pressing problem of Common Market entry and Norway's vital role in NATO, neither Labor nor the other old-line parties want to give the fellow-traveling upstarts a chance to play the balance-of-power game.

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