In Helsemagasinet, Julia Schreiner Benito highlights new figures from Statistics Norway (Statistisk sentralbyrå) showing that excess mortality in Norway is set to continue into 2026: “Every year since 2021, more people than expected have died in Norway, and the pattern is similar across other Western countries. This is historic. Excess mortality is a serious signal of something affecting our health or societal development, and it is not enough for the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) to simply monitor the situation closely. When will academic environments, researchers, and institutions outside the NIPH be granted full access to anonymised raw data from the national registers? The NIPH should openly document and share the data, without either alarming or reassuring people.”
Writer Jan Terje Voilaas also points out that this wave of deaths is unprecedented in the country’s modern history. Yet it has been largely met with silence from the authorities.
When you examine the figures closely, you realise that mortality was not particularly high in 2020, when a new virus was spreading and society was under strict lockdowns.
Mortality began to rise in the summer of 2021, after the rollout of the COVID vaccinations. The timeline here is very clear. Uncomfortably clear. From July 2021 right through to the start of 2026, Norway has experienced almost continuous excess mortality, with only a handful of months as exceptions. Other countries that used modified mRNA COVID vaccines show a similar pattern of excess mortality.
What created a public health crisis of historic proportions?
Have mRNA injections killed more Norwegians than World War II?
The number of Norwegian citizens killed during the Second World War was either just over 10,000 or just over 12,000, depending on which source you consult. Excess mortality from mid-2021 to the start of 2026 has long since surpassed exceeded this — and it continues to rise. Something unspecified has, since mid-2021, claimed the lives of a Norwegian town the size of Narvik or Elverum, and as of now, the wave of deaths shows no sign of abating.
The excess mortality began in the final months of the Solberg government in 2021. Since October 2021, the Støre government has presided over the most massive death wave in modern Norwegian history. They have done little more than watch it unfold. Health ministers Ingvild Kjerkol (Ap) and Jan Christian Vestre (Ap) have taken no concrete steps to address it, nor has Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap) himself. The health bureaucracy has remained largely silent about this public health crisis.
Julia Schreiner Benito criticises the fact that the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) wields near-total power:
The NIPH manages the data, defines the categories, decides on the publications, and determines the interpretation of the significance of the figures. When the NIPH owns both the basis and the conclusion, independent verification becomes almost impossible. In general, this is unfortunate, and in the case of persistent excess mortality, it is unacceptable. If the systems make it difficult for anyone other than the NIPH to pick up the pieces, it is the systems that are at fault, not the critics and us who are asking for it. The NIPH publishes overviews, reports and models for excess mortality. They participate in international surveillance, and there is no shortage of professional expertise. However, history shows that even the best can have “blind spots”. When independent researchers are not given standardised access to sufficiently detailed, anonymised data, we end up with a knowledge monopoly: The NIPH becomes a source, filter and interpreter. The very premise of science then disappears: to challenge, test alternative models and ask new questions. The NIPH’s obfuscation undermines trust, and the road to speculation becomes short. The NIPH justifies its obfuscation on the grounds of privacy, but it is entirely possible to combine strict privacy protection with broader access to researchers. The NIPH needs the countervailing power of independent control. It’s a matter of life and death.
It’s easy to agree with her on this. If independent researchers like Professor Jarle Aarstad want access to this data, they should get it.
It should be a demand from every person in this country—vaccinated or unvaccinated—that the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) immediately publishes anonymised death statistics comparing COVID-vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals, so independent researchers can scrutinise the figures. We simply won’t take no for an answer.
NIPH employees are paid from public funds, and this data concerns our health—and that of our loved ones. We have a right to see it.
The thousands upon thousands who have died in excess mortality since 2021 were our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, grandchildren, friends, and colleagues. We demand to know what happened to them.