Is Norway a better society to live in today than in the 1950s? Inge Eidsvåg believes it is – on the whole things have gone in the right direction, at least from the point of view of material standards of living. At the same time, we are in the process of sawing off the branch we’re sitting on. Eidsvåg’s generation is the first to have become aware of the climate crisis – and they are the last ones who will escape its impact.

That is the backdrop to this report from the school of life, the school that may make us a bit wiser but ultimately takes the lives of all its students. The School of Life is Inge Eidsvåg’s journey from the realm of childhood to the narrow paths of old age, and a settling of accounts with Norwegian society, from the 1950s to the present day.