1. Where are you from?
I'm from Drammen, which is a city 30 minutes from Oslo and I currently work within the Norwegian Joint Military Police, here in Oslo. I work mainly with investigations.
2. How long have you been in the military? Why did you decide to join?
I joined the military because I wanted to get some education and military training for my country. Initially I also wanted to become a police officer in the Norwegian (civilian) police and I thought doing military police training would be a nice experience to become a police officer here in Norway.
I went to the NCO Academy in 2008 and joined the military police in 2009 and I've been working in the military police since then.
3. Have you deployed before, either on a NATO exercise or other mission?
I have been deployed several times with investigation matters in Norway and other places around the world. It's mostly short trips, like a week or two. I was also posted to SHAPE, in Belgium, for three years, which was a great experience. I've also been deployed on five NATO Cold Response and Trident Juncture exercises in the past.
4. What are your expectations of this exercise?
My expectation for this exercise is that we will support the troops, getting their equipment safely from the port down in Fredrikstad to the exercise area, and back again.
5. What is your role/job in the military and during this exercise?
My role in the exercise is being a Military Police patrolman, by doing mobility support operations to the military convoys. They're to be driving together with civilian traffic and our task is to regulate the traffic to ensure freedom of movement for special transports, which is wider and heavier than the roads are usually made for. It means that a tank on top of a trailer for example, needs to cross a lot of the bridges centric and alone as well as through the tunnels. So we will support the convoys to ensure their safety, stopping and regulating the traffic so that they can deploy safely to their destination.
6. How did you and your unit prepare for this cold weather?
We're Norwegians; we were born prepared for cold weather.
7. What do you do in your down time to relax?
I spend most of my time with my family. I have a girlfriend and a son; he's four years old. And we have a dog! We enjoy all kinds of outdoor sports. During the winter we're skiing; cross country skiing and also downhill skiing sometimes. We also enjoy hiking and just spending time outdoors. This past weekend actually I was staying out in the woods for one night.
During the summer I also like outdoor sports, like running, kayaking and standup paddling.
8. What is the best thing about being in the military?
The best thing about being in the military is that I have great colleagues and also, now, my office is in the centre of Oslo. There is also the variation of experiences that we can have. At times we work multinational and I really enjoy that. I've seen most of Norway, in uniform, and I've had a lot of nice experiences travelling around with the military inside and outside of Norway.