An architectural icon

Countless times they could let out a sigh of relief when they found a conveniently bright red “telefonkiosk” in various times of need, and could fish out a couple of coins from a pocket to call home and ask for a ride, or to say that the ferry just left the dock and they would have to wait another two hours on the wrong side of the fjord.

There were 6000 of these red boxes in Norway at the most, all with the exact same design. They were strategically positioned all over the country, some adorning prestigious locations on a corner in a posh neighbourhood, others proudly defying their less well-tended surroundings, or looking forlorn in the middle of nowhere.

Roots in Bergen

The designer of the booths, Georg Fredrik Fasting, was an architect from Bergen. In 1932 he won the competition for the design of a new booth that would bring telephones to people all across the country, in urban and sparsely populated areas.

There were 93 entrants to the competition run by Televerket (as Telenor was known then), but his design, which he dubbed “Riks,” prevailed in the end. Riks referred to the nation, “riket” and connoted long-distance calls. In the early 1930s, this simple design was ultra modern, as opposed to the British design of similar colour, but with connotations of tradition. This 1930s design was kept for the Norwegian telefonkiosk for the better part of a century.

Final dial tone goes silent

The vast majority of the kiosks were gradually decommissioned as mobile communications took over in the 1990s and many fell into disrepair. On a beautiful summer’s day in 2016, the last functioning telefonkiosk lost its dial tone and was decommissioned.

Today you can still see them. One hundred of them still live on as decorative additions to our landscape, protected as cultural heritage by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Norway (Riksantikvaren). Some have become neighborhood “libraries” or book exchanges. They all brighten up our surroundings and help us connect with times past.