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repeat with conviction, as if talking to a slow-witted child. I’m unshaven and scruffy and look conspicuous enough without your help, so I don’t want to have a moose straggling behind me. Don’t worry, I say, I won’t be long. But it does worry. It doesn’t want me to go. Poor little moose, I say, you think I’m going to abandon you, but I won’t. I just have to go to the shop and get some milk and a few other things I need. This has no effect. Separation anxiety shines out of its eyes, and it concerns me that it is so clingy. I thought moose were more independent. It’s attaching itself to me in a way I’m not sure I’m ready for yet. I catch myself blaming its dead mother for taking the calf with her on a walk, slap bang in the middle of the hunting season. What was she thinking of?
    I stop, put down my sack and cuddle the moose. Try to lift it up, but it’s too heavy, so instead I massage its head with my knuckles in a playful, affectionate way. I give it knuckle, as we say in my family. Afterwards I explain the situation in an unhurried, orderly fashion. I’m a great believer in explaining things. I’ve always done that with my children too. Children can sense that there’s something up if you lie or withhold facts, I tell myself. Therefore I explain, using body language, that I’m going down among people and it’s much too dangerous for a little moose. There are cars and buses down there, and lots of noise and all sorts of confusing signals. In fact, that’s the most distinctive feature of humans, I say, they’re the masters when it comes to confusing signals, no one can match them,  you can search for a thousand years, but you won’t find more confusing signals than those that come from humans.
    And when moose happen to stray among humans they’re shot, I say, miming a stray moose being shot and dying a gruesome death. So, I say, it’s best for you to wait here. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, then we can get together and do something nice.
    I wait for a sign that it’s understood me and that it agrees, but it’s not forthcoming. And despite all my explaining and all my kind intentions it still follows me. In the end I tie it to a tree. That settles that.
    The manager at ICA is dubious. I can read him like a book. The doubt oozes from every pore. Help a poor old hunter-gatherer, I say, but I can see he thinks it’s weird.
    We’re standing in the stockroom and he’s trying to put on a stoic attitude, but despite all the smiling training and theories about how the customer is king, he radiates scepticism. What I’m asking is, of course, way beyond all the rules and regulations. I offer him moose meat in exchange for milk and a handful of other wares from his rich assortment, and he doesn’t like it. I know that most people think that this type of economy is a throwback, I say, but here I am anyway, and the meat is good, and besides it’s an excellent economic system. You barter. You do things for other people. I’m sure it’s on its way back, I say. It’s coming back, and if you go along with this you can boast later that you were ahead of your time. You were a trendsetter because it’s absolutely certain that bartering is coming back. In ten years’ time bartering will be the norm. It’s obvious, I say. Things can’t go on the way they are doing now. It’s no good. Open virtually any paper or magazine and you will see that nowadays there are hardly any discerning people who are in any doubt about how we have to change our consumer ways if we’re going to keep things going for more than a few decades. And I see that’s your view too, I say. You’re a thinker. I notice you haven’t said no.
    He’s in his mid-thirties and actually pretty pleased with himself. It’s quite clear that he’s well-trained, for a shopkeeper, and thinks it’s exciting to be involved in building up ICA at Ullevål Stadium. The shop has been done up and everything. One of the country’s most