Coercive sterilizations of members of societal outgroups, especially people of Romani descent were not uncommon within the Norwegian health care system under the Sterilization Act of 1934, which regulated sterilizations in Norway until the 1970s. Although abolished by a new sterilization Act in 1977, previous practices did not come under public scrutiny until the 1990s. In 1998, a formal apology to victims of coercive sterilization was issued by the Government, and in 2005 Parliament issued a justice compensation scheme to individual victims of coercive sterilization, as well as a collective repair to the Romani people in the shape of a public fund to document and preserve their history and culture. In some ways this process can be interpreted as a political learning process. The historical injustice was recognized, pasta buses were condemned and reparation claims acknowledged by virtually all political parties. However, some traits of the process indicate that learning have been more superficial and ’ritual ’ than substantial, and marked more by a distancing from rather than a reconciliation with past abuses. The paper specifically deals with the role of consensus and conflict in facilitating societal and political learning processes, arguing that the overall consensus among the political parties may actually have been a hindrance to a more profound and deeper understanding amongst politicians as well as the public at large of the sufferings and injustices experienced by the Romani people in Norway during the 20th century.
