In the midst of our busy city district there is a fortress surrounded by walls. Inside the walls there is a world the fewest of us have very much knowledge of.  Oslo Prison is Norway’s largest prison and consists of three departments, A, B and C. Most of the inmates are in remand custody, and most of them are foreign citizens. We have met Morthen Sørlie, prison chaplain, who is relatively new to the job. He is about to experience his first Christmas behind the prison walls. The world of the prison is an entirely new experience for him. He serves Dept. B, previously known popularly as ’Bayern’, since once there was a brewery here!

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Text: Olav Rune Ekeland Bastrup Photo: Lill Beate Eidsheim. First published in ’Kirkeposten’ (The Church Post) no. 2-2010.

- What has surprised you most in your new job?
- That there is such a huge demand for me. The Chaplain is one of the professional bodies in the Prison that receives a lot of enquiries. We enjoy a high degree of respect among both inmates and employees.  I am also positively surprised by the high ethical standard among employees of the prison services. One notices this in the way inmates are talked about and treated. The employees are polite and correct and never talk in a derogatory manner.

- But being a chaplain in prison must be very different to being a parist priest?
- Yes, it is. The greatest difference is that my role here is completely justified, which is not necessarily the case to the same extent otherwise. The chaplain is not a stranger who suddenly pops up on special occasions. He is a completed accepted as a part of a prison’s everyday life. Muslims ask to see the chaplain just as much as Christians. If someone asks me to get a copy of the Koran, I help with this too.

- Is there a religious life in a prison?
- Most definitely so. Oslo Prison mainly houses prisoners on remand, and that means that I, in my capacity as chaplain, meet the inmates in an acute phase for them, shortly after something terrible has happened, the very reason for them being here. It is then that the basic existential and religious questions crop up - questions that go far deeper than whether or not you are a prisoner or a free person. This also influences our church services. In church, we emphasize the importance of the spoken word.  Here the meaningful rituals mean so much more. After all, many of the inmates cannot speak Norwegian. But they can participate naturally in common rituals, such as  kan falle naturlig inn i felles rituelle handlinger, som communion, prayer, singing and lighting of candles.
At the same time this tells met hat very many inmates have a background from religious activities, they have a language they can draw on and make use of which becomes even more meaningful in their new current situation.

- Do you often think about the fact that many of those you are chaplain for have committed very serious crimes?
- I never ask what an inmate has done unless the person wishes to talk about this himself. And there are many that have a big need to do so.  What I first and foremost experience on meeting inmates is that the border between them and us is not as big as the walls around the prison can easily make us believe. The inmates are just as much a part of a Norwegian average population as they are not. I never think at all that here I am dealing with a different category of people. I meet and greet them as I do with any person that thinks and feels as people do when they have basic needs.  Human dignity cannot be defined base don what we have done or who we are.  To me, as chaplain, this is a fundamental starting point.
Morthen Sørlie comes from many years service as priest for Gamle Aker parish in Oslo, where he has participated in a rich life of church service to God at Oslo’s oldest church. His position as prison chaplain is temporary during a period in which Oslo deanship is currently undergoing significant manpower restructuring, and therefore his length of service at Oslo Prison us somewhat uncertain.