Aftenposten.no: Jens Stoltenberg and his new government partners, the Center Party and the Socialist Left, have a long list of issues to resolve in order to put forward a united front as a ruling government coalition. They've already agreed to disagree on whether Norway should join the European Union.

The three parties have sharply differing views on whether, for example, Norway should drill for more oil in the Barents Sea, build gas plants or remain in NATO. They'll retreat to a conference center in the hills above Oslo on Tuesday, to start hashing out a government platform.

Stoltenberg and his Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet) have some clear advantages, however. They will lead the coalition from a position of relative strength, after winning more than 60 seats in Parliament and 32.7 percent of the vote.

That indicates that Labour, which started adopting a more moderate brand of politics in the 1990s, likely won't be making any major radical turns, even though it will be cooperating with the Socialist Left (SV), known for a much more left-wing brand of socialist politics.

SV, however, was relatively battered at the polls and heads into a government coalition with just 8.7 percent of voter support and a major loss of seats in Parliament. Party leader Kristin Halvorsen wasn't a happy woman as the poor results streamed in during the night, but vowed she'll nonetheless push her party's views in the new coalition, and expects to be be heard.

So does Åslaug Haga, head of the Center Party (Sp), which remains adamantely opposed to Norwegian membership in the European Union while Stoltenberg supports it. Haga's party also has traditionally championed the interests of Norwegian farmers and the country's outlying districts, fighting the influence of global free markets in order to subsidize life outside Norway's cities.

Haga seemed to somewhat distance her party, however, from the farmers during all the election hype Monday evening, claiming on national TV that her party's politics don't only support the farmers and can be good for the cities as well. She also cited increased funding for townships, sports and culture, and support for the districts as her main priorities, thereby neatly avoiding the thorny EU and trade issues.

The pressure is on for the three parties to find common ground if they hope to hold on to government power. Labour has never been part of a government coalition before, and SV has never been part of a government at all, but as one commentator put it Tuesday, they're doomed to succeed.

After a party debate yesterday on national television, politicians from the red-greens seemed extremely "streamlined". The conservatives managed to bring the whole debate down several notches however as they immediately started attacking the red-greens for making promises they could never fulfill. The end result was a red-green coalition that seemed much stronger than it may be, and a conservative block that's running around like headless chickens wondering what went wrong and blaming the socialists in an automatic response.