Witch in Norway Gets Small Business Grant
By WILLIAM STOICHEVSKI
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 21, 2003; 4:50 PM

OSLO, Norway - For witch Lena Skarninga, getting a small business grant was just the potion needed to cook up a little enterprise.

It was her detailed business plan that enchanted the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund, the SND. The Fund awarded her $7,453 so she could spread her magic to residents around the forest of Nord-Odal, 93 miles north of the capital, Oslo.

Skarning, a 33-year-old practicing witch said she plans to make a living mixing elixirs for clients, selling wares door-to-door and making house calls.

"I'll travel to their homes," she told The Associated Press Tuesday. "This is what I always wanted to do."

Her specialty products include night creams for vivid dreams, a day cream to combat indecisiveness and a foot cream to change a user's bad habits.

Skarning said she has always been a witch, but needed seed money for her business to take root. She attended a seminar on entrepreneurship and then applied for the grant.

SND spokesman Ove Gahren said the money was awarded for applications that were "exceptional, very innovative, and very importantly, offered a new service or created a job."

He said the notion of a witch getting a grant may seem out of the ordinary, but her business plan was "pretty reasonable and well thought-out."

Last year, the agency gave out $534 million for some 8,000 projects to help develop and promote small business in the Nordic country of 4.5 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60006-2003Oct21.html