There are very few full time soldiers in Norway, they have a national service model and then they retain some people on a permanent basis but only part time, they join exercises every year and participate in regular activities.
I don’t know the full details but generally speaking the Norwegians don’t bullshit or gossip much and even if it is not a “real” threat they seem to be treating it as one and expecting/preparing for the worst. That was why it is “reading between the lines”, he’s not giving anything away that isn’t public knowledge, huge numbers of national service recruits go to the north where the Russian border is and there is regular news about airspace incursions/spying. The Russians even troll the Norwegians by taking immigrants to the far north and sending them across the border on bikes, google it, it’s not a joke.
If I remember rightly there was even a show on UK TV recently where they interviewed a border guard from the north of Norway and she more or less said Russia were the enemy and she was a “security guard” or some such. It’s just accepted over here. See the comments from the guy about Finland. They don’t trust Russia on historical reasons and they probably never will, when Russia is at war with another neighbour state then it is bound to raise tensions, preparations etc in other neighbour states. They’ll never tell you what they are up to but they don’t have any other enemies in Scandinavia/Finland