Being Gay in Norway before it was legal, part 2— the hidden meetings
In this article we move into the 20th century when homosexuality was legalized in Norway.
In the early 1900’s it was accepted that two “frøkner” (“misses” or unmarried women) lived together, as lesbian love wasn’t understood. For gay men it was several examples of more openness, tolerance and protection in small villages where they could be a couple or live together undisturbed on a farm. The whole village knew, but nobody cared about it — many gay men owned their respect through work and were not excluded simply because they loved another man.
The discretion line
Did that mean it was easy? No, not at all. Most gays kept a low profile in social life as it was never any public display of affection, different ways of behaving or dressing. Secret meeting places occurred everywhere: small notes written discretely in a local magazine or simply meeting through friends in private homes happened all the time. One example is Erling Næss who as a young man moved into a well-established gay environment in Oslo in 1913, and held his home open for gay men until the 1950’s. In the 1940’s, the police already knew of certain gay meetings in urinals and male toilets in Oslo, and often came in with flashlights to catch men in the darkness. The arrested spent the night in jail and were let out the next morning, as the authorities wanted to keep things quiet without a public display of homosexuality through a court process.
That doesn’t mean the gay didn’t have safe public places, indeed the restaurants and bars such as Original Pilsen and Håndverkeren in Oslo mixed gays with a working class male environment, where gays were welcome and could show affection openly. For gay women it was harder to get in, as the staff did not let single women because they assumed they were prostitutes. To solve this problem some gay women dressed up as men, and escorted single gay women in and out of the bars. This “butch/femme” dressing was common among lesbian women at the time, to show the world that they simply weren’t just heterosexual female friends living together — No, they were a couple. Dressing up in a full male clothing required a lot of courage as it would rather often attract stares and bullying. The Norwegian after-war society focused heavily on traditional female gender roles, and the media sexualized femininity as women were supposed to look good for her husband. The gay women challenged these expectations such as well-known composer Pauline Hall and Oslo Tourism CEO Alfhild Hovdan. There was still a fine line between saying or doing too much even for women, as homosexuality was considered a mental illness in medical books and widely disregarded in society as something of perversion. The condemnation and punishment is why discretion was held tightly amongst gay men and women, and to survive it was crucial not overstepping that line and become too visible.
The secret meetings
The association “Det Norske Forbundet” (The Norwegian Association) was founded in Oslo in 1948, shorted to DNF-48. It was modeled after the Danish one with the same name, and as Denmark had legalized homosexuality in 1933 their version of the association could now move from undercover to public. In Norway it wasn’t yet the case, but the two founders were set to fight to remove paragraph 213 from the penal code. Their first brochure of 1951 stated that the association worked to “defend the human rights of the minority in society which is made up of people with a homosexual and bisexual attitude to love life.” As it wasn’t allowed to have homosexual organizations, the association had to take a public name “The Association for Town and Country” and keep their meetings secret.
Women were also invited to DNF from chairmen Løvaas and Dermot Mack, and in the late 50’s it was 277 female members (around 20% of the total members) and equal gender representation in the board. It led gay women and men together for the first time to discuss their common experiences and work through mental health issues together. The club moved out of Heli and Eckhoff’s home in Oslo and had meetings in sports clubs and the like. The volunteers had strict orders to keep the member cards secret, and if necessary destroy all evidence to avoid persecution of members. Vigdis Bunkholdt was one of the early and active members of DNF, and made pamphlets distributed in schools and medical centers about homosexuality, and worked tirelessly as a psychology student to debate and change the medical and social view of homosexuality. Next to serious meetings it was also a lot of parties in DNF, and according to Vigdis “the girls wore men’s clothes and was fighting, while the boys were knitting and crying”. As she came from a wealthy home and became a psychologist she could confirm that many lesbian girls focused on their studies like her, to avoid being married or having a traditional family life. Bot gay men and women were also struggling with their self confidence and lacked idols and a healthy view of homosexuality as love, not perversion and mental illness.
De-criminalizing homosexuality
The law from 1902 was unchanged by the 50’s, but did for the first time separate between people who have sex with animals and paragraph 213 “fornication between men of the same sex”. Again, women were not mentioned. The maximum punishment was prison for 1 year, but persecution could only take place if it was “for the best interest of the public”. A vague sentence which often meant that the court would not actually persecute homosexuals because it was considered so shameful, that it was better if you just let them be and don’t make it a public interest to give people ideas. In that sense it was very few criminal cases against homosexuals in Norway compared to other countries.
DNF worked tirelessly to get rid of paragraph 213 by hiring lawyers and being more politically active in the 1960’s. They were invited to TV and amongst student organizations, but the members always worked under false names in public. In 1970 DNF lobbied tirelessly towards the Parliament representatives and with the new leader in DNF named Karen Christine “Kim” Friele in front, paragraph 213 was removed and homosexuality legalized in 1972. Kim Friele became a symbol for gay rights all over Norway, as she herself left her marriage and lived openly with her girlfriend. She continued as secretary in DNF after 1971 and up to 1989, which meant that her and DNF also got homosexuality removed as a psychiatric diagnosis during this time. In 1993 gays had their civil union law passed and it was furthermore formalized to the new marriage law of 2009. Only in 2017 the Church of Norway allowed same-sex marriages inside the church.
DNF continued to live through other organizations for gay rights, today it’s named FRI.
Sources in Norwegian:
Aftenposten (https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/g0d0q/da-homofile-maatte-skjule-seg) and (https://www.aftenposten.no/oslo/i/01oQM/han-sto-frem-som-homofil-samme-aar-som-det-ble-avkriminalisert-i-norge-i-dag-feiret-han-sammen-med-titusenvis-av-andre)
Forskning (https://forskning.no/samliv-sosialantropologi-historie/gamle-homser-snakker-ut/1057546)
Kvinnehistorie (https://www.kvinnehistorie.no/artikkel/t-7257)
Book: Hans W. Kristiansen, “Masker og Motstand”
