Roald Halvorsen

Who was Roald Halvorsen?

Roald Halvorsen was a Norwegian typographer, Communist Party politician and resistance member from World War II.

He finished his typographer's education before World War II, and was a board member of his local union in Oslo, Oslo Typografiske Fagforening. He was not a member of any political party. During the German occupation of Norway in World War II, Halvorsen joined the communist part of the Norwegian resistance movement in 1942. In March 1942 he got a warning that the German police had tried to contact him at his home, and started to live undercover. When he disappeared from the police, his wife Fanny was incarcerated at the Grini concentration camp for sixteen months, as a hostage. Halvorsen participated in the production of the underground newspaper Avantgarden, which reached a peak circulation of 18,000 in 1942. Avantgarden was printed in Oslo. Halvorsen was responsible for the type-setting, and during the summer and autumn 1942 this was done from a summer hut at the beach Bestemorstranda at the eastern side of Bunnefjorden. During the winter 1942–1943 he operated from a hut annex at Krokskogen. He later worked out of Skriulægeret in Valdresfjella, in the central headquarters of the communist resistance. The encampment was raided by the German occupiers in Operation Almenrausch in June 1944, but Halvorsen escaped. He fled to Sweden and was a part of the Communist Party leadership-in-exile there. In 1988 he was an editor and contributor to the book De trykte illegale avisene, about the illegal press during the war.