Erik Braadland

Who was Erik Braadland?

Erik Braadland was a Norwegian diplomat and politician for the Centre Party.

He was born in Idd as a son of former Parliament member Birger Braadland and Ragna Abigael Vogt Stang. He finished Oslo Commerce School in 1928 and then attended the Norwegian Military Academy for one year. He graduated with the cand.oecon. degree in 1932 and was hired in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1934. He was first stationed in Hamburg, then from 1936 in Marseille. From 1940 to 1943 he was a secretary in the Ministry of Provisioning in occupied Oslo. He then fled to Sweden, and served as a secretary in the Norwegian legation in Stockholm from 1943.

In 1945 he was promoted to assistant secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was a legation councellor in West Berlin from 1947 to 1951, chargé d'affaires in Bonn from 1951 to 1952 and ambassador to SFR Yugoslavia from 1952 to 1954. He then served as the Norwegian ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1958 and to both the United Kingdom and Ireland from 1959 to 1961.

He was elected to the Parliament of Norway from Østfold in 1961, and was re-elected on one occasion in 1965. During his two terms he was a member of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Standing Committee on Finance respectively, for four years each. Parallel to this, he was a member of the Enlarged Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence for eight years.