Knut Getz Wold

Who was Knut Getz Wold?

Knut Getz Wold is a Norwegian economist and civil servant, who served as the Governor of the Central Bank of Norway from 1970 to 1985.

He was born in Verdal as a son of district physician Trygve Wold and Anna Ella Getz. He graduated from the University of Oslo with cand.oecon. degree in 1939. He lost his brother Torolf in Norwegian Campaign on 4 May 1940.

He started working with research at the university, and studied further at Stockholm College in 1940. In 1941 he started working for the Ministry of Finance-in-exile in the United Kingdom. From July 1947 to March 1948 he served as a State Secretary in the Ministry of Social Affairs. Wold represented the Liberal Party, and Gerhardsen's Second Cabinet in which he was appointed was a Labour cabinet. This discrepancy is very uncommon in Norwegian history.

In 1948 he returned to the civil servant role when he became deputy under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Trade. In his diaries he described the Ministry of Trade as "not [...] a ministry, but a Brain Trust of young economists". He remained there until 1958, when former Minister of Trade Erik Brofoss, who now had become Governor of the Central Bank of Norway, appointed Wold as Deputy Governor. Wold was the unquestionable successor as Governor when Brofoss withdrew in 1970. In 1985, the year of his seventieth birthday, Wold stepped down and was succeeded by Hermod Skånland.