Eivind Berggrav

Eivind Berggrav
Eivind Berggrav in 1940
Personal details
Born	(1884-10-25)25 October 1884 Stavanger, Norway
Died	14 January 1959(1959-01-14) (aged 74) Oslo, Norway
Nationality	Norwegian
Denomination	Christian
Occupation	Priest
Education	Cand.theol.
Alma mater	University of Oslo

Eivind Josef Berggrav (25 October 1884 – January 14, 1959) was a Norwegian Lutheran bishop. As Primate of the Church of Norway (Norwegian:Preses i Bispemøtet i Den norske kirke), Berggrav became known for his unyielding resistance against the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II. Berggrav also became an important figure in 20th-century ecumenical movement and served as president of the United Bible Societies.

Berggrav was born Eivind Jensen in Stavanger and raised in Asak in Østfold. His father, Otto Jensen (like his father before him) was an educator and parish priest, who when Eivind was 22 became for a short time Norway's National Minister of Education and Church Affairs in a coalition government before returning to his Skjeberg parish. Rev. Jensen later became dean in the Diocese of Kristiania, and, in the year before his death, bishop of the Diocese of Hamar. His wife, and Eivind's mother, was Marena Christine Pedersen (1846–1924).

Eivind studied theology in Oslo at what was then the University of Kristiania beginning in 1903, and continued family tradition by becoming a priest in the Church of Norway. He changed his surname to that of his paternal grandmother's family: to Jensen Berggrav in 1907 and a decade later to simply Berggrav.

Upon graduating from the university in 1908, Jensen Berggrav taught school for a decade (at the Eidsvoll folkehøgskole, Holmestrand offentlige lærerskole and Akershus fylkesskole). He also started writing for the journal, Kirke i Kultur, which Berggrav continued to do intermittently for decades, until his death. During World War I Berggrav filed some stories as a war correspondent for the Morgenbladet, Norway's largest newspaper. Berggrav also became involved with the Østlandsk reisning political party and the Østlandsk ungdomsfylking youth movement with Alf Frydenberg. Both social movements sought to incorporate the language spoken in eastern Norway into the national written language. (See Norwegian language conflict).