Gunnar Knudsen
| Gunnar Knudsen | |
|---|---|
 |
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| 3rd Prime Minister of Norway | |
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In office 31 January 1913 – 21 June 1920 |
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| Monarch | Haakon VII |
| Preceded by | Jens Bratlie |
| Succeeded by | Otto Bahr Halvorsen |
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In office 19 March 1908 – 2 February 1910 |
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| Monarch | Haakon VII |
| Preceded by | Jørgen Løvland |
| Succeeded by | Wollert Konow |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 19 September 1848 Saltrød, Norway |
| Died | 1 December 1928 (aged 80) Skien, Norway |
| Political party | Liberal Party |
Gunnar Knudsen (19 September 1848, Saltrød – 1 December 1928, Skien), born Aanon Gunerius Knudsen, was a Norwegian politician from the Liberal Party who had two spells as Prime Minister of Norway from 1908 to 1910 and from 1913 to 1920. He also owned a number of shipping companies, and created the Borgestad corporation.
Knudsen was born in 1848 at the medium-sized farm Saltrød in Stokken, now part of Arendal at the South coast of Norway. His father Christen Knudsen was a sea captain and ship-owner, whose ancestors had lived at the farm for several generations. His mother Guro Aadnesdatter had grown up at one of the smaller farms in Saltrød which her father which hailed from Vegusdal had bought. Christen Knudsen established a shipyard in Arendal in 1851, but in 1855 he and the family moved to Frednes in Porsgrunn.
A brother of Gunnar died in 1855, his two living siblings were Jørgen Christian Knudsen (born 1843) and Ellen Serine (born 1846) who married Johan Jeremiassen.
He started studying at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1865 where he got a degree as engineer in 1867. Returning to Norway, he started working at Aker's Mechanical Workshop and then went to England where he studied ship building technics at Piles Shipyard in Sunderland. The first ship he designed for the family's shipyard was Gambetta, named after the French politician Léon Gambetta. It was launched in 1871. The stay in England convinced Knudsen that the days of sail ships would soon be over and that the family business needed to start building steam ships in the future.
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