Gunnar Reiss-Andersen

Gunnar Reiss-Andersen (21 August 1896 – 29 July 1964) was a Norwegian lyric poet and author.

Born in southern Norway in Larvik municipality, Reiss-Andersen went to sea at 17 years of age, sailing the Baltic and North Seas for a year in the brig “Baron von Holberg", which was commanded by his uncle, Knut Knutsen. After completing the Examen artium with emphasis in Latin in 1916 he went into the military and trained, becoming a non-commissioned officer. There he followed his inclination towards the arts, painting portraits. He subsequently studied painting in Copenhagen (1917–1919) and Paris (1919–1921). For several years he worked as an artist, illustrator, and the art reviewer for the Arbeiderbladet newspaper in Oslo.

In 1921 he debuted as a lyric poet with his poetry collection titled Indvielsens aar.

He participated in the Norwegian resistance movement beginning in 1940 and during the early years of the Second World War, writing clandestinely distributed anti-war poetry to express opposition to the German occupation. In 1942 he was forced to flee to Sweden to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. He achieved a wide following in Norway by serving as one of the voices for the resistance, along with Nordahl Grieg and Arnulf Øverland. His contributions included several resistance-oriented collections of poetry including a collection written primarily in Norway titled Kampdikt fra Norge 1940-43 (“War Poetry from Norway 1940-43”) which was published in in 1943 and Norsk røst (“Norwegian Voice of Conscience”) which was published in Stockholm in 1944. His poetry written during the war, which had previously circulated illegally, was published in Norway as a collection in the spring of 1945, and enjoyed popularity.

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