Gustav Natvig-Pedersen

Gustav Natvig-Pedersen (18 August 1893 – 27 May 1965) was a Norwegian philologist, educator and politician for the Labour Party. A school teacher and headmaster during his professional career, he served in Stavanger city council from 1922 to 1964 and three terms in the Norwegian Parliament; during one of these terms he was President of the Storting. He made his mark in language politics.

He was born in Stavanger as a son of sailmaker Johan Pedersen (1857–1941) and his wife Johanne Christine Natvig (1863–1940). He briefly attended the Norwegian Military Academy, but graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1919. In the same year he was hired as a school teacher in Stavanger. He was also a standing military officer, and held the rank Premier Lieutenant from 1920.

He was elected to Stavanger city council for the first time in 1922, and was re-elected successively throughout the rest of the interwar period. He chaired his local party chapter from 1925 to 1926 and 1935 to 1936, and was a member of the Labour Party national board from 1936 to 1939. From 1926 to 1928 he was a member of the city school board. He was also board chairman of the local party newspaper Den 1ste Mai from 1927 to 1936. He was elected to the Norwegian Parliament from the Market towns of Vest-Agder and Rogaland counties in 1936.

Among the political cases during this period, Natvig-Pedersen made a mark in the language issue. He was one of the people behind the orthographic reform of 1938, which implemented a converge between Nynorsk and Bokmål. He issued the orthographic dictionary Norsk rettskrivingsordliste in 1938 together with August Lange; the book was reprinted ten times. In the next year, Natvig-Pedersen followed with a textbook in Norwegian Bokmål. He later served as a member of the Norwegian Language Committee from 1953 to 1962, and in 1959 he issued a new version of Norsk rettskrivingsordliste together with Kjølv Egeland.

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