Ingeborg Refling Hagen

Ingeborg Refling Hagen (19 December 1895 – 30 October 1989) was a Norwegian author and teacher.

Ingeborg Refling Hagen was born in Hedmark, Norway, in the parish Tangen besides Mjøsa, as the fourth child of the local miller. Her childhood was enriched by strong folk tradition and story-telling, and also a strong religious consciousness, mostly derived from her mother, who taught in the spirit of Hans Nielsen Hauge.

Her father died early, and the family had to work hard for self-support. Ingeborg herself and her younger sisters were forced into child labour and hard work. This incident forced her to quit elementary school, and apart from a year at a public high school, seven years of children's school were her sole official education.

From 1911, she worked as a nurse for the Kielland family in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and during this time, she studied Shakespeare in her leisure-time. Later in life, she stated that she also learned to understand the emigrant's plight. From Newcastle she brought with her a vivid memory of the "dock-rats", English orphans on the Newcastle quay. Later, in her writings, she interpreted these children as a preview to the rise of fascism. The dock-rats haunted her for years, and she described them later as a nightmarish vision of Hell. Another curious remembrance of her Newcastle years is a strong geordie accent she developed in socializing with other members of the local lower class (whenever she spoke English in later years). This trait is said to have amused her brother who lived in Boston when she visited him there in 1947.

The experiences the hard work gave her made way for strong socialist sympathies later in her life. She supported the Norwegian Labour Party for most of her life, but was mostly considered a left-winger. She opposed the official political statements done by the party in later years, as well as protesting the official school policy. But in whole, she applauded the idea of the welfare state, and even wrote a poem about it. In spite her criticism, she remained on friendly terms with Einar Gerhardsen throughout her life.

...
Wikipedia