Adam Egede-Nissen

Parents

Adam Hjalmar Egede-Nissen was born on an Øvre Rinnan farm in Frol Municipality (today part of Levanger Municipality) in Nordre Trondheim county, where his father Paul Christian Egede-Nissen (1835–1891) was then serving in the medical corps of the Norwegian Army. Having qualified as a medical doctor in 1858 and having been active as a military physician in the Italian liberation struggle led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, by 1863 Paul Egede-Nissen was practicing medicine in Tromsø; in 1867 he was a commissioned officer with the rank of major and was a regimental surgeon stationed with the army at Levanger. Adam Egede-Nissen's mother was Sophie Amalie Normann of Harstad (1826–1912), widow of Søren Schøning (1816–1861), who had been a merchant on Grøtøya island in Karlsøy Municipality; she married his father in 1863, and the couple had three children, Pauline Fayette Egede-Nissen (born 1864), Søren Kristian Henrik Egede-Nissen (born 1866), and Adam Egede-Nissen, born in 1868. Besides his two full siblings, he had a stepbrother, Jakob Schøning.

Youth and early career

Adam Egede-Nissen graduated from Trondheim Cathedral School in 1886, receiving his Cand philol. (master's degree) two years later. In 1887 he was appointed as a post office assistant in Nordland county; and in 1890 as a mail clerk; he transferred in the following year to become a mail clerk in Bergen. He was postmaster in Vardø (in Finnmark near the Russian border) from 1897 to 1911, when he became postmaster in Stavanger. On 13 May 1899, during his time in Vardø, he founded the newspaper "Finnmarken"; he was its editor for many years.

Egede-Nissen was a member of the municipal council of Vardø Municipality from 1903 to 1911. With Vardø being the easternmost municipality in Norway — and indeed in all of Western Europe — it formed a thriving duty-free centre for the Pomor trade of Norwegian pollock for Russian rye grain and other goods brought by merchants from Arkhangelsk. Making use of his contacts with Russian merchants and officials, Egede-Nissen was among the first Norwegians to establish working links with anti-Tsarist Russian groups. As early as 1902 he had begun printing and smuggling literature across the border into Russia promoting democracy and socialism. In 1906 he was a co-founder of Nordens Klippe, a decidedly socialist Norwegian mineworkers union.

Egede-Nissen was married to Georga ("Goggi") Wilhelma Ellertsen (1871–1959); they had eleven children, seven of whom became stage and film actors: Aud Egede-Nissen (1893–1974), Gerd Grieg (1895–1988), Ada Kramm (1899–1981), Oscar Egede-Nissen (1903–1976), Stig Egede-Nissen (1907–1988), Lill Egede-Nissen (1909–1962) and Gøril Havrevold (1914–1992).