Speech at the unveiling of a portrait of Gunnar “Kjakan” Sønsteby

The Minister based his speech on the following points:

 

Dear Gunnar Sønsteby, Ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen,

• Gunnar Sønsteby – a living legend and a historical figure who is still very much alive, a storyteller and an educator, a quite extraordinary, ordinary hero. You turned 92 in January this year. It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to be here this evening.  
  
• When Winston Churchill received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his achievements and historical writing on the Second World War, it was said that the prize was awarded to a man who had both made history and written history.
  
• It feels natural to use the same words to describe Gunnar Sønsteby. Not least because there are two bronze statues in Solli Plass in Oslo, of Winston Churchill and Gunnar Sønsteby. Two quite different statues. The one of Sønsteby, by the sculptor Per Ung, was unveiled by the King in 2007. It conveys a greatness that is completely devoid of pretentiousness.
  
• Gunnar Sønsteby, you have made history and you have written and communicated history, every day since Norway was liberated in May 1945. You are one of the best known members of the Norwegian resistance movement. You have been decorated with the War Cross with three swords, and you are Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. You have shown the way, and you have borne witness to your times.
  
• Now, there are tens of thousands more people who know you from the film Max Manus, in particular from the younger generation. You have held over 2000 lectures, and you have visited countless schools. Only today there is a newspaper article referring to a visit you made a few days ago to Majorstua School in Oslo, and how one of the pupils wrote to the newspaper saying how much she had learned. You are a storyteller, an educator. At the same time we know you from films, fiction, documentaries, TV programmes, interviews, books, sculptures, and now also a new painting, which we will soon see. As Nanna Segelcke mentioned, there are only a very few other portraits of you. Two of them are in the Ministry of Defence, where if I remember right you are hanging next to the King and Jens Christian Hauge, there is at least one in your home town of Rjukan, and there is a fine photographic portrait of you in Larvik.
  
• You are known for your steady hand, and I have heard that you can still forge the handwriting of the head of the Gestapo in Oslo. (My office today is in the building that used to house the Gestapo headquarters in Oslo).
  
• If we consider everything that you and your friends were up against 65–70 years ago and compare our experience with yours, we see that in many ways we are an “untested” generation.
  
• The message you convey is that peace has to be won, that peace has to be defended, and that peace requires commitment from us all.
  
• Your story therefore gives meaning and perspective to the task of all our fellow countrymen and women who are deployed today to dangerous missions abroad in the name of peace. Not long ago you visited an injured Afghanistan veteran, whose one great wish was to meet you. The fact that you visited him speaks volumes.
  
• In January 2008, you said to the newspaper Dagbladet: “There is one thing I can’t stand. That is those who strap explosives to themselves and kill innocent people. They are inhuman. They are the ones we are fighting now.”
  
• Another of the points you often make is that when there is something important at stake, many people find they have a hero inside. 
  
• It is an honour to unveil this painting, by the artist Knut André Vikshåland – a portrait of the man with 30–40 aliases: the man with the bicycle; “Kjakan”, or the chin; “No. 24”, “Erling Fjeld”, “Hans Jacobsen”... On canvas, here well protected by the King’s Guard, as befits our national hero, Gunnar Sønsteby.