The Bishop and Mr Quisling

“Bishop Berggrav was so opposed to all that Mr Quisling and the Nazis stood for, that he organised an effective movement of non-violent Christian resistance to Nazi tyranny.

THOUGH Bishop Berggrav, who in the 1940s was the head of the Lutheran Church in Norway, is not as well known as Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Niemoller, he was also an outstanding hero of the Second World War.

His incredible courage in opposing the Nazis when they invaded Norway in 1942, was recognised by Time magazine at the end of the war.

Berggrav is in fact one of the few Protestant ministers to have been featured on the front cover of that widely read magazine. The editor believed, as I do, that Berggrav’s story is well worth telling.

The story sheds light on how the word ‘quisling’, which Churchill coined to describe those like the Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, came to be used as a synonym for ‘traitor’, not only in English but in many other languages.

Having invaded Norway, the Nazis appointed Quisling to be in charge of the government.

Quisling later declared himself to be also the supreme ruler of the church in Norway!

Bishop Berggrav was so opposed to all that Mr Quisling and the Nazis stood for, that he organised an effective movement of non-violent Christian resistance to Nazi tyranny.

Most weeks, the letters he penned, letters which were very critical of the Nazis and Mr Quisling were distributed by a vast underground movement and read on Sundays in many Lutheran churches. Though these letters infuriated Mr Quisling, he was well aware that if he arrested or shot Berggrav, there would be an uprising in Norway. That was the last thing the Nazi leaders wanted at that time.

So instead, he asked Bishop Berggrav to meet with him in the royal palace, which the Nazis had taken over for their headquarters. King Haaken VII had been advised to escape to Britain. At the palace gate Berggrav was met by two armed guards who took him to Mr Quisling’s office.

On entering, Vidkun Quisling signalled to Berggrav to sit opposite him. He then made a great show of taking out his revolver from his holster, and placing it in front of him on his desk. “Perhaps now Bishop”, he said, “we can speak on equal terms”. Berggrav responded by taking his pen out of his pocket and placing it also on the desk. “Perhaps now Mr Quisling “, Bergravv said, “we can speak on equal terms. “ It was that pen that Mr Quisling feared. The power of words! To speak, as we sometimes do of ‘mere words’, is in fact like speaking of mere dynamite.

Shortly after that confrontation, Quisling isolated Berggrav in his country cottage, a cottage guarded round the clock by twelve armed policemen. Berggrav lived there in isolation until the end of the war.

His wife and family were not allowed to visit him, though occasionally a few of the more sympathetic police guards, who secretly admired the bishop, did allow one of his family to visit him.

Whereas Berggrav was liberated at the end of the war, Quisling was arrested and put on trial. Found guilty of murder, embezzlement and high treason, he was executed by a firing squad in October 1945.

This article appears in the November 2020 Issue of Life and Work

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