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NORWAY’s hidden WW2 shame: The Bigamy Law

15th January 2025

 

NORWAY's hidden WW2 shame: The Bigamy LawNorway’s hidden WW2 shame: The Bigamy Law, a change that would have devastating consequences for a small group of women and children. The Bigamy Law is the inspiration for The Silent Resistance by Anna Norman.

The Silent Resistance by Anna Normann

Natalie Normann and Anan Singh, the duo behind the Anna Normann penname extensively researched an extraordinary but little-known scandal of wartime history: Norway’s infamous ‘Bigamy Law’ which impacted many women and families. Furthermore, The Silent Resistance explores the reprisals meted out by the authorities against women who fraternised with the German occupying forces.

“Better a dead husband and father instead of the shame.”

Quote from Aftenposten, Norway’s largest print newspaper, 9.5.2015

Norway’s hidden WW2 shame: The Bigamy Law.

By Anna Normann (Anan Singh and Natalie Normann)

On 15th of April 1942, the Norwegian Government-in-exile in London unanimously voted to amend one paragraph in the Marriage Act of 1918 that changed how to achieve a divorce. This change would have devastating consequences for a small group of women and children.

A few years ago, when we started researching our new book, we discovered this mostly forgotten snippet of history that shook us deeply and became the inspiration for The Secret Resistance.

During WW2 women all over Norway were left alone at home to care for their children and to try and survive the harsh conditions of the Nazi occupation. If their husband was a sailor aboard one of the many ships in the Norwegian Merchant Marine fleet, he would be at sea somewhere in the world, or, if not a sailor, he might have been forced to escape from Norway. He could be a civil servant, a soldier, a member of the resistance, but he was always a husband who would have little knowledge about how his family managed on their own; did they have enough food, were they happy and safe, did they miss him? Sometimes a letter might make it through, or a message from someone, but mostly there was silence, worry and hard times.

Meanwhile their wives managed as best they could, telling themselves they would return. Norwegian seafarers have always sailed to faraway waters, be it on Viking raids, herring fisheries in the North Sea, or on cargo ships headed for Shanghai or Sydney, and they would always return, well, most of them anyway.

The peace so many wives had been looking forward to while struggling with life under the Occupation by Nazi-Germany, never came. The welcome they had planned for their beloved husbands return after six horrible years of being apart, the children excited to greet a father they barely remembered, in so many cases this never happened. Instead, wives received divorce papers in the mail, lost their husband’s income and would be left to manage on their own while he either stayed in another country, or came home with a new family. It was almost impossible in these cases to get any financial support from him or from the Government. Most women at the time were housewives with low education and little work experience, and they were just left to manage on their own.

How could a small change in one paragraph do so much harm?

Before this change in the Marriage Act, a married couple had to be separated for three years, and they both had to agree for a divorce to be granted. After the change was made, there were exceptions that made it possible for a man to get a divorce without his wife back home knowing about it.

In 1942 the Government-in-exile in London received a query from the Norwegian legation in Stockholm about the possibility for a diplomat who had escaped to Sweden to divorce his Nazi-sympathiser wife. He had tried before he left Norway, but had been denied by the new regime.

The query led to discussions that there would be other men outside of Norway who would need a divorce. Men who had sweethearts and perhaps new babies. For inspiration on how to change the law, they decided to use amendments that the Nazi-friendly government in Norway had already made to the same Marriage Act – to make it easy to divorce a spouse that had illegally left the country.

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When the Government-in-exile discussed the case, the politicians, notably all men, showed no regard for the women and children it would affect. What this would mean for the wives and families back home was not even part of the discussion. Before the law was changed, it was sent to other government offices for a hearing, and not even the then Ministry of Church and Education had any objections.

The change in the paragraph was one sentence: ‘the ministry can also make a decision in the matter if one of the spouses applies for it and, due to a state of war or other special circumstances, it is not possible to contact the other spouse.’

The argument that it was impossible to contact the wife, wasn’t true. Certainly, telegrams through the Red Cross were possible. Usually any provisional laws the Government-in-exile passed would be broadcast through the BBC and published in the illegal press. But not this one. This was kept deliberately quiet as if they didn’t want anyone to know about it.

The amendment was quickly dubbed the Bigamy law when it became public knowledge in September 1945. At that time a female politician demanded to know what the government would to for the women who had been victims of this change to the law. The public outcry that followed became a great embarrassment to the government, and something they did not want to deal with, especially with an election coming in October. The law was quickly abolished but those wartime divorces remained valid.

Rumours fuelled by evasive responses from government officials and the newspapers whispered that the women who were divorced in this manner surely must have done something to deserve it. Surely they had fraternised with Germans or had been disloyal to the nation in other ways. It was a cruel coda to the affair.

These women had raised their children during the harsh conditions of the Nazi Occupation, kept them dressed and fed on increasingly meagre rations, dreaming of the day their husband would return home, only to be betrayed. Not only had they lost their husbands and financial providers, the father of their children, they also had to carry the shame of being a divorced, single mother. Some women would manage to rise above it, making a life for their children, and others were devastated and would never recover.

In 2018, the then Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, finally issued an official apology to the country’s ‘German women and their children’ – women who had stepped out with Germans during the war, sometimes married them and had children. The punishment for the women who were involved with Germans, the German girls, was harsh. Not only from the public, even more so from the government.

No such apology has ever been given to the victims of the Bigamy law. They never received any help from the government, and they were forced to carry the shame for the rest of their lives.

Natalie Normann and Anan Singh

Catch Natalie on Twitter X 

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Sources:

Aftenposten newspaper article 9.5.2015

Elisabeth Wille ‘Til krigen skiller oss ad’

Book titled: Until war does us part.’ 2018

See also: ‘Norway apologises to women punished for relationships with German soldiers’ in The Guardian, October 2018.

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