Vidkun Quisling is best known as a Norwegian traitor who led Norway’s puppet government when the country was under Nazi German occupation during World War II. He was executed after the war, and now his family’s grave is at the center of a dispute involving a charitable organization that’s been tending it since 1980.
That’s when Quisling’s widow Maria died and willed around NOK 2.4 million from the couple’s estate to the religious charity that was called Oslo Indremisjon at the time. Earnings on the endowment were meant to finance efforts by the charity to help “lonely and poor” elderly. In return, the charity now known as Kirkens Bymisjon was obligated to pay for the Quisling family’s grave for the next 50 years.
The Gjerpen Church and cemetery in Skien, where Quisling family members have been buried since 1914. PHOTO: Hans A Rosbach/Wikipedia
The agreement wasn’t widely known until Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) aired a story earlier this month about the grave that’s attracted Nazi sympathizers in the past. Kirkens Bymisjon has long stated that its “vision” involves “respect, fairness and caring” regardless of a person’s situation, faith or cultural background.
Even though the values of Vidkun Quisling and his sympathizers are far from those of the charity, it has paid the lease on the Quisling family’s gravesite at Gjerpen Church in Skien that’s due every 10 years through to 2030. Marthe Borgerud, communications director for Kirkens Bymisjon, told NRK that the organization was a “legal obligation” under the terms of Maria Quisling’s will.
Now the organization has changed its mind and no longer wants to pay for the grave where five Quisling family members are buried. It now finds the situation difficult and at odds with its own values.
“I think it’s problematic to know that this gravesite is being upheld, when we know that it’s viewed as an important place for those who sympathize with his (Vidkun Quisling’s) views,” Marthe Bogerud, communications director for Kirkens Bymisjon, told NRK.
Vidkun Quisling (far left) with his parents Jon and Anna Qvisling, and his brothers Arne (far right) and Jørgen in 1915, shortly after their daughter and sister Esther had died. PHOTO: Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) @ Flickr Commons
The Quisling family grave was initially established in connection with the death of Vidkun Quisling’s younger sister Esther in 1914, when she was only 20 years old and fell fatally ill with meningitis. The family was living in Gjerpen at the time and Quisling’s father Jon Lauritz Qvisling (spelled with a “v” instead of Vidkun’s “u”), a pastor and church historian from Telemark, was also buried there when he died in 1930.
Quisling’s mother Anna Qvisling died in Oslo in 1941 when Quisling himself was in power as leader of Germany’s pro-Nazi regime in Norway. A large contingent from his Nasjonal Samling (NS) party attended her funeral and burial, also at Gjerpen Church. Photos from the funeral show them lined up wearing Nazi-style uniforms, chilling reminders of foreign occupation at a time when efforts are being made to fend off more war in Europe and end Russia’s efforts to occupy and take over Ukraine. Maria Vasilijevna Pasetsjnikova Quisling was herself born in Kharkiv when it was still part of the Russian Empire, but is now part of Ukraine despite relentless attacks by Russian forces ordered to take it over again.
Vidkun and Maria Quisling at the funeral of his mother Anna in 1941, with his Nazi German supporters standing guard. It took place at the Gjerpen Church and cemetery in Skien, where the Quisling family grave is now caught in conflict. PHOTO: Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway)
The Kirkens Bymisjon charity has been paying for four graves at the Quisling family grave site, according to NRK, even though five are listed on plaques at the site. The last bill paid in 2019 reportedly amounted to NOK 14,640.
The conflict now is over whether that will be the last bill paid by the charity, since it no longer wants to pay for another 10 years of maintaining the Quisling graves. Bogerud claims the charity’s obligation expires in 2030: “We have chosen to end this obligation now, and won’t pay another bill for this burial place.”
Others contend that may violate the terms of Maria Quisling’s will and the endowment the charity received. Many have been surprised to hear that Kirkens Bymisjon has been responsible for the Quisling graves for so many years, with some saying they understand the dilemma the charity faces.
On Tuesday the 77-year-old daughter of a woman active in an NS group in Telemark offered to pay for the graves if the charity no longer will. Inger Cecilie Stridsklev told newspaper Telemarksavisa and NRK that she has left flowers at the grave and noticed that others have as well over the years. She doesn’t want the grave and its markers to disappear, which is what can happen if the cemetery lease payment isn’t made.
“If no one else wants to pay (for what’s called festeavgiften), I can consider doing do,” Stridsklev said. She thinks Quisling did some good and that “history is the most important. It must be allowed to say something positive about Vidkun Quisling.” He and Maria are believed to have met in Kharkiv in 1923 when he was working with polar explorer and philanthropist Fridtjof Nansen on a humanitarian aid program in the former Soviet Union. Today a large part of Norway’s current aid program to Ukraine is run through a program named after Nansen.
Stridsklev said she remembers visting Maria Quisling in Oslo and believes elimination of the family grave would show “a lack of respect for the other four people who are buried there:” his parents, sister and widow.
The remains of Vidkun Quisling himself didn’t arrive at the grave, meanwhile, until 1959, 14 years after his execution and cremation. Maria Quisling’s initial attempts to obtain an urn with his ashes were turned down in 1946, as were two later attempts, also when Oslo officials obtained government permission to dump his ashes into the Oslofjord. That didn’t happen, however. According to author Arve Juritzen, who wrote a book about the private lives of the Quislings in 2008, the state turned over the urn to Maria Quisling in 1959, and she placed it at the family grave in Gjerpen in a secret and private ceremony.
Maria Quisling was interrogated after the war but wasn’t arrested until 1946 on various charges of which she was acquitted. She could eventually move back to the Oslo apartment where the couple had lived before the war. She died on Janary 17, 1980, at the age of 79.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
