The Legal History of the Norwegian Police and Policing 1686 - 2016

Geir Heivoll is researching and writing about the period from 1686 to 1940. This long period makes up the two first parts of the collective legal history of the Norwegian police, and will be published in the first volume of the three volume series. Much of the existing research on this early period has been local or almost anecdotal. This is largely due to the vast amount of not very accessible sources in different archives. The project has hence invested time and money in finding and transcribing selected sources from archives in Oslo, Kristiansand, Bergen and Trondheim from essential parts of the period to get a more coherent and representative picture of Norwegian police from the first chief of police in Trondheim in 1686 to the second world war.

Heivoll is currently a Professor at the Norwegian Police University College, where he has previously been a research fellow and an associate professor. He has also worked as an associate professor at the University of Oslo. Heivoll teaches administrative law, police law and legal history. His research mainly focuses on the legal history of Norwegian Police.

Øystein Hetland is researching and writing about the Norwegian Police during the Second World War. The amount of literature on Norway during the Second World War is vast. However, more thorough and systematic investigations on the police have mainly been conducted in later years. Hetland wrote a doctoral thesis from 2020 on this topic. In this part of the project, he will draw on recent research, expand the scope of his own thesis and systematically examine archive material from different parts of Norway. His research will be published in a separate volume, and will provide new insights into the history of the Norwegian Police during the Second World War.

Hetland is a researcher at the Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Minority Studies. He has previously worked as a research assistant, research fellow and advisor at the same place. As previously mentioned his doctoral thesis from 2020 focused on the Norwegian Police during the second world war. From 2019 to 2021 Hetland was responsible for the course “Norway under the Swastika” (Norge under hakekorset) at the University of Oslo.

Lisbeth Skyberg is researching and writing about the period from 1945 to 1994. Like Heivoll and Hetland, Skyberg will base her study on material from archives. However, in her period much more of the source material is printed, and she has access to living sources. Skyberg will therefore conduct interviews to add a very clear mentality dimension to her research on a period where policing was affected by a changing view of authority, family and women and children, by the emergence of drug crime and by the materialisation of the idea of human rights. Much has been written on the social changes with the 60s and 70s as a turning point, but in Norway these changes have not been subject to systematic research from a police point of view. Skyberg will write the first part of the third volume on the legal history of the Norwegian police.

Skyberg is a researcher at the University of Bergen, guest researcher at the University of Oslo and a part-time researcher at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Oslo in 2019 following her dissertation on the reliability of testimony given in judicial interrogation. Among other subjects, her research focuses on evidence theory and criminal procedure.

Helge Renå is researching the period from 1994 to 2016, when the Police Reform of 2015 ("Nærpolitireformen") was implemented. This is a period when all the changes of the previous decades, coupled with increased mobility and computer technology, pushes for new administrative police structures. At the same time, the police have to redefine their role in society as their tasks, and even their very work day, changes. While the research of legal historian Heivoll and historian Hetland is clearly historical, and the research of sociologist Skyberg is bridging the historical and the contemporary, the research of Renå is on an ongoing process. Renå will write the second part of the third volume on the legal history of the Norwegian Police.

Renå received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Bergen in 2019, where he currently works as a researcher. His dissertation was titled ‘Police Coordination in Crises. Who knew what, when where and why in managing the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya in 2011’. In the period 2019 to 2020 Renå participated in the public inquiry into how the police handled the incident of terror in Bærum in August of 2019. Renå published the book ‘The Handling of Crises in an organisational perspective. The police effort on the 22^nd of July’ in 2022.