Sammendrag
On April 9, 1940 Germany invaded Norway and Denmark. For the next five years the German occupational force would try to transform the Norwegian society, including the University of Oslo, to better fit the Nazi ideology. The unwillingness of its students and professors to surrender to the demands of the occupation soon led the university into a protracted conflict with Nasjonal Samling and the German occupational force. The first conflict concerned the occupational force’s dissolution of Det norske Studentersamfund (the student union) in September 1940. The second conflict occurred when the occupational force arrested Rector Didrik Arup Seip in September 1941. A third conflict occurred when the students protested against NS’s labour mobilisation in February 1943. The fourth conflict began with a letter of protest from the professors against NS’s interference with the university’s admission procedures. It all ended on November 30, 1943 when the German occupational force closed the University of Oslo and arrested its professors and students. These conflicts will throughout the thesis be referred to as «events» at the University of Oslo. The conflicts at the University of Oslo did not go unnoticed in Sweden; In fact, there was a reaction from Sweden to each conflict at the university during the war. This thesis will focus on the reactions of six Swedish newspapers; the daily newspapers Dagens Nyheter, Arbetet, Göteborgs Handels– och Sjöfartstidning, as well as the student newspapers Gaudeamus, Ergo and Lundagård. These newspapers would in many cases be the opposition to the Swedish government’s policies to keep Sweden out of the war. This opposition was influenced both by the Nordic Idea, and by the changing relationships of the Swedish government with the German government in Berlin and the Norwegian exile government in London.