(Mirror. Mirror.)

As a result of [Fascist] health policy in Norway, psychiatric hospitals and mental health care were not given priority (Haave 2008, 232). Instead of expensive treatment in psychiatric hospitals, the authorities mainly wanted to prevent the increase in mental disorders by sterilization. Sterilization would improve the quality of the population and also reduce the costs of expensive treatment in asylum.

In this discussion, the link between racial biology and psychiatry became more distinct (Gogstad 1991, 177). The eugenic had influenced Norwegian scientists since the beginning of the century and racial thoughts were well known in Norwegian medicine from the mid‐1850s as it was in the rest of European medicine (Gogstad 1991, 183, Haave 2008, 181). The first Norwegian professor in Psychiatry, Ragnar Vogt, was influenced by theories of race and heredity, and programmes to prevent mental illness were launched in 1916 (Haave 2008, 181).

The main task was to fight degeneration by contraception, prohibition of marriage [with the] mentally ill and disabled, sterilization, and closuring and internment. Vogt claimed that psychiatric diagnoses like schizophrenia and mental deficiency were caused by heredity and outlined what should become the message of the mental hygiene in Norway: to reduce mental illness by environmental efforts and eugenic interventions (Haave 2008, 181).

These ideas led to resolution of The Act of Sterilization of Mental Deficiency and Mentally Ill (Lov om Sterilisering) in 1934, that had a period of validity until 1977, only replaced by the far more radical “Act № 1 to protect the people[’s] race” (“Vern om Folkeætten”) during the wartime.

…wow.

In 1942 the [Fascist] government, however, changed the law and gave access to the directors of the asylums to sterilize their patients by force. The new law [allowed] use of restraint and from the end of 1943 the directors were instructed to evaluate if sterilization could be used before discharging patients with schizophrenia diagnoses.⁵

In the years to come, those reckoned as less worthy were not the subject of any comprehensive sterilization as was the case in Denmark and Germany. In Norway almost 500 individuals were sterilized and less than 30 % of these were mentally ill inpatients in psychiatric hospitals (Haave 2008, 234). This was not as many as the authorities had expected. During the war these ideas received a central place in the official health policy as they were considered as a more rational and economical alternative to the increase of hospital beds.

A more radical variant to these ideas was to kill the incurable patients. In this way the authorities could more effectively reduce the need for more hospital beds and also the cost. According to Haave, the thought of mass killing of mental patients in Norway had been discussed among both [Fascists] and health authorities, but the Norwegian health governmental authorities were critical to the ideas of killing patients and these ideas were never effectuated in Norway (Haave 2008, 239–245).

[…]

The evacuation order to the population of Hammerfest was given on October 20. Those who had left voluntarily moved to the surroundings of Hammerfest hoping to avoid evacuation. The deportation of the town started on October 29 and was completed within 10 days. The last buildings were blown up and burned on February 10, 1945. The medical practitioner Gustav Vig was one of the last to leave Hammerfest in February.¹⁹

In the court against the [Axis] commissioner of the county of Finnmark, Johan Andreas Lippestad in 1946, witnesses told that Lippestad wanted to implement the plan of deportation no matter the costs.²⁰ The number of mentally ill living in private family care in the medical district of Hammerfest had increased after the closure of the nursing home, and in October 1944 the number had risen to 55 individuals.

The medical practitioner Gustav Vig made an attempt to gather the mentally ill on one ship and transport all of them together with some patients suffering from diphtheria. When the evacuation authorities were asked for help, Lippestad refused to help and rudely stated that the mentally ill should be just left to die waiting for the Russians. The medical practitioner did not succeed in bringing the mentally ill safely southwards. There was nothing he could do to prevent many of them being left alone on board the ships.

“An insane person jumped into the sea”

The evacuation of Rønvik asylum and the nursing home in Hammerfest was well organized and the patients were followed by attendants that were well known to the patients. In contrast the deportation of the population in Finnmark was not well planned at all. Some of the mentally ill were deported together with their caretakers. Others were just placed on the ships and left alone with no one to look after them.

An eyewitness told that the ship she travelled on from Hammerfest to Tromsø seemed to be “filled with the mentally ill”. She and her family had two mentally ill women living with them. On arrival at Tromsø harbour, the women were taken care of by local authorities (Palmer 2010, 114, 140).

The travelling conditions for the deported varied from boat to boat. The conditions on board the [Axis] warships like “Carl Arp”, which carried more than 1800 passengers, [Axis] soldiers and war equipment, are described as particularly terrible and almost 20 persons died before arriving in Narvik.²¹

But even on the Coastal Steamers or small fishing boats, the journey was not easy, sailing in overcrowded and overloaded boats, in mine waters, open seas and in total darkness with no light even during daytime (it being polar night) except for the light from the burning houses along the coast. A man writes this about the evacuation: “It is impossible to tell and describe the fear and horror we felt during the journey. Leaving Alta some people said we would never get as far as Tromsø in a boat carrying that much ammunition and explosives[.]”²²

But if the journey caused fear for the population in general, it was even worse for the mentally ill left alone without acquaintances to take care of them and perhaps not knowing what was going on. It is therefore understandable that some behaved strangely and with great danger for their own life, like the man who jumped overboard to catch his hat when it suddenly was taken by a gust of wind.²³ When he was found, he was dead.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

Unsurprisingly, Norway’s return to social democracy did little to ameliorate mental patients’ living standards:

Most of the mentally ill were denied returning to their home municipalities in the reconstruction period after the war. There were several requests from family members asking for help to bring the mentally ill back, but these often received a negative response due to the living conditions.⁶⁶ Living in barracks, as the population in Finnmark and Northern Troms did for some years, was according to the health authorities unsatisfactory for mentally ill.

Institutionalisation was the alternative. In that way the war ruined the mental health care system in Finnmark. Without an institution in the surrounding area, the private care system was not given any opportunity to work. The distance to Tromsø was too long and the mental health care system was now handed over to a psychiatric hospital outside the county. Most of the mentally ill became hospitalised in psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes and colonies in Southern Norway.