Ronald Fangen

Ronald Fangen (29 April 1895 – 22 May 1946) was a Norwegian novelist, essayist, playwright, psalmist, journalist and literary critic. He was born in Kragerø, and perished in a plane accident in 1946.

Fangen was a journalist in the newspaper Verdens Gang from 1913. He made his literary debut in 1915 with the novel De svake. Fangen was a member of the Oxford Group from 1934 and issued several religious publications in his later years.

In October 1934, Fangen took part in an Oxford Group house party, at the invitation of Carl Hambro President of the Norwegian Parliament, and a leading figure in the League of Nations. Hambro invited 120 of his friends to meet Buchman and thirty companions at the Tourist Hotel at Høsbjør. Garth Lean, Buchman’s biographer writes that: ‘Fangen, the novelist, brought two bottles of whisky and a crate of books, expecting boredom. He did not find time to open either. His change was immediately visible and long remembered. The lyric poet Alt Larsen, even twenty years later, spoke of the “hopeless naivety” of the Group's philosophy as compared with his own anthroposophy. It had however completely transformed Fangen, who before that, in his opinion, had been the most unpleasant man in Norway.’ He received Gyldendal's Endowment in 1940.

Fangen was the first Norwegian writer to be arrested by the German occupants of Norway, in November 1940, due to an essay published in the periodical Kirke og Kultur. Fangen was instrumental in the formation of the newspaper Vårt Land, which was secretly planned and founded during the occupation in 1944, but first issued in August 1945.

Among biographers who have written about Fangen and his writings are Carl Fredrik Engelstad, Egil Yngvar Elseth, Reidar Huseby and Jan Inge Sørbø.