[1] During the Second World War he was a member of the Norwegian police troops in exile in Sweden, having fled from Norway in 1944.
In the same year he married physician's daughter Gro Ranveig Hansen.
[1] He started working for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a secretary in 1949.
In the 1960s he was a chargé d'affaires in Israel and Turkey, and an embassy counsellor in Sweden.
He was promoted to deputy under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1969, but went on to be chargé d'affaires in Kenya in 1972.