ABSTRACT
Many children with Norwegian mothers and German soldiers for fathers had a difficult childhood, being stigmatized as ‘German brats’. Some also experienced problems within their families. Their mothers might be traumatized by the hate and contempt they had met as ‘German tarts’ (see Chapter 10 by Ericsson). Politicians and professionals engaged in the war child issue, constructing it as a national problem for the authorities to deal with. This chapter discusses the construction of the ‘war child problem’, before exploring how being a ‘problem’ was experienced by the war children themselves. As part of a research project, 110 Norwegian war children were interviewed by Kjersti Ericsson and Eva Simonsen (Ericsson and Simonsen 2005). The sample was self-selected, and the ‘children’ had passed, or were nearing, their 60th birthday by the time of the interviews. Examples and conclusions on the experiences of Norwegian war children presented in this chapter are based on this interview material.
