This year marks the 75th anniversary of Trygve Lie becoming the UN's first Secretary-General. To mark the occasion, the Norwegian National Archives has made sources from his time at the UN available at digitalarkivet.no.
The archives document the UN's early phase in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with issues related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Korean crisis and problems in the Balkans and Berlin. The front lines and conflicts of the Cold War in Europe and Asia became important topics for the UN with Trygve Lie as Secretary-General.
- "The establishment of the UN is an important part of world history," says National Archivist Inga Bolstad. "The National Archives is constantly working to make key sources of our history available to everyone at the Digital Archives. The sources after Trygve Lie and his time at the UN are probably of greatest interest in Norway, but parts of the material we are now posting may also attract attention internationally.
Unique sources
The United Nations (UN) was created to prevent more war and turmoil, at a time when the world was deeply affected by two world wars. When Trygve Lie took on the role of Secretary-General, he declared that the UN had major challenges to solve. In his acceptance speech, which is now published on Digitalarkivet, he said the following: «We have to try and bring back security and decent standards of living to peoples broken by war and threatened even now by the terror of famine. That is the task which faces the United Nations.»
A total of just over 17,000 pages from the Lie archive have been published in the Digital Archive. You can browse correspondence, speeches, minutes from meetings and press conferences. The UN itself has a lot of material from the time when Trygve Lie was Secretary-General. Some of the material that has now been published will probably be duplicates of parts of the sources that the UN itself possesses. However, much of the material is unique and could provide new insight into the tasks of the UN and the Secretary-General in the first years after the establishment of the organization.
The Lie archive also contains material from Trygve Lie's time in London during World War II. This material will be published on Digitalarkivet in connection with the Swedish National Archives' spring release of sources on April 9.
About Arkivverket
The mission of the National Archives of Norway is to contribute to effective documentation management and to safeguard, preserve and make available a broad and versatile selection of society's archives. As the highest archival authority, the National Archives is responsible for professional standards and guidelines, supervision and guidance of public archival work. The National Archives shall implement overall national policy in the field of archives, and contribute to the development and strengthening of the archive sector. As a preservation institution, the National Archives is responsible for the long-term storage, accessibility and dissemination of state archives and prioritized private archives.
