For many years Arne Jensen from Oslo was a sailor, did he choose loneliness himself, did he have no heirs or is there family out there? Spoiler alert: The further text reveals part of the episode, but not the end. Link to the episode can be found at the bottom of the text.
Arne Otto Jensen died in 2014, aged 73. The authorities have so far been unable to find heirs to his nearly NOK 5 million.
At just 15 years old, he went to sea and the years that followed were a life on boats and in many ports. In the 1980s, Arne went ashore and started working as a janitor at the Norwegian Industrial Property Office in Oslo.
There he shared an office with Helge Skjervheim, who paints a picture of who Arne was for presenter Tarjei Strøm.
Despite the fact that it was both pleasant and social at the NIPO, Arne did not participate in the festivities, he did not want to. Nor did he keep in touch with his former contacts.
Helge tells Tarjei that Arne was married in the 1980s, can there be any heirs after this marriage or through his own parents?
As an only child of elderly parents, the parents must have had children from previous relationships for there to be any heirs through the parents.
The only relative through Arne's parents is Helge Vinorum, whose father was Arne's cousin. This means that Helge Vinorum is too far out in the family tree to be entitled to any inheritance.
Tarjei still has a chat with Helge to find out more about his knowledge of Arne.
This is where Arne's family history begins to emerge. It turns out that Arne's father had a number of half-siblings. All the half-siblings have now passed away, but their children may now be heirs. First, however, Tarjei and genealogist Kai-Samuel need to clarify whether Arne had any children of his own.
Kai-Samuel digs into the archives and discovers that Arne's mother also has a previous marriage behind her. Arne himself may also have, like his parents, a total of two marriages behind him.
Through a wonderful collaboration in which Tarjei talks to living people and Kai-Samuel searches the historical archives, the two eventually find out who are the rightful heirs to Arne Otto Jensen's inheritance of almost five million kroner.
If you want to get to the bottom of it, check out episode 2 of Unknown Heir - enjoy!
Watch episode 2 of Unknown Heir
If you want to follow NRK's broadcasting schedule, you may want to be aware that Sunday's episode of Ukjent arving has been moved to 22.00, due to an election broadcast from Sweden. If this election broadcast is delayed, episode 2 of Ukjent arving may in extreme cases be moved to next Sunday.
