Few people knew Svein Olav, who lived in an institution for most of his life. Who will inherit Svein Olav Larsen? Spoiler alert: The further text reveals part of the episode, but not the end. A link to the episode can be found at the bottom of the text.
In this episode, Kai-Samuel Vigardt and Tarjei Strøm face perhaps their biggest challenge yet.
Never before has Kai-Samuel experienced that there is no archive material for a person who lived in Norway. However, the obituary could be found in the newspaper, showing that he lived at Emma Hjort, an institution for the developmentally disabled.
The will of Svein Olav's mother, Alfhild, shows that she did not name any heirs. In other words, she denied that Svein Olav was her son. The boy who didn't exist becomes an enormous challenge for Kai-Samuel and Tarjei Strøm.
Kai-Samuel meets Bård Kjetil Dahl, who worked at the now closed institution when Svein Olav lived there.
He says that Svein Olav could walk, but that his language skills were poor.
Svein Olav probably came to the institution after the Second World War, at the same time as a member of parliament compared the place to a concentration camp.
Fortunately, conditions gradually improved and in 1963 he moved into a brand new ward for men. The home was closed in the 1990s after a major reform for the mentally disabled. The mentally disabled were no longer to be «stowed away», but to be part of society.
In this episode, it is very clear that Svein Olav never had children of his own. In this episode, Kai-Samuel and Tarjei must therefore quickly look for possible siblings on the father's side, uncles and aunts or their children, i.e. cousins of Svein Olav.
Born in 1944 to a German father, Svein Olav was probably labeled a so-called «German child». With a mother who doesn't name any heirs and a German father, Tarjei and Kai-Samuel have to look to Germany in their search for heirs.
But in order to learn about their father, the two had to gain access to information about Svein Olav in the Lebensborn archive. This is an archive that many war children search for to find the identity of their German father, but only children and parents are initially granted access.
In 2012, Svein Olav died and left behind just over 200,000. For the final verdict on whether Tarjei and Kai-Samuel will be able to find Svein Olav's heirs, watch episode 6 of Unknown Heir.
Watch episode 6 of Unknown Heir
Enjoy!
