Torger Baardseth (23 September 1875 – 21 October 1947) was a Norwegian bookseller and publisher.

Background

Torger Baardseth was born at

Bærum Bærum () is a municipality in the Greater Oslo Region in Norway that forms an affluent suburb of Oslo on the west coast of the city. Bærum is Norway's fifth largest municipality with a population of 128,760 (2021). It is part of the electoral ...

Akershus Akershus () is a traditional region and current electoral district in Norway, with Oslo as its main city and traditional capital. It is named after the Akershus Fortress in Oslo. From the middle ages to 1919, Akershus was a fief and main county ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. His parents were Nils Baardseth (1839–1920) and Gunda Elisa Morris (1855–1926). After middle school examination in 1891, he was an apprentice at P. T.Malling bokhandel in Christiania. In 1899, he traveled to

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

to work at Det nordiske Forlag, one of Scandinavia's leading publishers.

Career

In January 1901 he began working at the publishing house of J. W. Cappelens Forlag. He was the director of Cappelens from 1904 to 1916 and 1919 to 1943. In between, Baardseth had the chance for self-employment when he took over leadership of Steenske Forlag, a small company that dated to 1829. After a half year, he offered to buy the publishing house, and he was able with financial help from Jørgen W. Cappelen III. Baardseth continued as chairman of Steenske. Baardseth made it a publishing company with great influence. One of the first major tasks he undertook was a complete release of all works

Henrik Wergeland Henrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland (17 June 1808 – 12 July 1845) was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist. He is often described as a leading pioneer in the develop ...

had written. Torger Baardseth was chairman of the

Norwegian Booksellers Association The Norwegian Booksellers Association ( no, Den norske Bokhandlerforening) is a Norwegian interest group. Its purpose is "looking after the interests of the booksellers and working to strengthen the position of literature and books in society". It ...

from 1902 to 1916, Assistant (with brief interruptions) in the Norwegian Publishers Association 1922-24 and 1929–36, chairman of the Norwegian Pension Fund and Bookstores Savings Bank from 1916 and the

1936-39. In many fields, he took up the fight to improve conditions of workers, from education and scholarship schemes to salary and pension. A central issue for many years was the worker's right to establish themselves as

independent bookstore An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store (although there are some multi-store independents). They may be structured as sole proprietorships, cl ...

s.Egil Tveterås
''Torger Baardseth''
Norsk biografisk leksikon)

References

1875 births 1947 deaths People from Bærum Norwegian booksellers Norwegian book publishers (people) {{Norway-business-bio-stub