Jens Harald Älgenäs Eliassen (born 1955)

Translator's Note: This is a machine-assisted translation completed on May 28, 2025. While care has been taken to maintain accuracy, this translation has not yet undergone human review or validation.

Älgenäs Eliassen contracted HIV in the early 1980s, at a time when no medications were available to treat the virus. Nevertheless, he lived with the infection for several years without falling ill, until he developed full-blown AIDS in 1997. Fortunately, effective medications had just become available, which ultimately saved his life.

Jens Harald Älgenäs Eliassen was born in 1955 and grew up in Norway. As a young man in 1974, he helped establish a local chapter of DNF-48 in Frogn. He later pursued an education in design in London, United Kingdom, from 1978 to 1980.

In 1982, he moved to the United States to work as a designer, where he remained for 12 years before returning to Norway in 1994.

In the interview, he describes what it was like to arrive in the U.S. just as AIDS began to spread in earnest, and how the epidemic came to profoundly affect his life, both personally and professionally. Upon returning to Norway after many years abroad, he contributed to the establishment of a multidisciplinary health group for HIV and AIDS, prior to the availability of effective treatments.

In an excerpt from the interview, Älgenäs Eliassen recounts his early days in New York and the moment he first experienced symptoms of HIV infection.

The HivNorge archive is catalogued and available for request.

The full interview is available in our reading room. Skeivt Arkiv met Älgenäs Eliassen in Oslo in March 2020