"De homofile"

Translator's Note: This is a machine-assisted translation completed on May 16, 2025. While care has been taken to maintain accuracy, this translation has not yet undergone human review or validation. Please note that specialized terms, historical references, and nuanced content may benefit from expert review.

Finn Carling (1925–2004) was a Norwegian author who wrote one of the very first Norwegian books about homosexuality. De homofile. En skisse av en stengt tilværelse (The Homosexuals. A Sketch of a Closed Existence) was published by Gyldendal Publishing House in 1965 and received mixed reactions.

According to the author himself, the book was “not intended to be an exhaustive, academic presentation of the problems of homosexuality” (Carling 1965:17), but rather aimed to provide a portrayal of homosexuals that differed from the one dominant in the media at the time. In a 1990 interview in Fritt Fram, Carling also explained that he believed it was “important that it was an outsider, a non-homosexual, who wrote the book” (Fritt Fram 1990:21). This was in contrast to the only other Norwegian book on homosexuality published before then, Finn Grodal’s We Who Feel Differently, which Carling felt came across partly as a work of defense (Fritt Fram 1990:21).

Interviews with the Association

In 1960, Carling was contacted by the Norwegian Association of 1948 to give a lecture about his experiences in the United States in the late 1950s. He used this contact with the Association to propose a collaboration on a book about homosexuality. Over the following years, Carling interviewed members of the Association, first in groups and later individually. These interviews formed the basis for The Homosexuals, in which the main part of the text consists of Carling’s observations during the interviews and from the environment surrounding the Association in general.

In the 1990 interview, Carling explained why he chose to interview, speak with, and observe members of the Association to such a great extent. Instead of writing yet another defense piece or writing from the perspective of an observing scientist, he wanted to offer readers the viewpoint of a “co-experiencing author” (Fritt Fram 1990:21). He also hoped the book would have an impact on the situation of homosexuals in society, and that this co-experiencing approach would reduce the distance between heterosexuals and homosexuals, giving readers a chance to see homosexuality as something more than what is entirely “cut off from and completely unthinkable in our own experiential world” (Carling 1965:8).

The Homosexuals was published eight years after We Who Feel Differently by Finn Grodal, but likely had a greater impact on the visibility of homosexuals in Norwegian society than Grodal’s book. The Homosexuals is one of the reasons why 1965 can be considered a turning point in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in Norway. That same year, the Norwegian Association of 1948 also began publishing its first outward-facing magazine, OSS, which went on sale in the summer of 1965, around the same time as the first Norwegian radio program about homosexuality aired. Finn Carling was also one of the invited participants in that program, largely due to The Homosexuals.