A meeting place for gay men in Kristiania

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The article was first published on Skeivopedia on May 19, 2020.

What was it like to live as a young gay man a hundred years before helplines like Ungdomstelefonen, organizations like Skeiv Ungdom, and gatherings like Jafnaðr?
This is the fifth and final part of a series about the pioneer Erling Næss and his era. The series is created by activist and journalist Svein Skeid, and is based on a unique collection of interview material.

When 18-year-old Erling Næss (1895–1992) moved to Kristiania in 1913, he encountered—contrary to what has long been assumed—an already established community of men who loved men.

Just two years before his death, a fortunate coincidence ensured that this knowledge would be preserved for posterity, when I had the pleasure of interviewing him for Fritt Fram, the newspaper of the Norwegian National Association for Lesbians and Gays (DNF-48).

With his sharp memory, Næss became a goldmine of information about gay life in Kristiania—a community that, according to police and court archives, can be traced back to the late 19th century.

The oppressive spirit of the times does not appear to have significantly dampened the humor, pride, or love among men who loved men.

Despite legal prohibitions, blackmail, and police harassment, I have uncovered a network of meeting places or erotic oases (cf. Article IV: Andersen, 1987) in the capital around 1913.

As in other countries, the emergence of meeting places for homosexuals seems to coincide with the establishment of public parks, transportation hubs, public urinals, and private friendship networks in the latter half of the 19th century.

As in many cities, the main railway station—Hovedbanen—was perhaps the most important transportation hub. At Østbanen, one could find a casual encounter or a partner for life. The hall, including the underground toilet, dates back to 1909. According to historian Runar Jordåen, police records show a case from that year where two men met there.

The rest of the capital’s infrastructure was also in place when Erling Næss arrived in Kristiania, including the typical cruising areas or “erotic oases” frequented by gay men. Within the city limits in 1911, there were as many as 73 public urinals or “green houses” scattered throughout the capital.

The tea houses were evenly distributed across the city. The distance between urinals was not to be too great.

For dedicated night walkers, the “light trail” was a well-known phenomenon. To avoid arousing suspicion, one should not linger too long in one place. Such a route could consist of a dozen stops.

According to Næss himself, he was not one to frequent the city’s toilets. But he identified Studenterlunden as an early meeting place, where body language and coded signals were essential for making contact without being discovered by outsiders. Erling was already sitting there in the 1910s, rather than being alone in his rented room on Sofies gate.

The most exciting rows of benches, according to Næss, were between Rosenkrantz’ gate and Universitetsgata. Here, gay men sat on the benches hoping their prince charming would appear. One would stroll up and down to get an overview. If you made eye contact with someone interesting, you could “accidentally” sit down next to him. Then you might say something innocuous. Sometimes it clicked—leading to long-lasting friendships or perhaps a one-night encounter with a sailor passing through.

Whether the gay pioneer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson ever sat on these benches, we do not know. But Erling Næss’ later workplace, directly across the street at the Westend Hotel on Karl Johans gate 45, was Bjørnson’s regular haunt when he visited the capital, until his death in 1910.

Tostrupkjelleren, two blocks down, also claimed Bjørnson as a regular guest.

It’s as if Bjørnson’s liberal spirit still lingered in the walls when Erling Næss arrived in Kristiania in 1913. Erling described Tostrupkjelleren as a place where gay men gathered even before World War I.

“I was very poor at the time,” Erling said. “At Tostrupkjelleren, we could get coffee and sandwiches for under 60 øre.”

A 1928 morality conviction in the Oslo District Court supports the image of Tostrupkjelleren as an early meeting place. A 41-year-old man approached a male cook there. They went to the cook’s room and had sexual relations, for which they were convicted.

Slottsparken could be a quiet place to retreat after a visit to Tostrupkjelleren or Studenterlunden. According to Erling, such green oases were playgrounds for the city’s homosexuals in the early 1900s.

Police records confirm this picture, according to Runar Jordåen. In 1915, a 30-year-old pharmacist was warned for “taking a 15-year-old boy up into Slottsparken, grabbing his crotch over his trousers, and trying to get the boy to do the same to him” (Jordåen 2003, p. 72). A similar case from the same location is recorded in 1923.

On the city’s west side, the woods behind today’s Monolith in Frognerparken were already a green oasis for gay men in 1914 (Andersen, 1987, p. 50).

“But it wasn’t particularly well-frequented back then,” said Erling Næss. For many years, it was forbidden to enter, likely due to the construction of the Vigeland installation after the 1914 Jubilee Exhibition.

The underground toilet at Birkelunden was recently unearthed during the laying of new tram tracks on Thorvald Meyers gate.

“There was both violence and murder there,” Erling said. “Even before the war, the first murder occurred in that underground toilet, and more followed.”

The toilet was sealed in 1975 after serving as a restroom and cruising spot since the 1920s.

Stensparken remains one of Oslo’s most popular green oases, with over 1,800 members on the website Gaysir. According to Erling Næss, the area was likely in use even before the city built the now-protected urinal Kjærlighetskarusellen in 1937.

Green squares indicate “green houses” or cast-iron urinals. Other meeting places before World War I included Karl Johans gate, Slottsparken, Sofienbergparken, Vestbanen, Østbanestasjonen, the Kinematograf Theatre, Hasvold Bath, and “Dasslokket”—an underground toilet from 1914.

From Stensparken in the north, the city’s gay oases were strung like pearls along Pilestredet. From the green house known as “Ventehallen,” across from what was then Conrad Langgård’s tobacco factory, it wasn’t far to a coffee chat with “Mother in Need.” Erling Næss’s boarding house at Dalsbergstien 21 is an early example of an informal social institution for society’s “undesirable elements”—twenty years before the founding of DNF-48.

Once a week, Erling would walk from Sofies gate to Bislett Bath, one of the most modern bathing facilities in the Nordic region when it opened in 1920.

“There, one could combine the useful with the pleasant,” Erling recalled. Admission cost 25 øre.

“But Torggata Bath was perhaps the best of them all. A lovely place for homosexuals, but of course, one had to be very careful,” Erling emphasized. In the summer, we went to ‘Neven’ or Ingierstrand. Several people told me it was a place where you could meet other gay men.

The city’s east side also had a safe haven as early as the 1910s. Long before the high-rises of Enerhaugen, gay men felt welcome at the Olympen restaurant in Grønlandsleiret.

The teetotaler Erling Næss visited the place with a friend.

“He told me about the gay men who frequented the place and pointed them out to me, one by one,” Erling concluded.

Even though they did not yet call themselves “homosexual” or “gay,” it is clear that the Kristiania homser, despite a hostile society, had formed a subculture as early as the 1910s—one that helped lay the foundation for a more liberal Norway over a hundred years later.

Apropos:

Kim Friele spoke of the early, hidden homosexual subculture “which became the very foundation upon which DNF-48 could build its work.”

Kim Friele: “Oslo 2000. The City as a Haven for Gays and Lesbians.” Lecture at the Oslo City Museum, November 14, 2000.