Photo: Unknown / Maihaugen.
Gidsken in Lillehammer in the winter of 1930. She had landed her seaplane “Måsen” on the frozen lake Mjøsa.

On sailcloth wings over Norway with Gidsken Jakobsen

She could have lived a life safely ensconced as an office clerk in her father's firm in Narvik – a small town north of the Arctic Circle. Instead, Gidsken Jakobsen became Norway’s second female aircraft pilot. She gained her pilot’s licence in 1929, founded three airlines and, for seven years, ran a highly diverse business operation with her own aeroplanes.

Today, as we fly around the world without a second thought, it is amazing to consider the changes that have occurred since Gidsken climbed skyward for the first time. Norway’s army and navy had established their own air forces, but civilian aviation hardly existed – and there were no airports. Gidsken could only afford small, fragile aircraft and experienced life-threatening accidents. As a woman in aviation, she encountered prejudice, with some people never viewing her as anything other than a foolhardy slip of a girl. Nevertheless, she broke through contemporary boundaries.

Explore these topics in the exhibition:

Photo: Unknown / Norwegian Aviation Museum.
Gidsken at a flying school in Stockholm.

What does a female aviator look like?

“Gidsken Jakobsen is a sweet little girl. Those would be the right words to describe her. There is nothing Amazonian about her, nothing to turn one’s thoughts to a pilot’s strenuous life, full of exhausting manual labour (...) Clad in sporty trousers and a green sweater, rosy cheeked, hale and hearty – and extremely feminine. In other words, an adorable little girl we would love to go up for a spin with – though not until the weather is a bit warmer.”

This is how a reporter from the newspaper Adresseavisen in Trondheim described his meeting with the 21-year-old Gidsken Jakobsen in an article published on 29 December 1929. She had arrived in the city earlier in the day aboard her own seaplane “Måsen” [Seagull]. The reporter met her in the upmarket Britannia Hotel.

In Trondheim, as everywhere else in Norway, people were curious about who Gidsken was. As a newly fledged aviatrix with her own plane, she deviated sharply from the normal way of things.

Adresseavisen’s description is typical of how contemporary newspapers perceived Gidsken Jakobsen. She was seen and judged through men's eyes. Her appearance, body and clothes are the immediate focus of attention in the article. What she is about to accomplish comes in second place. We learn that she is an “adorable little girl”. This is followed by a desire to “go up for a spin”, which gives the text a sexual undertone.

The description fixes Gidsken firmly in the role of inexperienced young woman, which was typical for the time. There was nothing in Adresseavisen’s article that would make it easier for the reader to understand how she could fly high up beneath the clouds.

Childhood

Gidsken Jakobsen was born on 1 August 1908, the second of five siblings. She grew up in Narvik. Drive and a thirst for adventure were in her blood.

Her father, Nils Jakobsen, had been first mate aboard sailing sloops that plied the coast in all weathers. Her mother, Johanna, looked after the domestic front. In Narvik, the family started trading in timber and fish.

For a time during and after WWI, Nils Jakobsen ran a boatyard employing 70 people. He made a fortune from the risky business of shipping freight during the war, only to go bankrupt when it ended. Gidsken described this as a severe blow to the family, even though the trade in timber and fish continued.

There was, however, never any doubt that Gidsken came from a well-to-do background. She went to school in dresses that very few could afford and was the first to be given a bicycle. By the age of 15, Gidsken had grown tired of small-town life in Narvik.

In a letter to a friend, she gave voice to her dream: Let’s go to Hollywood and become film stars!

Bitten by the flying bug

After leaving compulsory education, Gidsken attended the Treider Business School in Oslo and then went to work in her father’s firm as an office clerk. She had found an occupation which, at that time, was considered suitable for a young, unmarried woman. Her future seemed secure.

But then, one summer day in 1928, something magical happened!

A three-engine Junkers seaplane roared into the Ofotfjord and landed in Narvik. The plane was Swedish and was named “Uppland”. It was on its way to Svalbard to join the search for the airship “Italia” that had been lost while carrying out scientific observations of the north pole. Gidsken eagerly followed events and a desire to fly herself was born.

Later that summer, Italian pilots who had taken part in the search on Svalbard arrived in Narvik by ship. Gidsken was introduced to Umberto Maddalena. It was a meeting that would change her life.

“Maddalena was the most famous aviator in Italy, if not the world, and he said that I should become an aviatrix. That had a huge impact on an impressionable young girl. Maddalena was the world record holder for both height and speed. He was pictured in a weekly magazine, covered in medals. I had my head in the clouds. That was when I finally decided to become a pilot.”

— Gidsken Jakobsen

Photo: Ola G. Aas / Norwegian Aviation Museum.
Gidsken at the frozen lake Lomnessjøen located between Oslo and Trondheim.

A winter flight

On 20 January 1930, the pair landed in Oslo. The journey had taken 35 days. The following brief notice was published in the Narvik newspaper Fremover. “On Tuesday, Miss Gidsken Jakobsen, together with the Finnish aviator Leppänen, left for Oslo aboard the aircraft “Maasen”. The pilots expect to be back in time for Christmas.”

The purpose of the trip was to get “Måsen” registered and licensed for use in Norway. Gidsken intended to accomplish this at the Norwegian naval air force's base in Horten, near Oslo. No one had ever flown so far from north to south in Norway during the winter. In Narvik at that time of year, the sun never rose above the horizon. Even further south in Norway, the daylight hours were limited. To top it all, the journey was to be undertaken in a frail seaplane, with the pilots freezing in an open cockpit.

From Narvik, the aviators made a series of short hops south along the coast. Darkness and strong winds caused problems, and they were left weather-bound for days at a time. At Leines in Nordland County, “Måsen” had to be tied down with 18 ropes to stop it being blown out to sea.

By the new year, they had made it as far as Trondheim. The journey continued westward along the coast to Molde and Åndalsnes. They made several unsuccessful attempts to fly over the mountains and reach Eastern Norway, where Oslo is located. At last, they made it – crossing from Sogn via Filefjell to Valdres. From there they managed to land and take-off on frozen lakes.

On 20 January 1930, the pair landed in Oslo. The journey had taken 35 days.

Famous and controversial

Both newspapers and radio had posted daily updates on the long and dramatic aerial expedition. Gidsken made a lasting impression on many of those who met her.

“I well remember that lovely woman, Gidsken Jakobsen, when she came ashore. She was dressed in leather with a leather helmet on her head, and we thought she was a very fine lady,”

– remembered Ingrid Grubse Aasen more than 70 years later.

As a young girl, she met Gidsken at Åheim in Møre in 1930.

When Gidsken arrived in Oslo, she had become famous. The magazine Vor Tid called her “the young lady that the whole of Norway now knows.” No one had ever before undertaken a winter flight in all weathers. “Well done, Miss Gidsken!”

Others were highly critical. “If Gidsken had simply taken the scheduled ferry boat, she would have been here long ago,” wrote the newspaper Dagbladet disdainfully. The newspaper described the flight as a foolhardy “attempted suicide”.

However, pioneer aviator Tryggve Gran robustly defended her in a lecture he held in Oslo. “Miss Gidsken Jakobsen’s arrival in Oslo in her aircraft without doubt means that a new chapter in the story of Norwegian aviation has begun,” he asserted.

“She can ‘push on’ when necessary and wait when required, despite idle gossip, criticism and jeers (...) If she had belonged to a nation with a major interest in aviation, there would be little risk in predicting a bright future for her.”

A flight to freedom

Gidsken never gave a clear explanation of why she chose to fly in the middle of winter, with all the additional risks that entailed.

Perhaps no one ever asked her. In his book “Pionertid” [The Pioneering Years], the early Norwegian aviator Viggo Widerøe wrote that flying in the early 1930s was supposed “above all, to be exciting and hazardous, an exploit involving quick thinking and courage”. “An aviator who was not held to be a ‘daredevil’, was not reckoned to be worth much.”

Gidsken also had other reasons for taking off in the middle of winter. Unbeknownst to Norway, a personal drama was being played out behind the scenes. Later in life, Gidsken revealed that she was actually supposed to become engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Sverre, that Christmas.

“Then I ran away with “Måsen” and left him in the lurch to go off with a Finnish flier. That was badly done of me, but I realised that there was a gulf between us. Sverre said many times that when we were married, you won’t get a lovely dress like that. He talked about finding ways to save money (...) The Finnish pilot was not interested in buing dresses and things like that.”

In 1930, marriage marked a clear watershed in a woman’s life. Most married women left the workforce and became stay-at-home housewives, supported financially by their husbands. Gidsken was unlikely to be tempted by such a prospective clipping of her wings. She remained a working woman and never had a family.

Photo: Sverre Lyngnes / Norwegian Aviation Museum
Gidsken and her sister on their way out to Gidsken’s Junkers seaplane in a small boat. The picture was taken in Volda, Western Norway.

Sightseeing along the west coast of Norway

In the spring of 1932, Gidsken and the military aviator Gunnar Johannes Wicklund-Hansen established the airline Nord-Norges Aero A/S. The largest shareholders hailed from Trondheim, where a Junkers F 13W aircraft with room for two pilots and four passengers was also procured.

By now, Gidsken’s first plane “Måsen” had been lost to her. She and her father never managed to pay the entire purchase price, so the plane was sold at compulsory auction in Helsinki in the autumn of 1931.

Gidsken wanted to use the new Junkers to carry mail and passengers on scheduled routes in Northern Norway. She also offered the Red Cross her services as a flying ambulance, but none of these plans won sufficient support. In the summer of 1933, she flew sightseeing tours along the west coast of Norway for passengers from the large cruise ships that anchored up in the fjords. Her co-pilot was the Norwegian-American Birger Johnsen.

From Kviknes Hotel in Sognefjord, they flew tours from eight in the morning until nightfall. According to the pilots themselves, the business was a huge success. But the tourist season was short.

On Gidsken’s 25th birthday on 1 August, the newspaper Sogningen wrote the following:

“All summer long she has flown tourists around Sognefjord. This trim, graceful and good-humoured figure has become extremely popular. She belongs to this sunny and radiant summer. Without Gidsken, who has clattered over our heads from morning to evening, the summer would not have been complete. So we wish you a very happy birthday and many happy returns!”

Engine detaches while in flight

In the summer of 1934, Gidsken and Birger Johnsen were back in Sognefjord, ready for a new tourist season with the same plane. One of the propellers had been damaged, and they got a local blacksmith to repair it. But was the repair good enough? They had to take it up to test it out, recalled Gidsken.

“When we had reached an altitude of around 500 metres, I saw that the rivets beside me seemed to be loosening. I reduced speed so that Birger could hear me, and said: ‘Um, Birger, we have to descend. The rivets are starting to go. It could end in disaster.’ ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Birger. ‘It’s just the valves that are incorrectly adjusted.’”

They climbed sharply. At 900 metres, the engine tore loose from the fuselage and fell away. The loss of weight unbalanced the aircraft and it began to stall. Birger ordered Gidsken and a boy who had come along for the ride to creep as far forward in the aircraft as possible to compensate for the loss of weight. Then he attempted to force the plane down like a glider. It worked! They landed on the fjord without anyone getting hurt. Apparently, this type of accident had occurred only three times before in history, but this was the first time anyone escaped with their lives.

Another accident

The Junkers plane was a wreck and could no longer be used. In the autumn of 1934, Gidsken established a new airline, Bergens Aero A/S, along with stakeholders from Bergen. She swapped the wrecked Junkers for two smaller Junkers K 16s in Germany and planned to fly a scheduled service between Bergen and Newcastle, and between Bergen and Hull in the UK. According to Gidsken she had four large Saro Cloud aircraft ready and waiting in Calcutta in India.

She sent the authorities an incomplete application for permission to establish the services, but the application was never considered. Just before Christmas in 1934, Det Norske Luftartselskap was given the exclusive right to fly routes in Norway for a period of 10 years. That marked the start of modern civil aviation in Norway.

In 1936, Gidsken tried to resume flying sightseeing tours around Olden in Nordfjord on the west coast using an amphibious Loening Air Yacht. On one of the first days in operation, the plane hit something hard in the sea as it was landing. It broke in two and seawater poured in. A passenger broke open a window and managed to drag the others to safety atop the floating wreck before they drowned.

Gidsken abandoned flying and went to work helping to run the family firm in Narvik. During WWII, when Norway was under Nazi occupation, she exported large volumes of fish to Germany. After the war, she was prosecuted for economic collaboration with the enemy, but the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Later in life, Gidsken led a conglomerate of businesses ranging from forestry and timber trading to tourist accommodation and ore prospecting.

In her later years, she went to live with her sisters, Camilla and Borghild, in southern Norway. Gidsken Jakobsen died on 13 June 1990.