The journal History and Anthropology has dedicated a special section to Norwegian anthropologist Axel Sommerfelt and his previously unpublished paper .
Opinion - In remembrance of Kirsten Alnaes
2021-02-17
Prof Peter H. Katjavivi
Professor Kirsten Elisabeth Alnaes, Norwegian social anthropologist, whose doctoral thesis was on the cosmology of the Konzo in Uganda, and who did extensive oral history with the Herero community in Botswana, passed away on 4 February this year.
Born 8 May 1927, in Hattfjelldal, Norway, Kirsten studied social anthropology at the University of Oslo. There she met fellow anthropologist Axel Sommerfelt and they were married. They spent three years both doing research in Uganda and then moved to Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. They had three children – Benedict, Aspen and Maja. Kirsten and her husband were staunch advocates of black majority rule in Rhodesia and they were expelled from Rhodesia by the Smith regime in 1966, along with a number of other academics, including Professor Terence Ranger.