An old, anonymous leather suitcase found in a museum storage area in Halden put three eager museum employees on the trail of the life of "The Fencing Lady".

The five most read articles in 2023 covered a variety of issues: from fatherhood and paternity tests; intimacy among whalers in the early 20th century to the treatment of gender dysphoria. 

According to historians, the Norwegian authorities reacted differently to the AIDS epidemic than other Western countries.

“The binary view of gender was particularly dominant in the 1950s,” says Ketil Slagstad. He has written a paper on the history of trans medicine.

“I am surprised that the coming-out stories are still so important, and that coming out is so stressful and difficult for young people also today,” says researcher.

Thea Johanne Prytz Hammarqvist has written about a hundred-year-old Japanese novel that challenged the idea of heterosexual marriage as the only correct choice for women.

The Harry Potter books are pervaded with queer and transsexual symbols, says Jennifer Duggan. She has written a PhD thesis about the internet culture surrounding to the book series.

New research demonstrates expressions of women’s liberation and homoerotic desire in Knut Hamsun’s works from the 1890’s.

In Norwegian black metal, monstrous images of hyper-masculinity is emphasised. This has given many fans power over their own identity.

A new report shows that twice as many LGBT people are victims of discrimination and exclusion as the rest of the population. The risk increases even more among those with minority characteristics.

How have the limits for what is considered acceptable sexuality been drawn and negotiated through history? This is the question we need to ask in order to understand not only the past, but also our present, according to Tone Hellesund.

In the 1950s, the first successful gender reassignment treatment was carried out. Since then, major developments have taken place within medicine and law, but also when it comes to our perceptions of gender, according to historian Sigrid Sandal.

Norwegian musicians make careers from experimenting with queer gender identities. According to musicologist Agnete Eilertsen, pop music shows that the gender norms are changing although there is still a shortage of queer musicians.

Young Norwegian Muslims are more liberal than their parents’ generation when it comes to equality and homosexuality, but both groups find support for their view in Islam, according to Levi Geir Eidhamar’s study.

In Norway, children under the age of sixteen can now change their legal gender. Anniken Sørlie investigates how the legislation affects the way children and youth perceive their own identity.