Waffen-SS Kriegsberichters Hamsun and Sveinsson Björnsson

SS-Unterscharführer Arild Hamsun

Björn Sveinsson Björnsson as SS-Hauptscharführer

According to various sources, the left photograph shows the Norwegian SS-Unterscharführer Arild Hamsun, son of the famous writer and Nobel Prize winner in Literature Knut Hamsun. Public domain. The right photograph shows the then SS-Hauptscharführer Björn Sveinsson Björnsson, son of the wartime Icelandic President. Fair use. They both served with SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers and were attached to SS-Regiment Nordland of the SS-Division Wiking as war correspondents. Arild Hamsun, whos famous father meant that the Germans were fighting for all Europeans, received the Iron Cross Second Class in October 1943. After the war he was sentenced to a short prison sentence before he took over his parents’ farm Nørholm in Grimstad in Norway. The Icelandic President's son Björn Sveinsson Björnsson joined the Waffen-SS in 1941 and followed Regiment Nordland on the advance on Rostov-on-Don, Kuran Valley and the Kaucasus-mountains before heading up the Nazi propaganda machine in occupied Denmark. He was taken prisoner in May 1945 and held in custody in Denmark but was released the following year to great public outrage. Upon his release he traveled incognito to Sweden and was smuggled back into Iceland. Björn Sveinsson Björnsson decamped for Argentina in 1949 before moving to Germany. He worked at Encyclopædia Britannica and his memoirs were published in 1989 entitled Ævi mín og sagan sem ekki mátti segja (My life and a story not allowed to be told). SS-Unterscharführer Arild Hamsun died aged 74 in 1988 in Grimstad in Norway and SS-Untersturmführer Björn Sveinsson Björnsson died aged 89 in 1998 in Borgarnes in Iceland.