Hege Storhaug

Sports and early life

Storhaug was born in Arendal, and grew up on Hisøy. She was an active volleyball player in her youth, and won the Norwegian Championship as part of the team Hisøy IL when she was fourteen and sixteen years old. When she was sixteen years old, she made her debut on the junior national team, as well as the senior national team.

She started her education at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in 1984, and graduated as a certified athletic trainer in 1987. From 1986 to 1987 she studied health and sports biology, and wrote a paper based on her mapping of the extent of eating disorders among female athletes. It was the first such mapping in Norway, and it brought considerable attention, including being on the first page of newspaper Dagbladet. She spoke in the media about her own eating disorder as a young athlete, which led to major public debate about the problem in Norway. In the wake of this, she co-founded the Interest Group for Women with Eating Disorders, and functioned as the press and information director of the organisation from 1987 to 1990.

In 1990 Storhaug took part in a mock marriage with her then-girlfriend as a protest outside the Norwegian parliament building. She is today married.

Journalism

Storhaug worked as a journalist for the left-wing newspaper Klassekampen from 1989 to 1990. She completed a degree in journalism at the Norwegian School of Journalism in 1992, after which she worked as a freelance journalist. One of her earliest journalistic efforts, for Dagbladet in 1992, was the first report in Norway about the forced marriages of young Muslim women. Before working with the story she adhered to left-wing anti-racist beliefs, and was shocked by her findings. The report in turn led to the passing of a law banning forced marriages in Norway. For further research she lived in Pakistan for two years in the mid-1990s, and wrote a book about her experience. As of 2015 she has visited Pakistan seventeen times, and has several of her closest friends there.

After the publication of her book Hellig tvang in 1998, Storhaug had a leading role in the production of two documentaries for Rikets tilstand and TV 2 that aired in October 1999 about forced marriages and honor killings in Norway, which had a major impact on Norwegian society. She thereafter conceived and researched a documentary which revealed that girls in Norway were being subjected to female genital mutilation and that imams in the country supported this practice. The program, which aired on TV 2 in October 2000 caused a considerable outcry, not least because imams who condemned this practice in interviews were caught on hidden cameras openly expressing their approval and encouragement of the procedure. In 2002, Storhaug released a report that described nine likely honor killings that had taken place in Norway by 2001. The documentary Norske jenter omskjæres, about female genital mutilation won a SKUP diploma in 2000 and the Gullruten award for best documentary in 2001.

Human Rights Service

In 2002 Storhaug was involved in the Brennpunkt documentary Barnebruder – en ulykkelig historie for state broadcaster NRK, which uncovered the importation of child brides into Norway. The same year she co-founded and began as information director of the foundation Human Rights Service (HRS). Storhaug was later, in 2004 accused of having exerted undue pressure on the girls she had worked with for her documentaries. Among those who have praised Storhaug and HRS's work is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who in the first article she published as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute wrote that while most non-governmental organizations in Europe "are embarrassingly silent" on the struggle for human rights for Muslim women and girls, "there is one in Norway that pays attention, Human Rights Service, run by a brave, determined woman, Hege Storhaug."

Storhaug's 2006 book But the Greatest of These Is Freedom: On the Consequences of Immigration (title of the later English version), was praised by some critics and won the Southern Norway's Literary Prize. However, only a total of 929 votes were cast, and there were five books nominated for the prize. A high-profile participant in media debates about forced marriage, honor killing, genital mutilation, Islam, and questions relating to the cultural impact and economic sustainability of large-scale immigration, her research and outspokenness led her to become increasingly more controversial.

In 2007 Storhaug was assaulted by her own home and beaten unconscious with blows to the head by an unknown assailant. She did not go public with the story until 2010, initially wanting to keep it private and fearing it could scare likeminded activists, until changing her mind after an attack against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Her book Islam, den 11. landeplage became one of Norway's biggest bestsellers during the autumn of 2015, selling 20,000 copies in its first month with several new editions issued, despite being self-published and gaining little to none initial mainstream media coverage. The same year she led online voting for the "Name of the Year" award of newspaper Verdens Gang by a wide margin, but fell short of winning the award following a final selective opinion poll. Some including Gunnar Stavrum and Kjetil Rolness criticised the selection process of the newspaper, particularly that the final results were not publicly disclosed and a less favourable presentation of Storhaug in the poll.

Published books

Awards