Birkelunden

Birkelunden occupies an entire rectangular block amid dense development. Thorvald Meyer set this land aside for a park while Grünerløkka was still being planned, and in eighteen eighty-two he transferred it free of charge to the city parks department on one condition: nothing would ever be built here. By then, birch trees were already growing along the fence. Birkelunden takes its name from them—“Birch Grove.”

Half a century later, the open block was needed by people who had nowhere else to meet. Ten or twelve pensioners met here on one of the benches. At the time, the word “pensioner” did not yet mean a comfortable old age: the nationwide old-age benefit only came into force in nineteen thirty-seven, was payable from the age of seventy, depended on income and property, and provided only the established minimum.

Jack Johnsen, who organized these meetings, wanted to turn the group on the bench into a permanent association. The group was allowed to use a small rest hut. In nineteen thirty-seven, membership reached eighteen, and they registered the Friends of Birkelunden association.

Johnsen led it for twenty-three years, until his death at the age of seventy-six. In nineteen fifty-one, the association joined the new Norwegian Pensioners' Association, and Johnsen became the union's deputy chair and helped establish local branches. Among the organization’s first demands were higher minimum payments and the abolition of the means test. That test was abolished in nineteen fifty-seven. The Friends of Birkelunden association itself lasted until two thousand twelve.

At the park’s northern edge, near the tram stop, stands a bust of Jack Johnsen. The pedestal reads: “Erected by pensioners in nineteen eighty-four.”