Gunvor Galtung Haavik

Gunvor Galtung Haavik born 1912 - died August 5, 1977, in Drammen was a Norwegian employee of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was arrested on January 27, 1977 after being betrayed by Oleg Gordievsky and charged with espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and treason. She confessed to these crimes, and then died, apparently of heart failure, before the case came to trial.

Haavik studied medicine at the University of Oslo from 1932 to 1933, but gave up these studies and became a nurse instead. She worked at hospitals several places in Norway and spent the war years at a hospital in Bodø, where she picked up Russian and fell in love with a Russian prisoner of war, Vladimir Koslov. Consequently, in 1946, the foreign ministry hired her as an interpreter.

In 1947, she was assigned to the Norwegian embassy in Moscow and was shortly thereafter recruited by the KGB. She maintained an intimate affair with Koslov for two years and committed to spying on behalf of the Soviet Union after the KGB threatened to deport him to Siberia. She was a trusted colleague in the ministry, and was among other things given the responsibility of safeguarding sensitive embassy documents against disclosure. She allowed KGB agents into her apartment to peruse such documents. In 1955, she returned to Oslo but continued her espionage activities through a Soviet handler.

On October 3, 2008 the film "Iskyss" premiered in Norwegian cinemas. The film is an adaptation of the biography by the same title by investigative journalist and author Alf R. Jacobsen and is directed by Knut Erik Jensen.