Discovering Her Work and Her Words: A Brave Norwegian Woman Among the Serbs During the Great War, 1914–1918

Our commemoration of 11 November, Armistice Day, took us to the grave of Ingeborg Steen-Hansen, a brave Norwegian nurse who volunteered to serve with the medical corps of the Serbian Royal Army.

She stayed by the side of our heroic ancestors in the hospitals of Niš and Valjevo, and crossed Albania with the army and the people. A member of the Norwegian Red Cross, she came to Serbia in 1915 from Belgium and France, bringing more than 200 tonnes of medical supplies for the wounded.

Two years after the end of the Great War, inspired by the Serbs’ love of freedom, the legendary courage of the Serbian soldier, and the solidarity and humanity they showed even towards their enemies, Ingeborg Steen-Hansen wrote some of the most moving pages about the Serbian people and their greatest trials of war in her book With the Red Cross on the Battlefields of Belgium, France and Serbia.

Available in digital form from the National Library of Norway: https://www.nb.no/items/URN:NBN:no-nb_digibok_2014061924001?page=75.

Ingeborg Steen-Hansen co-authored the expanded English-language edition with her friend Saint-Clair Livingston, a Scottish-Canadian nurse who came with her to Serbia and stayed until the end of the war.

In a photograph of the two women, they proudly wear the decorations bestowed on them by King Peter of Serbia: the Order of Karađorđe’s Star, awarded for their selfless service to Serbia.

Ingeborg Steen-Hansen and Saint-Clair Livingston wearing the Order of Karađorđe’s Star

Their book was published that same year, 1916, under the title Under Three Flags: With the Red Cross in Belgium, France and Serbia.

Thanks to the Serbian translation prepared by Dr Zorica Sarah Mitić, these important testimonies were published in the collection Foreign Women on the Serbian Soldier and Serbia during the Great War (Ratomir Damjanović).

In tribute to the brave Norwegian woman, Ambassador Jasmina Mitrović Marić and First Counsellor Isidora Đorđević laid flowers at the grave of Ingeborg Steen-Hansen. Her story is one of many that speak of the deep, enduring bond between Serbs and Norwegians - a friendship that reaches into the present day.

It is a friendship inherited from our ancestors, and one we are entrusted to preserve and strengthen, as best we can, for future generations.