Elias Volan

Elias Karelius Johansen Volan (10 March 1887 – 26 December 1974) was a Norwegian trade unionist.

He was born in Inderøy Municipality as a son of crofter Johan Berent Johannessen Volvollan and Lise Eliasdatter Kjærbo. He attended Sund Folk High School from 1903 to 1904, but spent the rest of his youth as a worker. In 1908 he became chairman of his local trade union. He became a Norwegian Union of General Workers unionist in Trondheim, and became a national board member in 1913. He was also a member of the Dutch Radicals (refer to Fagopposisjonen av 1911), and through his fellow adherents (spearheaded by Martin Tranmæl) he was elected chairman of the Norwegian Union of General Workers in 1918 and deputy chairman of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions in 1920. In 1923 he went on to become chairman of the newly created Norwegian Union of Building Workers.

He was active in the Norwegian Labour Party, but when the party split in 1923 he joined the Communist Party of Norway. Because of this he was removed as Norwegian Union of Building Workers leader in 1927, and instead became head of trade matters in the Communist Party of Norway. Jens Tangen from Fagopposisjonen av 1940 was ordered by Germans to take over. Volan fled to Sweden, where he worked for the exiled part of the Confederation of Trade Unions. He was a Communist Party member for a brief time, but joined the Labour Party for the third time before 1945.

After the war, he was not sanctioned for the time as trade union leader in occupied Norway. He continued as union secretary until retirement in 1953, being re-elected in 1946 and 1949. He was a member of the Labour Court of Norway from 1954 to 1957. He died in December 1974 in Oslo.