Nini Stoltenberg

Nini Stoltenberg (11 February 1963 – 27 July 2014) was a Norwegian television personality and sister of Jens Stoltenberg, former prime minister of Norway, and Camilla Stoltenberg, the director-general of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She was, however, better known as a drug addict, and has been cited as such by Norwegian media on numerous occasions. She has often been depicted as an unofficial spokesperson for Norwegian drug users. Stoltenberg was part of a 12-member group of expert advisers on drug policies for the second cabinet Bondevik (2001–2005).

Stoltenberg presented a harsh critique of Norwegian illegal drug politics and questioned whether the expert group of which she was a member really made any difference.

Early life Nini Stoltenberg grew up in Oslo as the youngest of three siblings. Her brother is Jens Stoltenberg (b. 1959), former prime minister of Norway, and her sister is Camilla Stoltenberg (b. 1957), a medical researcher and administrator. Her parents are Thorvald Stoltenberg, former foreign minister of Norway and Karin Stoltenberg, a geneticist who has served, among other prominent positions, as state secretary.

Stoltenberg studied law.

In the 1995 biography about her father, Nini Stoltenberg is described as the black sheep of the family. At the age of 15, she went to Christiania in Denmark, a self-governed zone known for its liberal drug policies, where she remained for several months. In 1994, she co-hosted Kvinnene på taket ("The Women On The Rooftop") together with Åsa Rytter Evensen and Anne Lise Hammer. In 2008, she appeared on Manshow, a talk show hosted by Håvard Lilleheie. Following the program in which she appeared together with her father, Thorvald Stoltenberg, she received more than 2,000 letters of support from viewers who in one way or another had experienced the problems associated with illegal drug abuse. Thorvald Stoltenberg has described his experiences with having a child who was an intravenous drug user in his 2001 memoirs, Det handler om mennesker ("It's about people")–one day being immersed in peace negotiations in the Balkans, the next wandering the streets of Oslo trying to find Nini. By the end of the 1990s, she was close to dying.

Stoltenberg received opioid agonist treatment using methadone for her heroin addiction during a two-year period.

Stoltenberg and her partner did not give up on drugs altogether. At one point, they asserted that they no longer had an addiction problem and that they "have an ok life, and sometimes drugs enter into our life".

Personal life Stoltenberg had a long-time relationship with Karl John Sivertzen (1951–2013) from Odda, a former drug addict who was convicted of an armed bank robbery in the 1970s (he was released in 1983), and whose past Stoltenberg described as a "virtual crime novel". They were invited together for Christmas dinner at her parents' house where her brother, as prime minister, attended. Together, they wrote about the conditions for drug users in Norway.

Stoltenberg and Sivertzen first met when she was admitted for detox and he was a therapist, and they became a couple 10 years later, after they met again at the home of a common acquaintance. In 2018, her childhood friend Lars Lillo-Stenberg published a biography of Nini Stoltenberg, at the instigation of her father, Thorvald Stoltenberg.