Copyright

Per Haave; Jon Røyne Kyllingstad

Published On

2026-03-02

Page Range

pp. 131–158

Language

  • English

Print Length

28 pages

4. IQ Testing and Sterilization in Norway, 1930 to 1960

  • Per Haave (author)
  • Jon Røyne Kyllingstad (author)
Chapter of: Historicizing IQ Testing: Intelligence Assessments and their Role in Norwegian Society from the 1900s to the Present(pp. 131–158)
This chapter deals with the scientific and ideological underpinnings of the use of IQ tests in Norwegian cases of involuntary sterilization between 1930 and up to the 60s. Specifically it untangles the role of IQ tests in psychiatry, and their part in creating the expert knowledge used to determine sterilisation cases, while also paying attention to different and coexisting conflicting ideas around IQ tests and their role in psychiatry and adjacent disciplines and in society at large.

Contributors

Per Haave

(author)

Per Haave (1958–2024) was a recognised historian of medicine and psychiatry in Norway. Haave was a Norwegian Government Grant holder and researcher at the Institute for Health and Society, University of Oslo. He published extensively on topics such as the history of psychiatry, the medical profession, the welfare state, and eugenics and involuntary sterilization.

Jon Røyne Kyllingstad

(author)
Associate professor and Research project leader at University of Oslo

Jon Røyne Kyllingstad is a historian and associate professor at the University of Oslo, Museum of University History/Museum of Cultural History, where he is the leader of the research project Historicizing Intelligence, which this book is based upon. He is a specialist in the history of science and the history of academic institutions with a focus on Norway. He was previously head conservator at the Norwegian Museum of Technology. His last book Rase: en vitenskapshistorie [Race: a history of a science] sums up two decades of work on changing ideas about race, ethnicity and the nation, within physical anthropology, genetics, and humanities disciplines such as archaeology and history in Norway. Similar topics were also addressed in Measuring the Master Race, published by Open Book Publishers in 2014.