The Alumni, Fellows and Members Team are delighted to share the details of our final lunchtime talk of 2025, which will take place on Thursday, 13 November in the Albert Lecture Theatre, RCSI Dublin.

We will be joined by Dr Harald G. Sunde (Medicine, Class of 1983). Dr Sunde worked for 25 years as a family doctor in Kirkenes, Northern Norway, and then spent a further 14 years as a medical director for Finnmark Hospital Health Trust. He has recently retired, and although he retains a part-time post as a medical advisor, he is happily absorbed in another passion, that of researching and writing books on the local history of Kirkenes.

The Finnmark partisans

For his talk Dr Sunde will tell the story of the Finnmark partisans, a subject he researched for a book published in 2018 – In the Footsteps of the Finnmark Partisans – about the Norwegian/Soviet collaboration against Nazi-Germany during World War II.

In response to the German invasion and occupation of Norway, which began in April 1940, resistance groups were established all over the country. In Southern Norway these groups collaborated with Great Britain, where the Norwegian government and royal family was forced into exile. In Northern Norway the proximity to the Soviet Union led these resistance groups to look eastwards for allies against the German occupation. For this reason, many Norwegians became ‘partisans’, or intelligence scouts who operated behind German military lines in Northern Norway. Despite their efforts throughout the conflict, when the war came to an end these partisans received little honour or recognition, as it was thought that they had collaborated with ‘the wrong allies’, given the outcome of the war.

Dr Sunde will also draw interesting historical lines from the events of World War II to the present day, including the ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia as witnessed from his hometown of Kirkenes, which is located just 5km from the Norwegian/Russian border.

The talk will begin at 12.30pm, with tea and coffee to follow.