Nini Stoltenberg

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. At the age of 17, Stoltenberg attended a Bruce Springsteen concert, was pulled up on stage and danced together with the rock superstar. ==Television career==

Stoltenberg started out doing television work in 1992 when she co-hosted the TV3 show På tide with Ole Paus. 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. ==Intravenous drug use==

Stoltenberg's drug addiction became known to the Norwegian public in October 2001, one week after her brother had resigned from his first cabinet. 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". ==Perspectives on reasons behind recreational drug use==

Stoltenberg refuted the notion that she started using drugs because she could not deal with the pressure of having such successful siblings. Had it not been for the many problems of her relationship at the time, she said, she would not have turned to drugs for an escape. ==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. ==References==