On Monday, May 25, Brother Rutherford made the announcement that a Northern European office would be established in Copenhagen. This office would care for the preaching work in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. It was announced that Brother William Dey from London would supervise the work, and the brothers expressed their delight with this arrangement. There would still be one local manager in each country, and Brother Enok Øman continued to shoulder that responsibility in the Norwegian office.

EXPANSION AT THE NORWEGIAN OFFICE

The year 1925 also became a memorable one for the work at the Norwegian branch office. At that time the Society bought a three-story building a few blocks from the office in Parkveien 60. The address was Incognitogaten 28 B. A brother who had inherited some money purchased the house and then sold it to the Society for 10-15,000 Norwegian kroner less than he had paid for it. In this way the Society obtained its own house and no longer was limited to the small room in Parkveien, where the office had been since 1916.

It was fitting that the office got more rooms. Brother Øman had been doing most of the branch work himself, but the expansion of the preaching activity after 1925 called for more help at the office. The Golden Age had to be translated and mailed to subscribers. More people were needed at the office, and so additional members were added to the Bethel family.

The cellar in the new place was used for literature storage. In the years that followed, large shipments of books came in from the Society’s printery at Magdeburg, Germany. However, the Society did not have the use of the whole house. Some of the tenants had difficulty in finding other places to live, and certain rooms were still occupied by these people. To begin with, only a few members of the Bethel family lived at Incognitogaten, and the address of the office was still Parkveien 60. But in 1930 the office and the other members of the Bethel family moved into the Society’s own house. At that time, eight brothers and sisters were working at the branch office. Since that year the Society’s office in Norway has been located in this house.