Michael Puntervold was a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 lawyer and politician for the Labour

Norwegian Labour Party

The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in Norway. It is the senior partner in the current Norwegian government as part of the Red-Green Coalition, and its leader, Jens Stoltenberg, is the current Prime Minister of Norway....

 and Social Democratic Labour

Social Democratic Labour Party of Norway

The Social Democratic Labour Party of Norway was a Norwegian political party in the 1920s. Following the Labour Party's entry into the Comintern in 1919, its right wing left the party to form the Social Democratic Labour Party in 1921...

 parties.

He is known for having a personal relation with Lenin and later served as a lawyer for Leon Trotsky during his exile. Several letters between Leon Trotsky and Michael Puntervold are stored in the Harvard Library.

He was the manager of the middle school in Narvik, and edited the newspaper Fremover

Fremover

Fremover is a regional newspaper published in Narvik, Norway. It has been published for more than 100 years, having been founded on May 27, 1903....

for a short time. He also chaired the local chapter of the Labour Party. He studied law and graduated with the cand.jur. degree in 1906. From 1904 to 1910 he was a journalist in the Kristiania

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 newspaper Social-Demokraten

Dagsavisen

Dagsavisen is a daily newspaper published in Oslo, Norway. The former party organ of the Norwegian Labour Party, the ties loosened over time from 1975 to 1999, and it is now fully independent...

. He also worked as an attorney and lawyer in Kristiania.

He became an important person in the labour movement in 1904 as he published the pamphlet Antimilitarismen via Norges Socialdemokratiske Ungdomsforbund. It was the first "comprehensive theoretical reasoning" behind the Labour Party military policy at the time; skepticism to the current military while wanting the working people to take up arms. In the early 1900s he published agitative pamphlets named Militarismen ("The Militarism") and Klassekampen ("The Class Struggle"). In 1919 he published I Lenins land ("In Lenin's Country"), a travel account

Travel literature

Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...

 from the newly established Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....

.

Puntervold placed himself on the right wing of the party, which had more or less control until 1918. In 1920 he was more or less denounced by Edvard Bull, Sr.

Edvard Bull, Sr.

Edvard Bull was a Norwegian historian and politician for the Labour Party. He took the doctorate in 1912 and became a professor at the University of Kristiania in 1917, and is known for writings on a broad range of subjects. In addition to his academic work, he is known for his work on Norsk...

 who wrote in Det 20de Aarhundre of "right-wing socialism and puntervoldery". When the Labour Party split in 1921, Puntervold joined the more right-wing Social Democratic Labour Party, and became a leading figure in this party. He, writing in Arbeider-Politikken

Arbeider-Politikken

Arbeider-Politikken was a Norwegian newspaper, published in Oslo.Arbeider-Politikken was started in 1920 as an organ for the right-wing group within the Norwegian Labour Party. Since 1918 this had been an oppositional group, mainly to the party's Comintern association. Its first editor was Oscar...

, was a part of the early supporters of such a new party. He took part at the founding congress of the Labour and Socialist International

Labour and Socialist International

The Labour and Socialist International was an international organization of socialist and labour parties, active between 1923 and 1940. The LSI was a forerunner of the present-day Socialist International....

 in 1923; the other Norwegian delegates were Magnus Nilssen

Magnus Nilssen

Magnus Nilssen was Norwegian politician for the Labour and Social Democratic Labour parties.He was born in Lillehammer as a son of shoemaker Mathias Nilssen and his wife Eline Pedersen . He was a first cousin of Marcus Halfdan Kastrud. He finished his appreniceship as a goldsmith in 1889, and...

, Arne Magnussen

Arne Magnussen

Arne Magnussen was a Norwegian trade unionist, newspaper editor and politician for the Labour and the Social Democratic Labour parties.He was elected to the Parliament of Norway from the urban constituency of Moss og Drøbak in 1919...

 and Olav Kringen

Olav Kringen

Olav Kringen was a Norwegian newspaper editor.He was born at a croft in Sel, and was a manual laborer in Norway before emigrating to the United States in 1887. There, he studied and took a teacher education. He worked as a teacher in Minnesota and Dakota. For the next two years he worked in the...

. Nonetheless, he gradually backed out of active politics. He belonged to the Labour Party again from 1927.