Per Egil Hegge is a Norwegian journalist.

He was born in Trondheim

Trondheim

Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...

 as a son of two teachers from Skatval

Skatval

Skatval is a village and former municipality in Nord-Trøndelag county, Norway. It is located in the present-day municipality of Stjørdal. The inhabitants are called as Skatvalsbygg....

. He started his career in the Norwegian News Agency

Norwegian News Agency

The Norwegian News Agency is a Norwegian press agency and wire service that serves many of the largest Norwegian media outlets. It also cooperates closely with the photo agency Scanpix, in which it has a 50% ownership share.NTB was founded in 1867...

, and was hired in Aftenposten

Aftenposten

Aftenposten is Norway's largest newspaper. It retook this position in 2010, taking it from the tabloid Verdens Gang which had been the largest newspaper for several decades. It is based in Oslo. The morning edition, which is distributed across all of Norway, had a circulation of 250,179 in 2007...

in 1962 and remained there for the rest of his career. He was the newspaper's London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 correspondent from 1963 to 1965, and then worked in Norway (winning the Narvesen Prize

Narvesen Prize

The Narvesen Prize was a Norwegian prize for those who excelled in journalism. It was established in 1954 by the company Narvesen, but the Norwegian Press Association was behind the selection of winners...

 in 1968) before becoming Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 correspondent from 1969 to 1971. He was then expelled from the country, among others after being the first journalist to interview Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...

 after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 in 1970. After another six years in Norway from 1971 to 1977 Hegge was the Washington DC correspondent from 1977 to 1981. He was then subeditor before editing Aftenposten's magazine A-magasinet from 1984 to 1988. From 1992 to 1998 he was the cultural editor. He retired in 2005, but continued to have a column about the correct use of language. When it comes to perceptions of the quality of the development of the Norwegian language

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Hegge has been called a "housegod of the dissatisfied" by literary critic Aage Borchgrevink

Aage Borchgrevink

Aage Storm Borchgrevink is a Norwegian writer and literary critic.He was born in Oslo, and took his education in literary history at the University of Oslo. His fiction releases are the novel Arkivene from 2000 and the short story collection Folkevandringer from 2004. He has written two...

.

Hegge chaired the Norwegian branch of PEN-International

PEN-International

The Postsecondary Education Network International, known as PEN-International, is an international partnership of colleges and universities serving the higher education of students with hearing impairment....

 from 1985 to 1988. He has written several books, formerly about world affairs, lately many books about the correct use of language and other popular releases. He has also biographed Otto Sverdrup

Otto Sverdrup

Otto Neumann Knoph Sverdrup was a Norwegian sailor and Arctic explorer.-Early and personal life:...

 (in 1996), Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a...

 (in 2002) and Harald V of Norway

Harald V of Norway

Harald V is the king of Norway. He succeeded to the throne of Norway upon the death of his father Olav V on 17 January 1991...

 (in 2006). His Nansen biography was translated to Armenian

Armenian language

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

 in 2007. Hegge has also been a popular lecturer.

In 2003 he was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav (Knight 1st Class).