Valentin Valentinsen was a Norwegian engineer and politician for the Liberal Party.

Born in Haugesund

Haugesund

is a town and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.-Location:Haugesund was separated from Torvastad as a town and municipality of its own in 1855. The rural municipality of Skåre was merged with Haugesund on January 1, 1958. Haugesund is a small municipality, only 73 km²...

 as the son of ship-owner Johannes Valentinsen, he took a technical education and started his career at a shipyard in Laksevaag

Laksevåg

Laksevåg is a borough of the city of Bergen, Norway.-Location:Laksevåg was separated from Askøy as a municipality of its own July 1, 1918. It was merged with Bergen January 1, 1972....

. In 1887 he was hired as head of the machine department in a shipyard in Mykolaiv

Mykolaiv

Mykolaiv , also known as Nikolayev , is a city in southern Ukraine, administrative center of the Mykolaiv Oblast. Mykolaiv is the main ship building center of the Black Sea, and, arguably, the whole Eastern Europe.-Name of city:...

, nicknamed the City of shipbuilders. In 1889 he went on to Jarrow

Jarrow

Jarrow is a town in Tyne and Wear, England, located on the River Tyne, with a population of 27,526. From the middle of the 19th century until 1935, Jarrow was a centre for shipbuilding, and was the starting point of the Jarrow March against unemployment in 1936.-Foundation:The Angles re-occupied...

, England, working as a machine constructor at the Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company Limited. He then traveled to Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 in 1890 and to San Francisco and the Union Iron Works

Union Iron Works

Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.-History:...

 in 1890. He returned to Norway in 1893.

He was a member of Haugesund city council from 1904, serving as deputy mayor in 1907 and 1908 and as mayor from 1909. He was then elected to the Norwegian Parliament in 1910 and 1913, representing the constituency of Haugesund.