Halvor Hoel

Halvor Hoel (born Feb. 4, 1766, Hedmark province, Nor.—died March 5, 1852, Hedmark) was a peasant agitator who influenced peasant opinion against Norway’s early 19th-century political leaders. A member of a wealthy peasant family, Hoel opposed the upper-class, urban-dominated parliamentary government established in Norway in 1814; particularly, he attacked its fiscal policies, which he characterized as inimical to peasant interests. On the other hand, he exhibited the traditional peasant tolerance of royalism and favoured a...