Per Sandberg

Per Sandberg (born 6 February 1960) is a Norwegian politician for the Capitalist Party and formerly the Progress Party who served as the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries from 2015 to 2018. Sandberg was a member of the Norwegian parliament from 1997 to 2017 (2005–2017 from the Sør-Trøndelag constituency, and before that from Nord-Trøndelag), and served as chair of the parliamentary standing committees on Justice, and Transport and Communications. He has additionally held the position of first deputy leader of the Progress Party from 2006 to 2018. In 1997 he was convicted of assault and battery of an asylum seeker. His status as a convicted felon has made him controversial in Norwegian politics. An outspoken politician with a blue-collar working background, Sandberg has stoked controversy on numerous occasions, and has been described, by former party chairman Carl I. Hagen as well as the media, as the "proto-typical Progress Party person". Early life and education Sandberg was born in Levanger, Nord-Trøndelag to self-employed businessman Rolf Sandberg (1926–2010) and part-time worker Rannveig Ertsås (1930–2006). He has three siblings, sister Mona, and brothers Harald and Stig (Stig committed suicide in 1997). He has described his upbringing as "rough", partly due to his father, who he describes as being "incredibly strict and manipulative". According to Sandberg, his father would regularly lock him up in the outhouse or the cellar as punishment. He would also resort to corporal punishment on his siblings regularly. So great was the abuse, that Sandberg claims: "Had my father acted like that today, child welfare would have been there. And it would have been an immediate takeover by the child protection services".