The mythology of the paper clip in Norwegian imagination

In 1989, a giant paper clip about 7 meters high was erected on a college campus near Oslo. This was a tribute to Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian patent clerk and inventor. In 1899, Vaaler designed a paper clip without being aware of the existence of a superior version by the Gem Manufacturing Company in Britain. Vaaler also applied for patents in Germany in 1899 and in the United States in 1901. However by 1907, the Gem brand of paper clips had achieved pre-eminence as the perfect paper clip that “will hold securely your letters, documents or memoranda without perforation and mutilation until you wish to release them.” Vaaler’s invention, which lacked the two loops and was thus inferior, went nowhere. He died soon after in 1910, with no idea of his impending place in history.

During the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II, the Norwegians made the paper clip a symbol of national unity. The occupation regime prohibited the wearing of pins or badges with national symbols or buttons imprinted with the initials of the exiled King Haakon VII. As a response to this law, Norwegians started wearing paper clips to their lapels in a show of solidarity. They became such a powerful symbol of the resistance to the occupation, that wearing a paper clip could immediately lead to arrest.

Later, Johan Vaaler was embraced as a national hero in Norway. In 1999, one hundred years after Vaaler’s patent application in Germany, the Norwegian government issued a commemorative stamp. In 2005, the national biographical encyclopedia of Norway published a comprehensive biography of Johan Vaaler that credited him as the inventor of the modern paper clip. This, despite the fact, that the claim remains shrouded in controversy. It can almost certainly be said that Vaaler is not the inventor of the gem clip as we know it today.

Yet the story lives on, erroneously. It is a subtle reminder of how the social production of a certain mythology can be such a useful tool for nationalist self-assertion.