Terje G. Simonsen
Terje Simonsen is a Norwegian historian and nonfiction author. He was among the first to predict the arrival of an androgynous pronoun in Norway.
Early life and education
Simonsen was born in Norway on April 23, 1963, in the municipality of Kristiansand and raised in the town of Mandal. He graduated from the University of Oslo in 1993. In 2001, his thesis on the Janus journal and Alf Larsen was published by Solum Forlag as a book JANUS—A Journal and an Era.Career
In 2003, he wrote an introductory essay to a Norwegian edition of I and Thou by Martin Buber, published by Bokklubben.In the article “En språklig mutant i anmarsj”, published in Morgenbladet, in 2006, Simonsen suggested that gender related changes in culture and society would result in an androgynous pronoun appearing through an evolutionary process resembling natural evolution.
Simonsen's main interest has been esoteric traditions—hermeticism, kabbalah, sufism etc.—and he has also edited and authored writings within this field. Among other things, he instigated the first Norwegian translation and edition of the antique esoteric text Book of Enoch in the series Verdens Hellige Skrifter, where he also wrote an introductory essay.
In 2013, Simonsen authored a book on parapsychology, where he explored various paranormal phenomena in a historical context as well as the evolution of the intellectual foundations of parapsychology. In 2018, an expanded and updated English edition was published by an Italian company Pari Publishing. In November 2019, it received the Parapsychological Association Book Award. A new edition was released in the United Kingdom and United States in 2020 by Watkins Publishing.