Svein Bjerke (born 15 November 1938 in Oslo), is a religious historian and professor emeritus at the University of Oslo, where he was attached to the Department for the History of Religion for thirty years, part of the time as its head. He belonged to the first Norwegian group of anthropology students, but has since worked with archeological excavations (for example as member of The in 1965-66), philological text analyses (especially in his thesis on the Egyptian mouth opening ritual) and traditional anthropological field work. His most well-known work is the doctoral dissertation Religion and Misfortune (UiO 1975; Universitetsforlaget 1981; ISBN 82-00-05681-3) based on fieldwork in North-Western Tanzania. Bjerke has represented Norwegian Comparative religion in the (IAHR) and for a numb