was born and brought up in Ulefoss, where he was a keen boy scout and sportsman. In the middle of the 1930s he moved to Vestfold county in Norway, where he was a farm labourer on the priest's farm at Hedrum. In the winter of 1938 he got work on a whaling vessel and was away for a season. In the summer of 1939 he married Maren Rauan and in the Septmember of the same year sailed again with the whaler. In the spring of 1940, after the occupation of Norway, Olav travelled to England. After some time he joined the Norwegian armed forces and later the Norwegian “No.5 Troop” in the Allied commando force “10th Interallied Commando”.  After hard and realistic training Olav took part in action on the Norwegian coastline, before the unit was ready for invasion of the European continent. As a link in the Allied landing operations the unit was sent to attack the island Kapelcher Veer in the Netherlands. Olav and his group were ambushed in the attack and he was killed by machinegun fire. Olav was buried in Holland but his remains were brought home to Norway and buried in Hedrum churchyard in a ceremony on 1st September 1946.

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was the eldest of 8 children, and after his mother died at a young age he was brought up by his grandparents in Valebø, on the opposite side of Norsjø from Ulefoss (at that time Valebø was a part of Holla). As a young man he worked in Porsgrunn as a painter and in 1939 took a job onboard the Steamboat Borgestad, a boat that sailed out of Porsgrunn. After the outbreak of war and the Norwegian occupation the Borgestad was put into service for the Allies. On 12th February 1941 it sailed in a convoy from the USA to England but between the Azores and Madeira the German Cruiser “Admiral Hipper” opened fire on the convoy from a distance of only 2500 metres. The Borgestad took up the fight, despite only having a single cannon and this gave the rest of the convoy chance to escape. The battle was of course uneven and the Borgestad's fate inescapable. The boat went down with all hands, in total thirty men and one woman perished. The Borgestad's battle against far superior firepower is often cited as an example of the Norwegian sailors' determination to contribute to the fight for freedom.