As a mission president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Norway, Erlend "Pete" Peterson often boarded airplanes wearing a heavy winter coat and hat.
Peterson could hear the whispers of passengers who always said one word: Gorbachev. People around the world have long mistaken Peterson, who is Brigham Young University dean of admissions and records, for former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.However, Norwegians now recognize Peterson as more than a Gorbachev look-alike. Peterson and Norwegian native Stein Eriksen, an Olympic gold medalist and skiing legend, were scheduled to be conferred Knights First Class in the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in separate ceremonies Monday. Tom Vraalsen, U.S. ambassador from Norway, was in town to present the awards.
Norway selects for the Order of Merit only a few foreign nationals and Norwegian nationals who permanently reside outside the country. Selections for the order are made by Norwegian King Harald V.
Eriksen won a gold medal in the giant slalom and a silver medal in the slalom race in the 1952 Winter Olympics held in Norway. He also won three gold medals at the World Championships in 1954.
Eriksen has said his skiing style came from his father, who competed in gymnastics at the 1912 Olympic Games. Eriksen learned to ski as soon as he could walk and began competing at age 7.
Eriksen has spent most of the four decades since winning gold at ski resorts in the United States. He worked as ski school director at resorts in California, Michigan, Vermont and Colorado before helping develop ski resorts at Park City and Deer Valley. As director of skiing at Deer Valley, the 68-year-old Eriksen still plays an active role in promoting Utah skiing. He and his wife, Francoise, have four children. They split their time between Deer Valley and Montana.
Peterson, a Utah native who has spent his career at BYU, has an involvement with Scandinavia that is both deep and long. His father served as an LDS mission president in Norway, and Peterson himself was there as a missionary during 1963-64. Twenty-five years later, Peterson worked as mission president in Norway. His ancestry on both sides traces to Scandinavia.
As an associate of BYU's David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, Peterson has been the driving force behind bringing dozens of Norwegian professors and government officials to Utah. The exchange program brings a Norwegian and a Dane to deliver an address at BYU each year. It also provides support for Scandinavian students to attend BYU and for BYU students to study in Scandinavia.
"With each of our guests that we have brought, we have asked them to recommend whom we should bring next," Peterson said. "In doing so, the doors have been opened to us to people for whom they normally wouldn't be."
Peterson's Norwegian visitors have included the president of Oslo University, the country's minister of education and the chief justice of the Norwegian Supreme Court. Last month, Peterson and the Kennedy Center hosted Oslo University professor Francis Sejersted, the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Selection Committee.
When Sejersted and the rest of the committee selected Gorbachev for the 1990 Peace Prize, Peterson was not far behind. He visited Sejersted's office in Norway just two months after Gorbachev received the prize. When Peterson walked in, Sejersted's secretary did a double take.
"When I saw you, I thought (Gorbachev) had come back again," she said.
At BYU, Peterson's goal for the Scandinavian Scholarship Endowment is not just to bring distinguished Norwegians for a one-time visit but to develop long-term friendships. He or another BYU representative visits Norway each summer to host a dinner for the Norwegian "Friends of BYU."
"If you just bring people for one shot and forget them, you haven't gained anything," Peterson said. "You have to cultivate those friendships."
Peterson, 56, and his wife, Colleen, have six children. Both Peterson and Eriksen will receive the insignia of the Royal Order of Merit, which is a gilded St. Olav's cross with a monogram of King Olav in the center. The Order was established in 1985 by King Olav V.