Adam Egede-Nissen (1868-1953)(39) was the senior figure among the old NKP leaders. Having been a postmaster since 1897, he represented the Liberal Party in the Storting from 1900 to 1906 before switching his allegiance to the Labour Party. From 1916 to 1919 he was mayor of Stavanger, and from 1922 on he returned to the Storting as a Labour representative. In 1923 he joined the NKP. At the national conference at which the NKP was founded, he was the most prominent among those who did not want Furubotn as the party's General Secretary. In addition to his work in the labour movement, he engaged himself in the temperance movement and numerous cultural activities. He was one of the relatively few Norwegians to have met Lenin, an encounter about which he wrote a book, Hos Lenin for 20 år siden (With Lenin 20 years ago), in 1937. In 1945 he published an autobiography, Et liv i strid (A life of strife). In view of his origins in the bourgeoisie of the late 1800s, it was quite remarkable for him to have been elected chairman of the NKP in 1937. He was 69, and his election must be regarded as symbolic rather than of practical political consequence. There is no question of his high reputation. During the war, when he was well into his seventies, he lived a relatively passive life and the Germans left him in peace. Formally he remained chairman of the NKP until 1946.

Adam Egede-Nissen was generally respected, and greatly liked by NKP members. In party circles, no controversy was attached to a man who had stood up for independence in the 1905 Storting and was a labour movement veteran. His practical influence was small in 1945, but the party listened to what he said, so who he supported was not unimportant.

Christian Hilt (1888-1958)(40) was another of the NKP old-timers. He had studied the humanities, but soon began to work for the labour press. In 1923 he chose the Communists, and edited the main party paper Norges Kommunistblad from 1926 to 1929. He was one of the NKP leaders in the 1920s, and was in due course given a number of posts in the international Communist movement. In Moscow he met several of the leaders of the Russian revolution. Between 1929 and 1936 he spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union, learned Russian, and did a good deal of journalistic work. He covered the Moscow trials for the new leading NKP paper Arbeideren, as well as publishing a pamphlet defending them.(41) During the war he stood out as one of the relatively few old NKP leaders who were active in the resistance, and lived with Furubotn for a time at the underground headquarters, where the illegal NKP leadership gathered. The two former opponents managed to co-operate relatively smoothly at the time, although Hilt refused to acknowledge Furubotn as ``the absolute leading personality''.(42) It was considered quite a feat for a man of his age (about 55) to live the tough life of the illegal encampment. He was elected by the national party conference to the Central Committee in 1936. He, too, was considered uncontroversial in party circles, where he was thought to represent what members regarded as the party line. His support was important for Furubotn.

Just Ebbesen von der Lippe (1904-1978)(43), or Just Lippe as he called himself, was an active Labour Party member in 1921, and participated in the establishment of the NKP in 1923. Early in the 1920s he was a prominent youth organisation leader, and in 1928 became a member of the Communist Youth International's Executive Committee. He co-operated closely with Furubotn early in the 1920`s, but gradually distanced himself from him.(44) When Furubotn resigned as party leader in 1930, Lippe became the party's labour movement organiser. That was an appointment he could have done without, and the Labour Party newspaper Arbeiderbladet commented with irony on its going to someone with his upper-class background.(45) In the l930`s he frequently visited the Soviet Union, and spent some time as a teacher at the Lenin School in Moscow where he was head of the Scandinavian party school. He then disgraced himself with the Comintern and was sent off to Vladivostok, where he headed the Scandinavian seamen's department.(46) After a period in exile, he was restored to favour, and gradually achieved a more and more prominent position in the NKP. When he came home he was made a member of the Central Committee and a leading Oslo party figure. When the invasion came in 1940, he supported the Non-Aggression Pact line. In the autumn of 1940, he and Furubotn were again at loggerheads. Lippe instructed the leading party officers in Norway to operate legally.(47) Furubotn was one of them, and if he had obeyed this instruction he would have been arrested. In the middle of August 1941, Lippe went to Sweden and from there to England. His stay in England led to a flood of rumours that he had been a Secret Service agent during the war.(48) The rumours originated in a report said to have come from Moscow in 1945, from the former Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov. The Swedish Communist Party passed it on to the NKP leadership, which had also received a letter claiming that Lippe had advised the Communists in the northernmost county of Finnmark against forming NKP groups immediately after the liberation.(49) That information served to bolster the claims which were said to have come from Moscow.