Anne Lindboe

Anne Lindboe (born 1 August 1971 in Sarpsborg) is a Norwegian paediatrician and politician for the Conservative Party (Høyre) who has been mayor of Oslo since the city council elected her on 25 October 2023. She grew up in the municipality of Re in Vestfold, has three children and lives in Oslo's Nordre Aker district. In Oslo the mayor chairs the city council and is the municipality's legal representative and foremost elected figure, while a city government is responsible for day-to-day municipal services.

She studied medicine at the University of Oslo, where she also completed a foundation course in French, specialised in paediatrics, and took an MBA in economic management and leadership at the Norwegian School of Economics. Before the ombudsman appointment she worked as a senior consultant paediatrician at Statens barnehus in Oslo and as a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. At the time she was named children's ombudsman she was a paediatrician at Oslo University Hospital and a doctoral research fellow.

On 27 April 2012 the minister for children, equality and inclusion, Inga Marte Thorkildsen, presented Lindboe as the new Children's Ombudsman (barneombud). She was chosen from 76 applicants after a panel of ten children and young people took part in the recruitment, which NRK reported had not been done before, and she succeeded Reidar Hjermann. She held the office until 2018. During that term she was responsible for the report Uten mål og mening, which described serious weaknesses in schools' educational-psychological services, and she was strongly critical of police work on children's legal security. In February 2018 she told NRK that she supported an Icelandic bill to prohibit non-therapeutic circumcision of boys, pointing to statements from Norwegian medical bodies that circumcision of infants was painful, carried some risk of complications and had no medical justification, and repeating her proposal that boys decide for themselves at 15 or 16. Rolf Kirschner, a senior physician and former leader of Oslo's Jewish community, called the Icelandic proposal unreasonable and said the operation did not produce the complications often claimed.

From 2018 to 2022 she was director of the National Association of Private Kindergartens (Private Barnehagers Landsforbund). On 3 January 2022 she resigned with immediate effect. She told E24 that the choice was less dramatic than it appeared and that she wanted to leave more commercial work; board chair Eirik Husby said no disagreement lay behind the departure. Oslo Høyre's representative assembly unanimously named her the party's mayoral candidate on 26 September 2022. In the municipal election of 11 September 2023 the Conservatives took 32.6 percent of the vote in Oslo, a gain of 7.2 points, while the Labour Party fell to 18.5 percent. NRK reported a majority for the Conservatives together with the Christian Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Progress Party. The new city council had 20 Conservative members, turnout was 64.2 percent, Lindboe was elected with 9,779 personal votes, and Eirik Lae Solberg received 22,299. She succeeded Marianne Borgen as mayor in October 2023.

Early life and education

Childhood and family

Anne Lindboe was born in Sarpsborg on 1 August 1971. Her mother has said the family lived first in Eidsberg in Østfold, then moved to Re in Vestfold. She grew up at Revetal, in a house facing large grain fields, and has described that upbringing as secure. Both parents were teachers—Tønsbergs Blad called them lektorer—and she has a brother, Olav. Her father, Sten, died of cancer at 59. She later called him her model and said she had taken from him a pleasure in being with children and young people.

Kristi Snildal has described an ordinary household: Sten took the children orienteering, the family walked between mountain cabins, Anne played the piano, and she joined a choir at nine. Lindboe has called herself a “slightly nerdy nature child” who decided in kindergarten to become a doctor, reading science books and admiring researchers such as Marie Curie. The start of school disappointed her. Her parents, who worked in schools, moved her to Solerød school in Undrumsdal; a photograph of her first day in 1978 was still there when she returned as an adult, and she has said she spent six years at the school. She has credited the teacher Sissel Kyrkjebø with restoring her pleasure in learning.

Her birth name was Snildal. As a young paediatrician she took the surname of her husband, the veterinarian Morten Lindboe, later joking that “kind doctor Snildal” would have been too much. They have three children, Maja, Falk and Lykke. The City of Oslo states that she lives in the borough of Nordre Aker.

University and further qualifications

Medicine was, she has said, the only field she wanted, but good marks from upper secondary were not enough: the cutoff then stood above 6, with no quota for applicants straight from school. Her father drilled the material with her, and she spent a year in France studying and collecting entrance points.

In 1991 she studied French for foreign students at the Université Paul Cézanne in Aix-Marseille, and in 1993 completed a grunnfag, a one-year foundation course, in French at the University of Oslo. She qualified as a physician (cand.med.) there in 2000 and was approved as a specialist in paediatrics in 2011. In 2009 she completed a Master of Business Administration in economic management and leadership (økonomisk styring og ledelse) at the Norwegian School of Economics.

From 2010 she was enrolled in the doctoral programme at the university’s Faculty of Medicine. An Extrastiftelsen project on brain oedema in sudden death in children—covering sudden infant death, stillbirth and violent death—ran from 1 January 2010 to 30 June 2012, with Torleiv Ole Rognum as main supervisor and Lindboe as researcher. Its closing summary says the grant was for a doctorate, but that she left for the post of Children’s Ombudsman; the results were to go into another project and a new fellowship. She did not finish the degree. A 2013 profile reported that she set the research aside because that six-year appointment came up only rarely.

Clinical and forensic medicine

Hospital training

After the cand.med. degree from the University of Oslo in 2000, Lindboe spent 2001–2002 as an intern (turnuslege) at Bærum Hospital, on the medical and surgical wards. She then worked as a doctor in the paediatric department at Drammen Hospital in 2002–2003 and at the children's clinic of Ullevål University Hospital in 2004–2007. From 2008 she was a senior consultant (overlege) in the paediatric department of Oslo University Hospital. The curriculum vitae published with her April 2012 appointment, and Store norske leksikon, both carry that consultancy through 2012, and she was approved as a specialist in paediatrics in 2011. She has written that the move into the hospital's social-paediatric section came after several years of neonatal medicine and was her first locum as a senior consultant. In 2009, while still in full-time clinical work, she completed an MBA in economic management and leadership at the Norwegian School of Economics.

The Children's House and public-health research

In the same years she was attached to Statens barnehus Oslo and acted as a medical expert for the police. The children's house, part of Oslo police district, opened in September 2009 at Skippergata 31. Children and young people are seen there after a report to the police when there is suspicion that they have been subjected to, or have witnessed, violence or sexual abuse. The house also receives some particularly vulnerable adults and young people in cases of suspected forced marriage or female genital mutilation, and its services include medical examinations in child-adapted rooms, coordinated with investigative interviews.

At the social-paediatric section she worked with children exposed to violence and sexual abuse and with severe eating disorders. A 2014 profile described that work as the part of paediatrics concerned with sexual abuse, violence, female genital mutilation and physical maltreatment, and presented her move into forensic medicine as a way of explaining injuries seen in treatment. In the medical journal she said that at the Institute of Forensic Medicine she had taken part in autopsies of children who had not survived neglect, and that autopsying infants while she was pregnant had been difficult. The same profile quoted her on seeing sudden infant death and on autopsying children who died after accidents.

From 2010 to 2012 she was a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Folkehelseinstituttet) and a doctoral candidate at the University of Oslo, with the work also tied to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Supervised by the forensic pathologist Torleiv Ole Rognum, she led the project "Brain oedema in sudden death in children," registered to the university's faculty of medicine and supported by Landsforeningen uventet barnedød through ExtraStiftelsen. It covered morphological, immunological and genetic aspects of sudden infant death, stillbirth and violent death, and tested wet-to-dry weight ratios in brain tissue as an objective post-mortem measure of oedema. With Vege and Rognum she published a short report in the Scandinavian Journal of Forensic Science in 2012. The grant had been awarded as a doctorate. She later said she had been about halfway through it; the project record states that she left for the new appointment, and the grant period ended on 30 June 2012.

On 27 April 2012, while she was still a senior consultant at Oslo University Hospital and a doctoral research fellow, she was appointed in Council as Children's Ombudsman for six years. She took up that office in June 2012, which ended both the hospital consultancy and the research post.

Children's Ombudsman

Appointment and legal mandate

The Children's Ombudsman (Barneombudet) is a Norwegian state body created by the Ombudsman for Children Act (barneombudsloven) of 6 March 1981 to promote children's interests in society, and Norway was the first country to establish a national children's ombudsman. Since an amendment in force from 1 July 2009, the ombudsman has been appointed by the King in Council for six years with no right to reappointment. The King may issue a general instruction on organisation and procedure, but the ombudsman otherwise works independently; the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion described the office as independent, autonomous and party-politically neutral.

On 27 April 2012, during Jens Stoltenberg's second government, the Council of State appointed Anne Lindboe for six years, and Minister of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion Inga Marte Thorkildsen announced the decision the same day. She was then a senior consultant (overlege) in paediatrics at Oslo University Hospital. She succeeded Reidar Hjermann, who had held the post since 2004 and had begun a second term in 2008. The ministry had advertised a single six-year term, and the office described her as the first ombudsman limited to one such term. She took up the post on 25 June 2012. There were 76 applicants. The ministry said a panel of eight children helped set requirements and interview candidates; NRK reported ten children and young people and said that involving them was new.

Under section 3 the ombudsman promotes children's interests toward public and private bodies and follows the conditions in which children grow up. It takes part in planning and inquiries, checks that legislation protecting children is observed, including whether Norwegian law and administrative practice match Norway's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, proposes measures to strengthen children's legal protection and to resolve or prevent conflicts between children and society, and sees that information about children's rights is provided. It may act on its own initiative or on request, and decides whether a request warrants examination. It has free access to public and private institutions for children and may require information despite duties of confidentiality, and it may address statements to whomever it chooses. The statutory role is one of monitoring, proposals and statements: the instruction withholds any authority to decide cases or set aside administrative decisions, and nothing in the Act confers a power to legislate. Disputes between a child and the child's parents, and between parents over parental responsibility, are to be rejected unless rejection would clearly set the child's interests aside.

On 25 May 2018 the Council of State, meeting at the Royal Palace in Oslo, appointed district-court judge Inga Bejer Engh for six years. The office said Lindboe would leave at the end of June and that Engh was expected to start after the summer.

How the office worked under Lindboe

The instruction requires the ombudsman to keep the public informed and to give the ministry a public annual report on the previous calendar year. The 2012 report, covering the end of Hjermann's term and Lindboe's first months, recorded 4,077 incoming letters and emails, 36 consultation responses and 96 lectures, and 2,046 print and online mentions, with June the busiest month; radio and television coverage was largely outside that count, and that autumn the staff adopted a vision and 24 longer-term goals through 2018. In her first week she told children that they could telephone or email the office, which could explain their rights and say whom to approach, but could not itself order a remedy such as removing a teacher. In 2013 the office gave 41 lectures and at 31 December reported 18 employees, twelve women and six men; Lindboe gave priority to talks on that year's focus, "Health on children's terms" (Helse på barns premisser), to decision-makers and to meetings with children. She also made a supplementary submission toward a white paper on violence in close relationships, drawing on earlier clinical and forensic work with children exposed to violence and abuse at Ullevål and the Children's House (Barnehuset) in Oslo.

Child protection and the justice system

Abuse investigations and waiting times

Before she became Children's Ombudsman in 2012, Lindboe was a paediatrician at Oslo University Hospital and spent one day a week at Statens barnehus in Oslo, examining children in investigations of violence or sexual abuse. She told Fagbladet that a doctor could only pass on what a child said; others decided the case, and the account was not always treated as credible.

Waiting times for those interviews became a standing criticism of the Norwegian Police Service. The rules required an interview within 14 days of a report of violence. In October 2012 VG reported waits of weeks at the children's houses; Lindboe called that "shameful". That November, in a Risør kindergarten case, NRK reported waits of 167 to 201 days. She said nearly a year was shameful, and that the two-week rule should apply whenever violence or abuse was suspected. Police prosecutor Leif Aleksandersen replied that further checks had been needed first, and that the deadline targeted ongoing abuse and was not absolute once it had stopped.

In February 2013 NRK reported waits of 46 to 91 days in Finnmark, and breaches in Kristiansand and Bergen. Lindboe said the police were "light years" from the deadlines, because children forget and may face further abuse, and that a limit had to come with resources. Prosecution leader Eli Nessimo blamed too few trained interviewers. In July 2014 she wrote in Aftenposten that the average wait was 52 days in 2013 and 60 to 88 days in six districts in 2014. The 1998 regulation, she argued, was not written for the children's houses, and she criticised justice minister Anders Anundsen of the Progress Party for refusing to date a replacement after the Storting had asked for one.

From 1 October 2015 a judge no longer had to attend, suspects were not automatically told first, urgent cases had a one-week deadline, and interviews were to be taken at the children's houses. UNICEF Norway said the change made it harder for a suspect to influence the child; lawyer Sveinung Søndervik Johnsen warned of a second interview within a week. By December Lindboe feared the houses were becoming "pure interview factories". NRK, citing UNICEF Norway, reported that therapy cases in Stavanger fell from 167 in 2014 to 55. Lindboe called an extra 40 million kroner "probably far too meagre". Police and the house manager there also asked for more staff.

Child-welfare services

In February 2013 she told Aftenposten that long, intense parental conflicts were comparable to serious neglect, citing studies that linked them to depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem and weaker school results. About 2,700 Children Act cases reached court each year, up 22 percent from 2009 to 2011. With the Courts Administration she proposed four hours of mandatory mediation, one with the child; violence and neglect, she said, were often better handled in court. Psychologist Trine Eikrem supported longer mediation; lawyer Gunhild Lærum doubted it straight after a breakup, but agreed judges should intervene when parents drew children in.

In March 2016 a county-governor inspection of child-welfare services in Tromsø, reported by NRK, found that 19 of 40 cases were not properly handled: investigations were not always documented, help was late, and staff had spoken to the child in only half the files, including 11 of 26 that were closed. Lindboe called it a breach of Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to close suspected violence after speaking only to the parents, and said other municipalities did the same to avoid missed deadlines. She asked for resources, supervision, and a child-welfare act cast as a rights law, so concerns about violence or neglect could not be closed without reasons. In November 2017, on the report Svikt og svik, she wrote that children had been mutilated, tortured and killed although services already knew the families.

In March 2023, as the Conservative Party candidate for mayor of Oslo, she criticised a rule taking effect that July under which foster care agreements had to be made with the municipality, not a private intermediary. She said it was "utterly indifferent" to children whether a home was public or private, so long as they reached a good family quickly. Minister Kjersti Toppe of the Centre Party replied that an intermediary could block the municipality's statutory duty of care.

Circumcision and bodily integrity

Medical and rights arguments

As Children's Ombudsman, pediatrician Anne Lindboe treated non-therapeutic circumcision of boys as bodily integrity. In a July 2012 Vårt Land piece reported by Dagen, she wrote that she represented all children, "also children of Muslims and Jews," and that the operation was medically useless, painful, and a breach of the right to decide over one's body. She wanted a symbolic ritual without surgery. After Health Minister Anne Grete Strøm-Erichsen rejected a ban, she told NRK there was no medical reason to circumcise young boys in Norway and that she wanted delay until the child could decide, not a prohibition.

On NRK Ytring on 18 March 2013 she criticized a consultation that would not ask whether the practice should continue. Citing a Pediatrics commentary, she wrote that about 100 circumcisions would prevent one urinary-tract infection while two boys might have complications, and that HIV effects belonged to adult life. Invoking article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, she asked whether Norway discriminated against boys by banning, since 2005, all cutting of girls, including removal of the clitoral hood, which she compared with removal of the foreskin. She proposed an age limit later put at 15 or 16. An NRK note said authorities treat female genital mutilation as separate and more extensive.

Physicians disagreed. In 2012 the American Academy of Pediatrics found that benefits, including fewer infant urinary-tract infections and lower risk of some sexually transmitted infections, outweighed the risks and justified access, but were "not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns." An April 2013 Pediatrics commentary for European pediatric associations called that culturally biased where HIV is rare. The World Health Organization and UNAIDS have since 2007 recommended voluntary medical male circumcision for men in high heterosexual-HIV countries after trials found about a 60 percent reduction, a policy aimed at eastern and southern Africa. In October 2013 Lindboe and Norwegian pediatric leaders wrote in Aftenposten that pain lasted days despite anesthesia, citing complication rates from under 1 percent to 35 percent and a recent death in Oslo. The Board of Health Supervision found a 12-day-old boy died in April 2012 after circumcision at an Oslo general practice; in March 2014 it warned that doctor and restricted two colleagues.

Law, religious communities and the Nordic statement

On 30 September 2013 in Oslo, children's ombudsmen from Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, the chair of Denmark's National Council for Children, Greenland's children's spokesperson, and pediatric bodies issued "Let the boys decide on circumcision." Non-therapeutic circumcision of someone unable to consent "violates fundamental medical-ethical principles, not least because the procedure is irreversible, painful and may cause serious complications," and there were "no health-related reasons" for it on young Nordic boys. Citing Convention articles 12 and 24(3), it said parents' rights "do not prevail over children's right to bodily integrity," and asked that only a sufficiently mature boy consent. Lindboe told Vårt Land that religious freedom is real but the child's interests come first, and urged rituals "less harmful to children's health than circumcision."

Ervin Kohn, head of Det Mosaiske Trossamfund, said Jews must circumcise on the eighth day—brit milah, the covenant sign in Judaism—and "will not be able to live in a society where circumcision is forbidden." He said proposing rituals was not her task and that a ban could empty the congregation. Physician Mohammad Usman Rana said she had no authority to replace traditions central to Jews and Islam and called the operation small and largely low-risk; religion scholar Jan Opsal noted that Islam has no direct command, though the practice is widespread. With Leif Knutsen, Kohn later called the appeal dishonest and an attempt to have the state talk minorities into line. In November 2013, as Health Minister Bent Høie promised regulation rather than a ban, Lindboe told Aftenposten, quoted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that information on risk, pain, and absent health benefits would make "parents from minorities" "voluntarily abstain." She likened a minimum age of 15 to the law against violence toward children; Kohn expected no ban.

The Act relating to ritual circumcision of boys, passed on 20 June 2014 and in force from 1 January 2015, requires specialist services to offer religious removal of the foreskin. A doctor must perform it, or be present and responsible, with pain relief before, during, and after. Under 18, parents must consent and the boy must be heard; it may not be done against his will, and chapter 2 of the Patients' and Users' Rights Act does not apply. Circumcision of girls remains prohibited.

In February 2018 an Icelandic bill proposed up to six years in prison for non-medical circumcision as contrary to the Convention. Lindboe told NRK she cheered it, repeating that infant circumcision was painful, complication-prone, and medically unjustified, and that she had suggested ages 15–16; Norway, she thought, would follow only later. Rolf Kirschner, a physician and former Jewish-community leader, called the bill unreasonable and said surgery at 16 is not the newborn operation.

Schools, bullying and family policy

Special education

On 6 March 2017 Ombudsman for Children Anne Lindboe gave Minister of Education Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, of the Conservative Party, the report Uten mål og mening? ("Without aim and meaning?") on special education in Norway's primary and lower-secondary schools. About 49,000 pupils then received it. The office had interviewed 25 pupils aged 9 to 17 and read 68 complaint files from five county governors for 2014–2015, plus 12 cases sent in directly.

The report found that many of these pupils did not get a defensible benefit from teaching, had a weaker psychosocial environment than others, and were neither heard nor allowed to shape the offer. Lessons were often given by assistants, substitutes or adults without approved qualifications, and teachers were said to expect little; one mother said her daughter spent part of the day making waffles. Assessments from the educational-psychological service (PPT) were often generic, with unclear goals and little on the pupil's potential, and in several files the pupil had not been heard. A won complaint often left the school day unchanged. Lindboe called this a breach of the Education Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and asked for a right to a qualified teacher, a national standard for planning and evaluation, staffing rules for PPT, and sanctions on school owners.

Røe Isaksen, receiving the report in Oslo, said the offer was too poor in many places and that special education had been left to carry on. He accepted much of the account but ranked late help, poor teaching and uneven use above weak enforcement after a successful complaint. An expert review and a white paper, he said, were already under way.

Bullying and cash-for-care

Lindboe treated the pupil's own account as the starting point in bullying. In 2014 she wrote that under the Education Act "it is the pupil's own experience of what has happened that shall be the starting point", not an adult view that an incident was a joke. In December 2015 she called 241 complaints to the county governors that year far too few beside a ministry figure of at least 32,000 bullied pupils. After Malvik municipality in January 2016 dropped an appeal against a judgment for failing to stop long-term bullying, she said compensation afterwards did not save a childhood. She asked for a national low-threshold complaints body, deadlines, power to move teachers who did not act, and daily fines, and said the governors were too close to the municipalities and too slow.

In April 2016 the government kept the governors, whom she and the Djupedal committee had wanted replaced. Governors could fine school owners who ignored decisions, pupils could complain directly, and the Ombudsman was strengthened as a watchdog rather than made the decision-maker. Lindboe said she would watch whether that was enough; she had earlier noted that it was the committee, not her office, that proposed the Ombudsman itself as the body. Røe Isaksen argued that the office should speak for all children, not rule against some of them. Committee chair Øystein Djupedal called the choice worse, and the Christian Democratic Party wanted a bullying ombudsman in each county.

On kontantstøtte, paid to parents who do not use a full publicly supported kindergarten place, Lindboe said in 2012 that free places for the children who needed them most were better than paying parents to keep children at home. Price, she argued, kept children in poor families, or in homes with substance abuse or mental illness, out of kindergarten. In November 2014, after the rate for one-year-olds rose to 6,000 kroner a month, she said the benefit could hide violence, because children at home might not be seen until school. The governing parties and the Christian Democrats had defended the rise as family choice. NAV figures for September 2014 showed the share of one-year-olds on the benefit still at 23 percent, against a forecast of 4,000 fewer children in kindergarten.

Private kindergarten sector

PBL and the private kindergarten debate

Private Barnehagers Landsforbund (PBL) appointed the outgoing children's ombudsman Anne Lindboe managing director from 27 August 2018, succeeding Arild M. Olsen. Founded in Bodø in 1993, PBL is Norway's largest interest and employers' organization for private kindergartens. It bargains its own agreements, outside the main employers' confederations, with Utdanningsforbundet, Fagforbundet, Delta and Lederne. Store norske leksikon dates the post to 2018–2021 and calls the body Private Barnehagers Landsforening; news reports put her last day on 3 January 2022.

By 2021 about half of kindergarten children were in private kindergartens, financed by municipal grants, a capital grant and parental fees. The five largest chains held 25 percent of private kindergartens, up from 12 percent in 2013, and 40 percent of the children in them. Læringsverkstedet was the largest; small and non-profit providers more often had weaker finances.

In June 2021 a committee chaired by Knut Storberget, set up under Prime Minister Erna Solberg, divided on that system. The majority — Storberget, KS, Utdanningsforbundet, Fagforbundet and Virke — cited above-normal returns, labelled superprofitt, and proposed local financing rules and a separate legal entity for each kindergarten. In 2019 the surplus was about 1 billion kroner, 11 percent of it dividends, while one in three private kindergartens made a loss. PBL dissented. Lindboe called the plan an attack on the 2003 kindergarten settlement and on parents' choice, and a threat to about 140,000 places.

Jonas Gahr Støre's Labour-led government went beyond a cut Solberg had already floated, lowering the pension add-on from 13 to 10 percent of municipal wage costs. Education minister Tonje Brenna said about 1 billion kroner too much had been paid in 2019, because 90 percent of private kindergartens received more than they spent, and that small and non-profit providers should be favoured over further commercial ownership. Lindboe accepted the overshoot but said a flat cut would hit kindergartens already in deficit. In November 2021 PBL urged more than 2,000 members to close from 14:00 on 24 November, arguing that up to 400 million kroner was being removed. Brenna said PBL was pushing children and parents in front of itself.

Resignation in 2022

She and chair Eirik Husby said there was no conflict; the December decision was hers, and they would "rip off the plaster" rather than keep an outgoing director for months. She told E24 she wanted to leave relatively commercial work for "profittmaksimering for samfunnet" — more social responsibility, especially for children she said had lost out in the pandemic — and that she had no next job. Klassekampen cast the exit as a warning against large actors. She told Utdanningsnytt this was wrongly read as support for Rødt. Chains such as Læringsverkstedet, FUS, Espira and Norlandia contributed positively, she said, but grants and the end of free establishment left only large buyers when kindergartens were sold. She wanted a minimum grant everywhere, a cap on the annual result and stricter staffing rules, while respecting owners' return, and she cited union work on a new pension scheme and "Barnas verneombud", training on violence and abuse. Deputy director Jørn-Tommy Schjelderup, at PBL since 2001, became interim managing director. She later became mayor of Oslo for the Conservative Party; that office's kindergarten policy is separate from the PBL years.

Entry into the Conservative Party and the 2023 election

Nomination and campaign

Anne Lindboe had not held elected office. Store norske leksikon records that she had no political experience when asked to stand as the Conservative Party (Høyre) candidate for mayor of Oslo in 2023, and that she joined the party at the start of the campaign. NRK dated the step more narrowly: she was not a member before 1 July 2022, and she said she decided around mid-June, when the nomination committee asked her—more than a year before polling day, not in the closing weeks of the campaign.

On 1 July 2022 Oslo Høyre's nomination committee unanimously proposed Eirik Lae Solberg as governing-mayor candidate and Lindboe as mayoral candidate for the 2023 municipal election. On 26 September 2022 the party's representative body unanimously chose her as candidate for mayor (ordfører) and Solberg, a former finance commissioner on the city council since 2007, as candidate for governing mayor (byrådsleder). NRK reported that they were first and second on the municipal list; the remaining names were chosen on 5 December. Solberg said his main issue would be the Oslo school and widening gaps between pupils and between schools. Lindboe spoke of a city that "sees everyone," citing women's health, mental health, elderly care and children who need extra support at school.

Elderly care dominated much of the campaign after reports of serious failings at Ullern helsehus. In January 2023 Lindboe, Solberg and health spokesperson Hassan Nawaz set out a plan for the city's four health houses: clearer responsibility, safer discharge, a daily activity guarantee and a shielded respite service for people with dementia. Høyre also proposed tendering some nursing homes while promising that staff would not lose pay or pension. The Red Party called that a deception. Spokesperson Seher Aydar and the union Fagforbundet said the city could not dictate later private wage rounds, and noted that after Oslo took back Oppsalhjemmet on 1 May 2023 most staff gained pay, in some cases 125,000 kroner.

Property tax was the other set-piece. Governing mayor Raymond Johansen of the Labour Party said cuts were welfare cuts, because the tax paid for elderly care, teachers and the activity school; Labour's mayoral candidate, Rina Mariann Hansen, said Labour would not raise it. Solberg called that dishonest and said the residential share—about 1 billion kroner of roughly 2 billion in property tax, in a 90 billion kroner budget—could be phased out over four years without cutting services. He said the Socialist Left Party, the Red Party and the Green Party had promised a higher rate.

Election result and the new majority

The election was held on 11 September 2023. Høyre was the largest party, with 32.6 percent and 117,998 votes, up 7.2 percentage points, and 20 of 59 seats, five more than in 2019. Turnout was 64.2 percent; 570,444 people were eligible to vote. Labour won 18.4 percent and 11 seats, the Greens 10.2 percent and six, the Socialist Left 10.1 percent and six, the Liberal Party (Venstre) 9.1 percent and six, the Progress Party 6.1 percent and four, the Red Party 5.8 percent and four, and the Christian Democratic Party 1.7 percent and one.

By personal votes Solberg placed first (22,299), Johansen second (22,222) and Lindboe third (9,779), in line with her second place on the Conservative list. The mayor chairs the city council; the governing mayor leads the executive city government (byråd). Lindboe was not nominated as a city commissioner and did not join that government.

On 24 October the four parties published an agreement: Høyre and Venstre would form a minority city government with support from the Christian Democrats and the Progress Party, securing a majority, and Lindboe would be mayor. It committed them to abolishing the tax on homes within four years and to building more nursing homes. The city government took office on 25 October with Solberg as governing mayor; the same day the city council elected Lindboe mayor and Julianne Ofstad of the Progress Party deputy mayor. She succeeded Marianne Borgen and replaced the red-green administration Johansen had led since 2015.

Mayor of Oslo

The office after 2023

The Oslo City Council elected Anne Lindboe of the Conservative Party (Høyre) mayor on 25 October 2023. She succeeded Marianne Borgen of the Socialist Left Party, whose last day after eight years in office was that Wednesday. The same meeting elected Julianne Ofstad of the Progress Party deputy mayor. A day earlier Høyre and the Liberal Party (Venstre), with support from the Progress Party and the Christian Democratic Party, agreed that Eirik Lae Solberg would be governing mayor and that Lindboe and Ofstad would hold the council posts.

Oslo uses a parliamentary model: the city government (byråd) answers to the council as a cabinet answers to parliament. Its 59 members, elected every four years, set service policy, adopt the budget and oversee the government. The mayor chairs meetings, is the municipality’s legal representative, and is its foremost elected representative. The city government runs the administration and must keep the council’s confidence or resign. From 2023 it was a Høyre–Venstre minority under Solberg as governing mayor (byrådsleder), backed by the Progress Party and KrF. Lindboe is not a city commissioner.

Priorities and disputes in the term

On 21 November 2025 NRK followed Lindboe using a wheelchair for the first time, guided by Torstein Lerhol around City Hall. She called it harder than walking. Stopped by curbs, she said accessibility was “not good enough” and could “absolutely be better,” against a goal that Oslo be adapted for everyone by 2030.

In January 2024 she welcomed the end of the ban on new private kindergartens: the youngest “deserve that we talk about quality in the kindergarten rather than an ideological debate about which logo hangs on the wall.” She called weak language the urgent problem. From 2018 to 2022 she had directed the National Association of Private Kindergartens. In December 2024 the governing parties and the Progress Party carried a council request that new kindergartens be opened mainly by private operators, and municipal ones only if need was clear and no private operator was interested. Conservative councillor Bjørgulv Vinje Borgundvaag called it a turn from an “ideological fight” against private providers. Sunniva Holmås Eidsvoll of the Socialist Left Party, a former upbringing commissioner, said the place shortage was over, that private subsidies never expire, and that private operators prefer wealthier districts while municipal kindergartens take more children needing extensive support.

Nursing homes and home care belonged to the city government. In May 2024 health commissioner Saliba Andreas Korkunc (Høyre) said four municipal homes—Kantarellen, Abildsø, Bjølsen and Uranienborg—would be tendered to commercial operators for quality, diversity and innovation, and that he cared less about “the logo on the shirt” than about users. Siri Follerås of Fagforbundet said the 448 staff were in shock and that people near retirement could lose up to a million kroner in contractual pension, on the union’s figures. In May 2026 NRK reported thinner practical home help. In Grorud, Erik Ralger’s cleaning fell from 1.5 hours every other week to one hour a month; he accused the Conservative city government of tax cuts for the rich. National patient ombud Jannicke Bruvik said similar cuts were nationwide and that dignity in law cannot be waived for lack of money. Korkunc said 2023 and 2024 deficits had forced cuts to reach surplus, while districts must still judge each case.

On 20 May 2024 Lindboe wrote in Aftenposten of Shabbat with a Jewish family she called “Johanna”: the menorah faced the backyard, fewer men wore a kippah, and “Johanna” had stayed in on Constitution Day and hidden a Star of David. Fear of adding to Gaza’s suffering, she wrote, had made her look away from Jews in Oslo. She asked residents to watch over Jewish neighbours: protection “does not mean that we accept Israel’s acts of war in Gaza. Jews in Oslo do not bear the blame.” The European Jewish Congress republished the article on 22 May. On 29 May, when the city government put the first 5.5 million kroner of a 75-million plan for the Bergstien synagogue into its revised-budget proposal—the plan itself adopted unanimously in March 2023—she said she wished the security were unnecessary: “Oslo shall be a safe city for everyone, also for our small Jewish minority.” Solberg said Gaza had not decided the money, but that antisemitism and harassment of Jews in Oslo had grown after 7 October 2023.

On 19 March 2026 Aftenposten reported that Lindboe and Solberg had told Høyre’s nomination committee they would seek re-election in 2027. On 8 June the Oslo party chose them as its mayoral and governing-mayor candidates; the rest of the list was to come later.

In late October 2026 Lindboe called on the government to bar Russian athletes from winter-sports World Cup events at Holmenkollen after the International Ski Federation relaxed rules that let Russian and Belarusian athletes compete under a neutral flag. In a press release she said that as long as Russia continued its war of aggression against Ukraine, Russian athletes had no place on the starting line at Holmenkollen, and that the federation’s opening did not require the government to follow. She argued that the work-related visa exception for professional Russian athletes should be reconsidered.

Reception and controversies

Debate over the ombudsman years

In June 2018, as Anne Lindboe left the post of children's ombudsman, the Storting's family and culture committee sent a note from chair Kristin Ørmen Johnsen thanking her for a "formidabelt arbeid" for children. Inga Marte Thorkildsen of the Socialist Left Party, the minister who appointed her, said she had been unafraid and knowledgeable on violence and abuse. On Uten mål og mening (2017), knowledge minister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen told NTB he largely shared its account of special education as too late, too poor and uneven, with a committee and a white paper already under way.

Religious criticism of her circumcision line treated it as disregard for minority freedom, and in places as hostility. Catholic bishop Bernt I. Eidsvig wrote in Aftenposten in July 2012 that expelling Norway's small Jewish minority was surely not her aim, but a ban under 15 or 16 would still make Jewish and Muslim parents criminals if sons were circumcised abroad. Physician Mohammad Usman Rana told Dagen she had no authority to replace traditions central to Jews and Muslims. Ervin Kohn, then head of the Mosaic congregation, and Leif Knutsen called the October 2013 appeal with medical leaders "uredelig": written so the state would talk minorities into line, exaggerating complications and ignoring Convention protections for minority communities.

Paediatric signatories took the other side of that appeal. With Trond Markestad, chair of the Council for Medical Ethics, the Norwegian Paediatric Association, and nursing and surgical representatives, Lindboe wrote that there was no health reason to circumcise young boys in the Nordic countries. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported her remark to Aftenposten that, once informed of risk, pain and absent health benefit, "parents from minorities" would "voluntarily abstain." In February 2018, after she told NRK she was cheering an Icelandic bill, Vårt Land led with a Jewish doctor's label for that support: "Fordekt antisemittisme og islamofobi." Former congregation leader Rolf Kirschner called the bill unreasonable. Åse Røthing wrote in Dagsavisen that the certainty smelled of "sedvanlig norsk selvgodhet."

Tønsbergs Blad reported in 2014 that email, letters and online comments, after her remarks on school Christmas services and on circumcision, included death threats and the charge that she was a "religionsfiendtlig" mother. She said the threats bounced off and only increased her "kamplyst."

Assessments of the political turn

Journalists framed the move into Oslo politics as the recruitment of a non-politician. NRK, at the September 2022 nomination, called her "et ubeskrevet blad politisk": she joined the Conservative Party on 1 July after a mid-June approach, and said politics needed people from "det virkelige liv." Aftenposten's 2023 profile recorded campaign lines that had been ridiculed; she said she had "tråkket i baret" and failed her exam as a politician, after Kristin Clemet's call.

On the left, the route from ombudsman to director of Private Barnehagers Landsforbund, and then into Høyre, was treated as a move from children's advocate toward a commercial-kindergarten lobby. In Klassekampen in 2018, Bjørn Christian Rødal wrote that PBL had headhunted her to repair a weak reputation with someone who had appeared as children's friend and defender. Utdanningsnytt reported whispers that the hire was an "avvæpningsmanøver" against debate on kindergarten barons and welfare profit. In June 2021 Bjørnar Moxnes of the Red Party asked in Dagsavisen whether Jonas Gahr Støre would be forced to his knees by Anne Lindboe, casting PBL as the lobby stalling limits on commercial kindergartens. After the 2023 change of city government, Sunniva Holmås Eidsvoll of the Socialist Left called it "kritikkverdig" that the new majority opposed giving Oslo more control over new kindergartens, and said it seemed more occupied with private providers than with municipal control.