Kingdom vs. Commoners : Courts: Norway sues for a declaration of title to a Palos Verdes Peninsula soccer field originally intended for recreational use by Norwegian seamen on layovers. A local nonprofit group fights to retain ownership.

“It’s Goliath against David,” Dr. Ragnar Amlie said. “The Norwegian government against little me. . . . It’s an unfair fight.”

The battle is over a soccer field tucked away amid the rambling homes and handsome horse barns in the upscale Palos Verdes Peninsula community of Rolling Hills Estates.

The 8 1/2-acre parcel--now worth millions of dollars--originally was donated by a Southern California couple so that Norwegian seamen would have a nice place to relax while their ships were being unloaded in San Pedro Harbor.

But sailors seldom visit the pleasant, hillside field on Hidden Valley Road anymore, and the Kingdom of Norway has other plans for the property.

The Norwegian government recently filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeking a declaration that it owns the land. Norway’s Parliament has ordered that all Norwegian government property on foreign soil be disposed of, and the kingdom wants to sell the parcel, possibly for development.

Battling the kingdom is Seamen of Norway Inc., a nonprofit charitable organization headed by Amlie.

Seamen of Norway says it--not the Norwegian government--holds title to the property, currently leased to a soccer club whose members are mostly Norwegian expatriates. Amlie’s attorneys say that because of Seamen of Norway’s nonprofit status, it is prohibited by California law from allowing the property to be sold.

“Norway has been in the forefront of negotiating peace all over the world,” said Amlie, a Norwegian citizen who has lived in Southern California for more than a decade. “They initiated the peace accord between the Palestinians and the Jews. Now they’re fighting us, their own people.”

The story of Nansen Field--named for Arctic explorer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen--dates back to the late 1940s, an era when scores of Norwegian freighters tied up at the docks in San Pedro every year. Ships were still unloaded by hand in those days, and thousands of Norwegian sailors found themselves with up to four days to spend in port.

At that time, the 8 1/2-acre parcel was owned by the Palos Verdes Corp. and its president, Kelvin Vanderlip--a local man who 35 years earlier had married a young Norwegian woman, Elin Brekke.

According to Amlie, a pediatrician who works in Orange County, Vanderlip and the corporation offered the land to the Norwegian Seamen’s Church in San Pedro for use by the sailors.

Amlie said last week that when the church decided it could not handle the obligation, the land was offered to a Norwegian government welfare agency. Kaare Ingstad, a friend of the Vanderlips who was the Norwegian consul general in Los Angeles at the time, took title to the property.

A soccer field was graded, a clubhouse was moved onto the property and merchant seamen began using the field regularly, Amlie said. He said that when Ingstad went back to Norway in 1952, title to the property was transferred to a newly created, nonprofit corporation--Seamen of Norway Inc.

“There is nothing in the articles of incorporation or in the bylaws of the organization that has any reference to ownership by Norway,” Amlie said.

The pediatrician said that in the early 1980s, when containerization of cargo ships led to a sharp drop in visits by Norway’s merchant seamen, the field was leased to Sportsklubben) Fram, a local soccer club named for Nansen’s ship, Fram.

Since then, he said, the club has used the field for games and practices. Youth soccer leagues also use the field, and during the 1984 Olympics, the Norwegian yachting team trained there.

In 1989, the Norwegian Parliament passed the law mandating the sale of government-owned property in other lands. Included on the list of properties was Nansen Field.

Amlie said he attempted to negotiate with the Norwegian government, even traveling to Oslo for that purpose last summer. But the discussions came to naught, and in the end, the government filed its lawsuit seeking title.

In its suit, the kingdom contends that it conveyed the property to the Seamen of Norway in a trust to be used for recreation by Norwegian merchant seamen. Since it is no longer used for that purpose, the property reverts to the kingdom, the suit says.

Seamen of Norway “has permitted the property to be used for wholly personal purposes unrelated to the welfare of Norwegian merchant seamen,” the suit says. “Norway therefore requests this court to declare the trust terminated.”

Attorney Ole Sandberg, who is representing the kingdom, said in a recently published interview that the objective of the suit is simply “to determine who holds title.”

“They probably are thinking that we’ll give up,” Amlie said. “But we won’t.”

Giving him encouragement is a letter he received in August from Elin Brekke Vanderlip, who discussed her and her late husband’s original decision to donate the land.

“There can be no question but that our intent was to create a park and playground for the Scandinavian community in Los Angeles, with special benefits, at that time, for the Norwegian seamen who were far from their homeland,” she wrote. “It was never intended that this property was to be a gift to the Norwegian government.”