Helge Mortensen was born in 1941 in Fraugde, a small village close to Odense.
Already as a 14-year-old, Mortensen pulled on his work clothes, where he worked as an agricultural assistant for a few years.
As a 19-year-old, Helge Mortensen Funen moved to Jutland, where he had got a job as a telephone fitter at Jysk Telefon.
His career in the Social Democratic movement began in 1962, when Helge Mortensen became chairman of the youth party in Vejle. He later became the local party chairman. A post he also got in Esbjerg.
In 1971 he became chairman of the “Jydsk Teleteknikerforbund”.
Mortensen got a taste for the political and entered the nationwide scene when he was elected to the Folketing for Social Democracy in 1984.
Here he quickly became the party’s traffic warden and became part of the Jutland traffic mafia, where he together with Svend Heiselberg (V), Kaj Ikast (K), Arne Melchior (CD) and JK Hansen (S) implemented several plans for highway construction in Jutland.
When Poul Nyrup Rasmussen was to form his first government in 1993, it was first Ritt Bjerregaard who was offered the post of Minister of Transport. But she said no.
Then the offer came to Helge Mortensen, who said yes to the challenge, who, among other things, talked about the plans for a bridge connection to Sweden.
Mortensen, however, only held the post for almost a year. He suffered a blood clot in his heart and then got a less stressful job as Minister of Communications and Tourism.
Mortensen left the Folketing in 2005 and subsequently sat for a year on the city council in Esbjerg. He could pass the seat in the Folketing and his constituency to his son Kim, who was headmaster at Esbjerg University College.
Since then, Helge Mortensen has spent time on the house, garden, his many grandchildren and reading biographies and books about history.
Source: The Nordic Page