| Asbjørn Aavik | |
| Birth Place: | Aavig (now Åvik, Lindesnes), Norway |
| Occupation: | Lutheran missionary to China |
| Alma Mater: | Fjellhaug utdanningssenter |
Asbjørn Aavik (November 30, 1902 – November 20, 1997) was a Norwegian Lutheran missionary to China. He was also the author of approximately forty books.[1]
Aavik was born in Aavig (now Åvik) in Lindesnes, Norway. From 1921 to 1926, he received education at Fjellhaug utdanningssenter in Oslo, a missionary school affiliated with the Norwegian Lutheran Mission.
He was sent to China in 1928 where he started on the China Mission Association's mission fields around Laohekou in Hubei. Aavik married Ragna Torgersen (1906–1984) in 1932 and later moved to the Yunyang northwestern mission area. The situation was turbulent, not least because of robber bands and the communist insurgency in the 1930s. In 1935 the couple decided to return to Norway.[2]
The planned return trip to China had to be postponed because the missionaries in China warned of increasing uncertainty and unease, but in 1938 Aavik traveled alone, without family, back to the same mission field in China. The Norwegian missionaries would later temporarily and definitely leave this field because of World War II and the subsequent communist advance. Aavik returned home for the second time in 1946.
Aavik still came back to the Republic of China, now Taiwan, where he worked with less interruption from 1952 to 1970. His work consisted partly in teaching at a Bible school at Kaohsiung and at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Taipei and Taichung. He also became the first principal at the China Lutheran Seminary in Hsinchu.
He was the writer of many missionary books. In the summer of 1999, a memorial stone was unveiled for the missionary in Åvik.