Jens Lyng was born in Hasle, Denmark, in 1868 and arrived in Australia in 1891. He was for a period secretary to the botanist Baron von Mueller and he served with the Australian armed forces in New Guinea in World War I. Lyng edited the New Guinea Government Gazette and later founded the Rabaul Record. He was the editor of a Scandinavian newspaper Norden, published for 40 years from 1896, and he also published several works of fiction in Danish at the beginning of this century. His other works include Our New Possession (Late German New Guinea) (1919), Non-Britishers in Australia : Influence on Population and Progress (1927) which won the Harbison-Higinbotham Prize from Melbourne University, and The Scandinavians in Australia, New Zealand and the Western Pacific (1939).