Career
Michelsen emigrated from Norway to New Zealand, where he sold religious literature on the Otago goldfields. He applied to the Synod of Otago and Southland to become a missionary, and was appointed to the island of Tongoa in 1878. He served there until his retirement in 1933.
J. Graham Miller calls him "one of the least educated but most gifted, versatile and warm-hearted" of the pioneer missionaries to Vanuatu.
