 Before moving to Oslo he was a member of Førde municipality council for eight years, representing the Labour Party.His brother Rolf Reikvam is a national legislator.Reikvam graduated from Medical School, University of Oslo, in 1970, and was a research fellow at the Institute of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, where he gained his PhD degree in 1976 with a thesis on “Activation and proliferation of macrophages.”

Reikvam had his main clinical training at Ullevaal University Hospital, Oslo, and became specialist in cardiology and in internal medicine in 1981.