Sven Elvestad

Sven Elvestad ( born September 6, 1884 in Halden, Norway, † 18 December 1934 in Skien, Norway) was a Norwegian journalist, writer and translator. He was known for his crime novels, which he published under the pseudonyms stone Riverton and Kristian F. Biller. Sven Elvestad regarded as the founder of the Norwegian crime novel.

Life and work

Journalist

Elvestad was born as Kristoffer Svendsen Elvestad in Halden, now Halden, a Norwegian small town near the border with Sweden. After he had embezzled money as a young bank clerk, he changed his name and went to Oslo as a journalist, the then Kristiania.

As a reporter, he staged sometimes spectacular reportage. So he reported in one of his most famous article by a day he spent in the lion cage of a circus.

In the spring of 1923, Sven Elvestad was among the first foreign journalists who had an interview with the at that time still largely unknown Adolf Hitler. The dictator later he asked the specific question: " If your goal is the same as Mussolini, the creation of a dictatorial government and the elimination of parliamentarism? " The interview was published on 9 April 1923 in the left-liberal newspaper Tidens Tegn.

Mystery writer

At the age of seventeen Elvestad had published the first detective stories. In 1904 he began using the pseudonym Stein Riverton to write crime novels, first as a semi- documentary reports from the perspective of a reporter, later he developed the fictional person of retired police detective Asbjørn Krag as narrator.

In 1908 designed Elvestad, under the pseudonym Kristian F. Biller, for the pulp novel series Lys og Skygge ( German: light and shadow ) the figure of the police detective Knut Gribb. The series Knut Gribb was continued into the 21st century by more than eighty authors. Some of Knut Gribb novels were later published as Asbjørn Krag title under the author's name Stein Riverton.

As Elvestads masterpiece ( German: The chariots of iron ) is considered the published already in 1909 thriller Jernvognen. This Elvestad uses a complex narrative technique that alternates between several levels of knowledge, so that the reader at times seemingly knows more than the fictional narrator or the people involved. A technique that later Agatha Christie (1890-1976) used.

Sven Elvestadt was extremely productive. In the course seinens life he published some ninety works. The stories and novels have been translated into seventeen languages, including German, Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian. Although some novels Elvestads considered as first-class detective stories, the literary quality of his work is judged very differently.

Death and memory

Elvestad died on 18 December 1934 at the age of fifty in a hotel room of the Norwegian port city of Skien, a day before a planned trip to Palestine.

After Elvestads pseudonym of award since 1972 Norwegian Riverton Prize was named. His winners include renowned crime writers like Ruth Rendell (1991 ), PD James (1993 ), Jo Nesbø (1997), Maj Sjöwall (2006) and Henning Mankell (2012 ).