Sven Elvestad
Sven Elvestad ( September 7, 1884 in Halden , Norway ; † December 18, 1934 in Skien , Norway) was a Norwegian journalist , writer and translator . He became known for his detective novels , which he published under the pseudonyms Stein Riverton and Kristian F. Biller . Sven Elvestad is considered to be the founder of the Norwegian crime novel.
life and work
journalist
Elvestad was born as Kristoffer Elvestad Svendsen in Fredrikshald, today's Halden, a small Norwegian town near the border with Sweden. After embezzling money as a young bank clerk, he changed his name and went to Oslo , then Kristiania , as a journalist .
As a reporter, he sometimes staged spectacular reports. In one of his best-known articles, for example, he reported on a day he spent in the lion cage of a circus.
In the spring of 1923 Sven Elvestad was one of the first foreign journalists to conduct an interview with Adolf Hitler , who was almost unknown at the time . He asked the later dictator the specific question “Is your goal the same as Mussolini's , the creation of a dictatorial government and the elimination of parliamentarism ?” The conversation appeared on April 9, 1923 in the left-liberal newspaper Tidens Tegn .
Detective writer
Elvestad had published his first crime stories at the age of seventeen. In 1904 he began to write detective novels under the pseudonym Stein Riverton , initially as semi-documentary reports from the perspective of a reporter, later he developed the fictional character of the retired police detective Asbjørn Krag as the narrator.
In 1908 Elvestad, under the pseudonym Kristian F. Biller , designed the character of the police detective Knut Gribb for the novel series Lys og Skygge (German: light and shadow ) . The series around Knut Gribb was continued by more than eighty authors into the 21st century. Some of the Knut Gribb novels were later re-published as Asbjørn Krag under the author's name Stein Riverton .
The thriller Jernvognen (German: The iron car ) , published in 1909, is considered Elvestad's masterpiece . In it Elvestad uses a complex narrative technique that switches between several levels of knowledge, so that at times the reader apparently knows more than the fictional narrator or the people involved. A technique that Agatha Christie (1890–1976) later used.
Sven Elvestadt was extremely productive. In the course of his life he published about ninety works. The stories and novels have been translated into seventeen languages, including German, Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian. Although some of Elvestad's novels are considered first-class crime stories, the literary quality of his work is judged very differently.
Death and memory
Elvestad died on December 18, 1934 at the age of fifty in a hotel room in the Norwegian port city of Skien, the day before a planned trip to Palestine .
The Norwegian Riverton Prize , awarded since 1972, was named after Elvestad's pseudonym . His award winners include renowned crime writers such as Ruth Rendell (1991), PD James (1993), Jo Nesbø (1997), Maj Sjöwall (2006) and Henning Mankell (2012).
literature
- Jost Hindersmann (Ed.): Fjords, Elche, Murderers - The Scandinavian detective novel . Nordpark-Verlag, Wuppertal 2006, pp. 122-133, ISBN 978-3-935421-16-4 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Sven Elvestad in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Sven Elvestad in the German Digital Library
- Works by Sven Elvestad in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Biography of the author Sven Elvestad in the literary portal schwedenkrimi.de , accessed on February 26, 2014
- Anne Marit Godal (Ed.): Sven Elvestad . In: Store norske leksikon (Norwegian), accessed on February 16, 2014
- Odd Magnar Syversen: Sven Elvestad . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian), Kunnskapsforlaget, Oslo, accessed on February 16, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Börsenblatt for the German book trade . Vol. 156, Leipzig 1989, p. 486
- ↑ a b c Hindersmann, p. 124
- ↑ Original text: "Er Deres maal de samme som Mussolinis, nemlig oprettelse av en dictatorisk regjering og avskaffelse av parliamentarisms?" Jon Arild Lund: Se til Italy! Vi vil ingenlunde dit . Høsten, Oslo 2012, p. 63
- ^ Sven Elvestad: Den tyske fascisme. Hitler - og et møte med ham . In: Tidens Tegn , Oslo April 9, 1923
- ↑ a b Hindersmann, p. 122
- ↑ Hindersmann, p. 123
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Elvestad, Sven |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Svendsen, Kristoffer Elvestad; Riverton, stone; Biller, Kristian F. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Norwegian journalist and detective writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 7, 1884 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heaps |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 18, 1934 |
| Place of death | Skien |