Øvre Richter Frich
Encyclopedia
Øvre Richter Frich full name Gjert Øvre Richter Frich, was a Norwegian reporter, newspaper editor and crime writer. He was one of the most popular writers of crime fiction in Norway during the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....

.

Early and personal life

Frich was born in Byneset
Byneset
Byneset is a former municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. The largest village in Byneset is Spongdal, other villages include Byneset and Langørjan. The municipality of Byneset encompassed the western part of present-day Trondheim municipality. It sits along an arm of the Trondheimsfjord,...

 in Sør-Trøndelag
Sør-Trøndelag
- References :...

, as a son of parish priest David Christopher Frich and Emilie Christine Richter. He started studying law and later medicine, but did not complete his studies. While student he excelled as athlete, in boxing, wrestling and rowing. He moved to Kristiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 in 1895, and married Olga Marie Hansen in 1897. They had three children. He then left family life, divorced, and married actress and boheme
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 Ida Ajagela Basilier-Magelssen in 1907. Both Frich and his new wife was part of a colorful group of people at the Grand Café in Kristiania. He later spent twenty years travelling around the world, to exotic places like Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

 and South America. His spent his last fifteen years in Sweden, and died in Södertälje
Södertälje
Södertälje is a city and the seat of Södertälje Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 86,069 inhabitants in 2010.The industrial city, about south of Stockholm, is the home to truck maker Scania AB and a top 10 pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca....

 in May 1945.

Journalist

Frich was a reporter for Aftenposten
Aftenposten
Aftenposten is Norway's largest newspaper. It retook this position in 2010, taking it from the tabloid Verdens Gang which had been the largest newspaper for several decades. It is based in Oslo. The morning edition, which is distributed across all of Norway, had a circulation of 250,179 in 2007...

from 1895 to 1910. As a reporter he covered the Ålesund Fire
Ålesund Fire
The Ålesund Fire happened in the Norwegian city of Ålesund on 23 January 1904. It destroyed almost the whole city centre, built mostly of wood like the majority of Norwegian towns in that era.-Fire:...

 in 1904 and the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, and is, in retrospect, regarded as a renewer of the genre in Norway. He was editor-in-chief for Verdens Gang
Verdens Gang (1868-1923 newspaper)
Verdens Gang is a former Norwegian newspaper, issued in Oslo from 1868 to 1923.It was established as a weekly magazine in 1868, later expanded to three issues a week, and was issued daily from 1885. It was the most widespread political newspaper in Norway for many years, and had considerable...

 from 1910 to 1911, and edited Bergens Aftenblad
Bergens Aftenblad
Bergens Aftenblad was a Norwegian daily newspaper, published in Bergen, Norway from 1880 to 1942. It supported the Conservative Party.The paper was started in 1880, and absorbed the long-running Bergens Adressecontoirs Efterretninger in 1889....

from 1913 to 1914.

Crime writer

Frich made his literary debut in 1911 with the adventurous novel De knyttede næver, the first in a series of books about the hero, Jonas Fjeld. This book was a great success, and from 1913 Frich started travelling around the world, while he continued his writings. He wrote a total of about seventy books, including 21 novels about Jonas Fjeld's adventures. His also issued the documentary Boken om tobakk ("The Tobacco Book", 1934) and several books on wine in Norwegian and Swedish from 1929 to 1938.

His books were translated into nine different languages, and Frich sold at least two million copies of his books.
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