Øvre Richter Frich

• Name — Øvre Richter Frich • Born — 24 March 1872 • Birthplace — Byneset Municipality, Norway • Died — 13 May 1945 • Occupation — reporter, newspaper editor and crime fiction writer

Frich was born in Byneset Municipality in Søndre Trondhjem county, Norway. He was the son of parish priest David Christopher Frich and Emilie Christine Richter. He started studying law and later medicine, but did not complete his studies. As a student he excelled as athlete, in boxing, wrestling and rowing. He moved to Kristiania in 1895, and married Olga Marie Hansen in 1897. They had three children. He then left family life, divorced, and married actress and boheme Ida Ajagela Basilier-Magelssen in 1907. Both Frich and his new wife were 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 and South America. He spent his last fifteen years in Sweden, and died in Södertälje in May 1945.

Frich was a reporter for Aftenposten from 1895 to 1910. As a reporter he covered the Ålesund 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 from 1910 to 1911, and edited Bergens Aftenblad from 1913 to 1914.