Sven Elvestad

Sven Elvestad (7 September 1884 – 18 December 1934) was a Norwegian journalist and author. He is best known for his detective stories, which were published under the pen name Stein Riverton and translated into several languages, including German and English. Elvestad was born Kristoffer Elvestad Svendsen, in Fredrikshald (now Halden), a small town near the Swedish border. After, as a young office boy, embezzling money from his employer, he changed his name and started a new life as a journalist in Kristiania (Oslo). As a reporter, he often staged his own sensations. Among his most famous stunts, was spending a day in a circus lion's cage. But he was also the first foreign reporter to interview Adolf Hitler (whom he, despite his fascist sympathies, described as "a dangerous man").