Anthon Bernhard Elias Nilsen was a prominent Norwegian businessman, politician, and author who achieved widespread popularity under the pen name Elias Kræmmer. Born in Svelvik in 1855, Nilsen established a successful export company for pulp, paper, and lumber in Drammen in 1879. He also spent many years in Fredrikstad, where he managed a sawmill, co-founded the newspaper Fredriksstad Blad, and served a term in the Norwegian Parliament representing the Conservative Party starting in 1895.
Alongside his active commercial and political life, Nilsen maintained a prolific literary career. Writing as Elias Kræmmer, he made his literary debut in 1894 with Glade Borgere, a collection of humorous depictions of small-town life. Although critics did not always award him high literary status, his warm humor and engaging storytelling won him a large and loyal reading public.
His subsequent bibliography includes popular novels such as Sigurd Seiersborg (1920), Fyrgangen (1923), Bølgerne ruller (1925), and Asylet (1928). He also wrote plays, one of which was staged at Norway's National Theatre in 1912, and published a collection of poetry under his real name in 1919. Nilsen passed away in 1936, leaving behind a legacy honored by a bust in his hometown of Svelvik and a street named after his famous pseudonym in Fredrikstad.
