Asbjørn Halvorsen was a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 footballer

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

. He was a centre-half who played 19 times for the Norwegian national team

Norway national football team

The Norway national football team represents Norway in association football and is controlled by the Football Association of Norway, the governing body for football in Norway. Norway's home ground is Ullevaal Stadion in Oslo and their head coach is Egil Olsen...

, and won the Norwegian Cup

Norwegian football cup

The Norwegian Football Cup is the main knockout cup competition in Norwegian football. It is run by the Football Association of Norway and has been contested since 1902, making it the oldest football tournament in the country. The tournament is commonly known as Cupen or NM, an acronym formed...

 in 1917 as a member of Sarpsborg

Sarpsborg F.K.

Sarpsborg Fotballklubb is a Norwegian football club from Sarpsborg, Østfold. It was founded on 8 May 1903. As of 2008 they are playing in Norwegian Fourth Division, the fifth tier of Norwegian league system.-History:...

. After his playing career ended, he became general secretary of the Norwegian Football Association, and he is regarded as the architect behind the Norwegian "Bronze Team" that famously finished third in the 1936 Olympics

1936 Summer Olympics

The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

.

Between 1922 and 1934, Halvorsen played in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 for Hamburger SV

Hamburger SV

Hamburger Sport-Verein, usually referred to as HSV in Germany and Hamburg in international parlance, is a German multi-sport club based in Hamburg, its largest branch being its football department...

, where he won two German championships. He returned to his home country in 1934, and was hired as general secretary of the NFF. This job also made him head of the national team's selection committee, and in the years before the war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he also acted as national team coach.

With Halvorsen at the helm, Norway won the Bronze medals at the 1936 Olympics, and qualified for the 1938 World Cup. This was Norway's first and only appearance in the World Cup finals until the 1990s.

During the war, Halvorsen was one of the figureheads of the Norwegian sports boycott. Practically all organized sport ceased its operations during the German occupation, and as a result, Halvorsen was arrested and placed in a concentration camp. He was imprisoned at Møllergata 19

Møllergata 19

Møllergata 19 is an address in Oslo, Norway where the city's main police station and jail was located. The address gained notoriety during the German occupation from 1940 to 1945, when the Nazi security police kept its headquarters here...

 for one day, then in Grini concentration camp from August 1942 to July 1943, then in Natzweiler-Struthof

Natzweiler-Struthof

Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....

, Neckarelz

Neckarelz

-Geography:Neckarelz is in northern Baden-Württemberg, between the Odenwald and Kraichgau, at the confluence of the Neckar and Elz rivers. On the other side of the Neckar, are the towns of Hochhausen and Obrigheim. Next to Neckarelz, is the suburb of Diedesheim....

 and Vaihingen an der Enz concentration camp

Vaihingen an der Enz concentration camp

Vaihingen an der Enz concentration camp, near the city of Vaihingen an der Enz in the Neckar region of Germany, was a slave labor camp for armament manufacturing built by the Todt organization, and then became an extermination camp.The camp was built in late 1943 - early 1944 as part of a secret...

s. He returned home after the war, and remained general secretary of the NFF until his death in 1955.