Herbrand Lavik was a Norwegian journalist, short story writer, novelist, poet, translator and theatre critic. He was born in Bergen

Bergen

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....

 as the son of newspaper editor Johannes Lavik

Johannes Lavik

Johannes Lavik was a Norwegian journalist and newspaper editor. He was a subeditor of the newspaper Bergens Tidende from 1894. He was a founder and editor of the Nynorsk newspaper Gula Tidend from 1904. He edited Bondebladet from 1919 to 1925.Johannes Lavik was a brother of Member of Parliament...

. From 1929 he was editor-in-chief of the Florø

Florø

is a town and the administrative centre of Flora municipality in the county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It is also a former municipality that existed for just over 100 years. The town was founded on the Florelandet island between the Botnafjorden and Solheimsfjorden by royal decree in 1860. In...

 newspaper Nordre Bergenhus Amtstidende. He made his literary debut in 1937 with the short story collection Frenzie's indianere. In 1945 he published the novel Tunet i det blå and the poetry collection Tolv dikt fra krigens tid. Among his translations are books by James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...

, Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

, Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 and Frederick Marryat

Frederick Marryat

Captain Frederick Marryat was an English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story...

. He translated Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

' diaries and poetry by François Villon

François Villon

François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...

 into Norwegian language

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

. From 1945 he was a theatre critic for the newspaper Bergens Tidende

Bergens Tidende

Bergens Tidende is Norway's fourth largest newspaper and largest newspaper outside Oslo, with a circulation of about 87,000 copies . Founded in 1868, it is a Norwegian-language newspaper published daily in Bergen. It reaches approximately 260,000 readers every day , mainly in the counties of...

.