1840 Norwegian Novel May Be World's First Crime Fiction

A 1840 Norwegian novel, "Der Mord an Maschinenführer Roolfsen" by Maurits Christopher Hansen, is argued by scholars to be the earliest crime or detective novel, predating Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by two years. The story is set in the mining town of Kongsberg, where a German machine operator named Roolfsen disappears after a drunken quarrel over a woman. The plot features two suspects, a state official investigating, a beautiful woman, and a scholar using chemistry to detect evidence tampering—but no corpse. Hansen, a major Norwegian author admired by Henrik Ibsen, set the novel around 1800 to avoid offending authorities, but still failed to secure a professorship and died at 48. The original ending, omitted from the book, is used in a stage adaptation performed at the annual crime festival in Kongsberg. Biographer Arve Fretheim suggests a lost early translation may have inspired Poe.