Background
Halvorsen was born in Sarpsborg, the son of baker Christian Halvorsen and Jakobine Dorthea Thronsen.
Halvorsen was born in Sarpsborg, the son of baker Christian Halvorsen and Jakobine Dorthea Thronsen.
He is regarded as the architect behind the Norwegian "Bronze Team" that finished third in the 1936 Olympics.
He was later Secretary general of the Norwegian Football Association, and acted as head coach of the Norwegian national team Aged 18 years and 318 days, he is the youngest captain in a Norwegian Cup final. He made his debut for the national team in 1918, in a match against Sweden, and played four matches for the national team in 1918, and four matches in 1919.
He represented Norway at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, where the Norwegian team reached the quarter finals.
He played his last match for the national team against Germany in Hamburg in 1923, his nineteenth game for the national selection. He returned to his home country in 1934, and was hired as secretary of the Norwegian Football Association, NFF. This job also made him head of the national team"s selection committee, and in the years before, he also acted as national team coach.
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 for one day, then in Grini concentration camp from August 1942 to July 1943, then in Natzweiler-Struthof, Neckarelz and Vaihingen an der Enz concentration camps. After the war, Halvorsen continued working for the NFF, with the title of Secretary General, until his death in 1955. He died in Narvik in 1955.
He was a board member of Norsk Tipping from 1946.