Fritiof Nilsson Piraten ("the Pirate"[1]) (4 December 1895 in Vollsjö – 31 January 1972 in Malmö), born Nils Fritiof Adam Nilsson was a Swedish author and lawyer, from the south-most province Skåne, which plays an important role in many of his books.

Educated as a lawyer at Lund he left a successful practice in 1932 to write, and that same year published his debut, Bombi Bitt och jag ("Bombi Bitt and me"), a Scanian Tom Sawyer-like story of sorts.

Bombi Bitt is what he is most remembered for; it was made into both a movie in 1936, and a TV-series in 1968, the series starring Stellan Skarsgård of present Hollywood-fame in the lead role as Bombi Bitt, with Piraten himself as the narrator.

Most of his books are collections of bucolic anecdotes about eccentric people in Skåne, such as his novel, Bock i örtagård ("Buck in herbal garden", 1933), about an illiterate horse-dealer and squire who bullies his way into a church-wardenship to win a bet.

A later novel, Bokhandlaren som slutade bada ("The book-dealer who ceased bathing", 1937) is a deeply tragic story, dotted with occasional comic situations, about a too-sensitive man falling in love with a woman and marrying her before he realizes who she really is, and the disasters that follow.