Son of Fredrik Olsen and born in Hvitsten, he worked in the family company Fred.
[1] He held a board position in a range of companies, including Det Norske Luftfartselskap and Scandinavian Airlines System.
During the Second World War, he chose to hide the works in a hay barn in central Norway after war had formally been declared, but before the German invasion of Norway in April 1940.
In gratitude to Britain for taking him in when he fled the Nazis, Olsen presented one of Munch’s most notable paintings, The Sick Child, to the Tate Gallery.
[3] In 2012, on the occasion of a Munch exhibition at the MoMa, the family of German Jewish art collector Hugo Simon pointed out that he had owned The Scream in the 1920s and 1930s, before Simon was forced to flee Germany due to Nazi persecution.