Hal Jespersen’s World War II Tour of Norway, September 2026 [Part 3]

These are my (Hal’s) notes from a trip to Norway to study World War II: the German invasion, the occupation, and the resistance. I traveled with a British-based tour company, The Cultural Experience, for the first time. They entitled the tour “Shells Exploding at a Picnic.”

Since this is a lengthy report with lots of photos (iPhone 17 Pro Max), I have broken it into three parts:

Wednesday, September 9 — Trondheim

It is a sad day in Norway: King Harald’s funeral was held in Oslo. At eight we drove about an hour east to Hegra. The area is quite rural and has heavier forest cover than it did in 1940. A steep switchback road led up to the festning (fortress).

The Battle of Hegra Fortress was a twenty-five-day siege that began on April 15. A force of roughly 250 Norwegian volunteers, most of them recently mobilized artillery reservists under Major Hans Reidar Holtermann, took refuge in the old, mothballed Ingstadkleiva fort after German troops overran their camp at Værnes. The fort was originally built in 1909–10 to defend against a Swedish attack from the east, not a German one from the west. Holtermann had no orders to defend the site, but as volunteers streamed in and the garrison reactivated the fortress’s dormant artillery, it became the center of Norwegian resistance in the region, ultimately holding out until May 5, after every other Norwegian unit in southern Norway had already surrendered. Light rain during our visit made things cold and slippery. The interior is a series of rough tunnels and subterranean rooms, and the muddy exterior perimeter has stone walls for cover. In April 1940, snow covered everything and made gun operation difficult.

The defenders were lightly armed, with rifles, a few machine guns, and some fixed and field artillery, and no air defense artillery. The first major German assault came on April 15, forcing a fighting retreat into the fortress. Repeated German infantry attacks on April 16 and 17 were repelled by artillery and machine-gun fire, and even by a blizzard that scattered one attacking battalion. After April 25, the Germans abandoned attempts to storm the fortress outright and shifted to sustained bombardment by air and artillery. Over the course of the siege, more than 2,300 shells struck the fortress, one of its 7.5 cm guns was destroyed, electrical and water lines were cut, and a German seaplane dropped an 1,800-kilogram bomb on the position.

With food and water running low, and news arriving of the broader Norwegian surrender in the Trøndelag region, Major Holtermann led his garrison of about 190 men marching into captivity on May 5. Most were eventually sent to a local POW camp, where they were released in groups by mid-June on Hitler’s personal order, reportedly in recognition of their defense. Six Norwegians were killed and fourteen wounded during the battle, while German losses were roughly 150 to 200 killed or wounded.

We stayed at the fort for about an hour and a half, though many of us, myself included, retreated to the warm and dry bus considerably sooner. The rain departed on the one-hour drive north to Falstadskogen (the Falstad Forest) in Ekne, Levanger, and the former SS prison camp (Strafgefangenenlager). It held an estimated 4,500 or more inmates from at least thirteen countries, mostly political prisoners, and several thousand POWs passed through as well. The population grew steadily following its conversion from a boarding school in November 1941. Although nominally a political prison, Falstad also served as a transit point for Norwegian Jews being deported to Auschwitz—forty-seven Jewish men were held there at various times, and at least eight were murdered on site. The camp is rather small and low-key in comparison to larger ones I have seen in Germany and Poland. This was actually the eleventh concentration camp I have visited, but the first one where lunch was served.

Daily life centered on forced, hard, and largely pointless labor, with routine degradation and abuse. Yugoslav prisoners in particular were deliberately worked to death, and we visited a forest memorial for at least seventy-four of them. The memorial statue was designed by an artist, Odd Hilt, who had escaped the camp. That nearby forest, Falstadskogen, was used for executions of POWs and of political and Jewish prisoners following show trials. The largest single instance of such killings came on October 6, 1942, when martial law was imposed on parts of central Norway and at least 170 non-Norwegian prisoners, along with 34 Norwegians, were shot in the forest. More than 150 additional unidentified POWs were executed there as well. In the final days before liberation, camp authorities tried to conceal the killings by exhuming and hiding bodies, sinking roughly twenty-five of them in the nearby fjord.

We stopped at a monument to the Allied aircrews who conducted multiple attacks on the Tirpitz, sister ship to the Bismarck, while she was anchored at Fættenfjord. In addition to multiple bomber runs, a daring but unsuccessful raid in October 1942 used two-man Chariot human torpedoes towed by the fishing boat Arthur, which had to be scuttled after the Chariots were lost in bad weather before reaching the target. The most successful attack near Trondheim came in September 1943, when Operation Source sent six X-craft midget submarines to plant explosive charges beneath the ship; two of them succeeded in doing so, and the resulting detonations badly damaged Tirpitz’s hull, engines, and turrets, putting her out of action for months, though she remained afloat. We will see the final fate of the Tirpitz when we visit Tromsø.

An hour’s drive brought us back to Trondheim to visit the Armoury Museum. On the way, I caught a glimpse of the sixteenth-century Steinvikholm Castle on a small island.

The Nidaros Cathedral, next door to the Armoury, was impressive. The museum was closed for the day of the funeral, but we were given a private ninety-minute tour covering Vikings, knights, feudal systems, and mercenaries, up through the eighteenth-century Great Nordic War. Alan urged the guide to move on to the twentieth century, and the second floor covered World War II with a brief description of the Trondheim campaign. The third floor, on the occupation and resistance, was the most interesting, with a neat diorama of the Tirpitz in Fættenfjord and a model of the stronghold at Austrått in Ørlandet. The stronghold’s enormous cannon turret was originally located on the German battleship Gneisenau; after Allied bombings destroyed the ship in 1942, the cannons were dismantled and transferred to Austrått. We were not able to visit this site on this trip.

Dinner at Kalas & Canasta, reached after a nice walk along the river. Quite good.

Thursday, September 10 — to Narvik

Cloudy and cool this morning. We started our travel day with a visit to Trondheim’s Kristiansten Festning, a star-shaped fortress named after Christian V of Denmark–Norway. It was built after the city fire of Trondheim in 1681 to protect the city against attack from the east, with construction finished in 1685. In 1718 it resisted a Swedish siege. The only WWII connection is that some flagrant collaborators were executed there. A few semi-modern artillery pieces were used yesterday for 21-gun salutes for King Harald and his successor.

We stopped briefly at Dora I, a German U-boat bunker constructed starting in 1941 to form one of the largest German naval bases in Northern Europe. The massive structure has a 3.5-meter-thick reinforced concrete roof and 3-meter-thick walls, measuring 153 by 105 meters overall. Construction relied heavily on slave labor. It was home to the 13th U-boat Flotilla, with room for sixteen U-boats and the ability to be hermetically sealed against attack. It survived the war largely intact despite Allied bombing attempts, and post-war plans to demolish it were abandoned due to its sheer size and the risk to surrounding buildings; the Norwegian submarine force used it from 1945 until 1954. Today the structure houses the Trondheim city and state archives, a bowling alley, and other businesses, while the original submarine pens now serve as a harbor for civilian boats. There is a Dora II nearby, but it was never finished.

We took a noon flight on Widerøe Airlines from Trondheim to Harstad–Narvik Airport in Evenes, a one-hour flight with beautiful views flying over Narvik. This was my first trip ever landing north of the Arctic Circle. We then drove forty-five minutes north to Harstad’s Trondenes Fort, enjoying more beautiful views of sounds, islands, and mountains. We will find out tomorrow that Harstad was the base for British, Polish, and French forces that arrived in April to assist the Norwegians.

We stopped for an alfresco sandwich lunch at Trondenes Historiske Senter, a small museum with cultural artifacts dating from the Bronze Age onward, including material on Prison Camp 1287, which held prisoners in plywood barracks.

Trondenes Fort is the current main naval base of the Norwegian Coastal Ranger Command, and we had to show identification to enter the base. The Germans built the fort in 1943 as part of the Atlantic Wall, one of hundreds of coastal artillery positions. It features four of the world’s largest land-based guns, 40.6 cm (16-inch) pieces known collectively as “Adolf Guns” (Adolfkanonen), with 20.3-meter barrels. They were designed for the Germans’ proposed H-class battleships, bigger than the Bismarck, but were deployed here when the naval building plans fell through.

We toured the operational No. 1 gun, labeled Barbara for the patron saint of artillery. The standard shell weighed 1,030 kg with a range of about 43 km, while a lighter 600-kg shell could reach roughly 56 km. Norway keeps one gun semi-operational for conservation purposes, meaning it can still move but no longer fire. The tour was rather duplicative of the slightly smaller gun at Møvik.

We saw the loading and firing sequences, along with the bunker, which NATO has turned into exhibition space. This included the generator room and the ammunition room, with its stock of ready shells and demonstration of loading procedures, as well as the fire control and sighting equipment that had been moved here from the command bunker for the exhibit, including a ballistic correction board.

We had a long drive to reach the city of Narvik, arriving after 7:30 p.m., and checked into the Quality Hotel Grand Royal. Since we arrived so late, I elected to skip dinner and get to bed at a time reasonable for an elderly guy.

Friday, September 11 — Narvik

Beautiful weather returned this morning, sunny and cool, with shirt-sleeve temperatures by noon. We drove to Bjerkvik, above Ofotfjord, for a view of Narvik and a discussion of the local naval battles. On April 9, 1940, ten German destroyers under Commodore Friedrich Bonte sailed up the fog-bound fjord carrying roughly 2,000 mountain troops (Gebirgsjäger) under General Eduard Dietl, catching the small garrison at Narvik largely by surprise. The two Norwegian coastal defense ships stationed in the harbor, Eidsvold and Norge, refused German demands to surrender; Eidsvold was sunk almost immediately by torpedoes with most of her crew lost, and Norge was sunk shortly after in a similar attack, together costing 282 Norwegian sailors’ lives. With the Norwegian naval defenses eliminated, German troops went ashore, and Colonel Konrad Sundlo surrendered the city.

On April 10, five British destroyers under Captain Bernard Warburton-Lee sailed into Ofotfjord. In a surprise dawn assault, the British destroyers sank two German destroyers and damaged several others, along with several merchant vessels, but on withdrawal they ran into a second group of German destroyers emerging from a fjord at Ballangen, resulting in a fierce exchange that cost the British two destroyers, including the flagship HMS Hardy, with Warburton-Lee himself killed. On April 13, a much larger British force, the battleship HMS Warspite and nine destroyers, returned to finish off the German flotilla. Warspite’s spotter aircraft ranged ahead of the fleet, locating and helping to sink a German submarine, U-64, in the fjord and reporting on the positions of the remaining German ships, giving the British a significant tactical advantage. The eight surviving German destroyers, low on fuel and ammunition after their earlier losses, conducted a fighting withdrawal up the fjord but were steadily hunted down; several were sunk or scuttled by their own crews rather than face capture. By the end of the day, the entire German naval force at Narvik had been eliminated, representing forty percent of Germany’s total destroyer strength at the start of the war. After taking Narvik on April 9, the Germans pushed north toward Setermoen, aiming to hamper Norwegian mobilization and seize Bardufoss airfield. Norwegian and Allied forces ambushed them at Gratangsfjellet, and a two-month campaign followed before the Germans ultimately withdrew. We spent the morning examining parts of this campaign.

We drove to the Fossbakken assembly area, staging ground for the Norwegian 6th Division under General Carl Gustav Fleischer for the first land battle of the campaign against General Eduard Dietl’s 3rd Mountain Division. At Lapphaugen we took in a view of the then-frozen lake beside the Austrian mountain troop position. An attack of April 24–25 around the flank stalled in bad weather and deep snow. We took a group photo at a memorial to General Fleischer.

From the Gratangsbotn tourist station we looked out over the small Gratangfjord and the town of Gratangsbotn at its end. The Norwegians held the mountain saddle above, aiming to dominate by firepower rather than direct assault, but when the exhausted 1st Battalion of Sør-Trøndelag Infantry Regiment 12 advanced into the undefended town without securing its perimeter, roughly 165 Germans counterattacked on April 25, using civilians as human shields, and routed the Norwegians, killing 34, wounding 64, and capturing 130 against just six German dead. It was a tactical German victory, but they soon abandoned the gained position once fresh Norwegian forces arrived. We continued down to Gratangsbotn itself for more detail on the battle, and visited a wooded memorial park to the fallen.

We drove to a lakeside vista at Øse, to where the Germans subsequently pushed north and fortified the mountains and valleys, with heavy fighting from May 1 to 14. In Gressdalen, east of Øse, two battalions of Troms Infantry Regiment 16 were pinned by German machine-gun fire from Britatind before artillery support finally forced the Germans to flee toward Vassdalen on May 7. In the nearby Leigasskaret pass, Norwegian troops fought in brutal sub-zero conditions until the Germans abandoned the area on May 12–13, timed with the Allied landing at Bjerkvik. To the west, in Labergdalen, Norwegian and French Chasseurs Alpins troops fought side by side for the first time, trying to flank the German position at Gratangseidet, and took the valley only on May 7, too late to be decisive. Finally, French Alpine troops and Norwegian infantry attacked south across the Gratangseidet plateau and Mount Roasme against well-entrenched Austrian mountain troops, who withdrew only after the May 13 Bjerkvik landing threatened to trap them in a pincer between Allied forces to the north and south. Together, these actions formed the Norwegian counteroffensive that helped drive the Germans back and led to the brief Allied recapture of Narvik on May 28.

We returned to Bjerkvik to discuss the May 13 amphibious landing there by the French Foreign Legion, and the controversy over the Allied bombardment of the small settlement; the slow advance that followed allowed the Germans to pull back.

Back in Narvik we visited the war museum, with forty minutes for lunch on our own beforehand. The museum has a very impressive animated map of the naval battles around Narvik, along with a large collection of artifacts, weapons, and uniforms, and aims to present the war and occupation in a “broader human context”; all exhibits are bilingual. Among the vehicles I found interesting to photograph were a Hotchkiss H39 French tank, deformed with a crude anti-war sentiment, an NSU HK 101 light caterpillar motorcycle, and a Morris Mk II light reconnaissance car. The Narvik non-war museum nearby covered local folktales about the supernatural, town photographs, and port history, along with a film on the Arctic Train (Ofotbanen) and information on the railway’s electrification; out back stood a locomotive.

Dinner was a few blocks away at Furu Gastropub. I raised a toast to the victims of September 11th twenty-five years ago. The pub had six choices of non-alcoholic beer!

Saturday, September 12 — Narvik and Bjørnfjell

Another day with no rain, although it started as overcast. We spent the morning examining the Allied recapture of Narvik in late May. We drove along the south side of Ofotfjord to Skjomnes, near the tip of the Ankenes peninsula, where another roadside sign on the Narvik 1940 campaign accompanied a memorial to the Poles, British, and French. It was here that the Polish Podhale Brigade coordinated with the French-Norwegian action at Taraldsvikfjellet (see below) and launched its own pincer offensive from the south on May 28, driving the Germans out of the peninsula and into the mountains to the east. Unfortunately for the Norwegians, the Allies had made the decision at this point to pull all of their troops out of Norway to deal with the ongoing crisis in France, so it was all for naught.

On the way back to Narvik, we passed a shipwreck from the battles, still slightly visible in the water and probably a German ore carrier.

We drove to Øyjord, a former ferry port before the Hålogaland Bridge was built, and discussed the northern pincer in the capture of Narvik. Just after midnight on May 28, the Second Battalion of the Nord-Hålogaland Infantry Regiment, together with the French Foreign Legion (13th Demi-Brigade) and Chasseurs Alpins, left Øyjord and Seines by landing craft and Norwegian fishing boats, crossing the Rombaksfjord. The amphibious/riverine landings of May 28 took place in areas visible from here, and French Foreign Legion troops departed from this spot as part of joint air, sea, and land operations, though low fog temporarily halted air support and naval gunfire.

Finally, we went to the south side of the fjord, under the Hålogaland Bridge, to the landing beach itself. The Germans, positioned on the reverse slope, could not see the beach, so the landing was technically unopposed. Heavy fighting followed on the steep and rocky slope to Taraldsvikfjellet, with many killed and wounded on both sides. French Hotchkiss tanks provided fire support, and Allied and Norwegian artillery support eventually forced the Germans to retreat and abandon the city early that morning, retreating to Bjørnfjell.

We were originally scheduled to take the Arctic Train to Bjørnfjell, but the timetable had changed and there was no train that day, so we went by bus instead. We stopped along the way to see German defensive positions on the Kuberg Plateau (Kuberget). After the French landed at Bjerkvik on May 13, the Germans withdrew to this new line, ceding exposed ground to avoid artillery and planning counter-attacks in between. Norwegian brigades took the outposts on May 14, then fought for Kuberget May 15–21, securing the main line by about May 22 and repelling German counter-attacks. Dietl called his flank “completely confused” by May 17–18, but the Germans held long enough to buy time before withdrawing further toward Bjørnfjell on May 21. A POW camp was established here in 1942, holding primarily Serbian prisoners. Of the 588 men forced to construct a mountain road, 242 died within five weeks; the sick and those who could no longer work were shot by SS guards.

We crossed the border into Sweden and stopped at a grocery store that was a madhouse. It seems that Swedish groceries are cheaper than in Norway, and hordes had come to stock up. By then, sunny skies had returned, and we had a nice picnic lunch with a view of a lake.

Back in the town of Bjørnfjell, the logistics hub for the Germans in the shadow of Bjørnfjell Mountain, Palle described otherwise neutral Sweden’s involvement in supplying the Germans and in providing hundreds of tourist visas to military-age males entering Norway.

We took a couple-mile walk that was scenic, but of limited military relevance. We saw General Eduard Dietl’s cabin, which is now rented out, along with numerous snow shelters for the railroad. The more adventurous and nimble of the group took a two-hour walk over rocky outcrops and saw some 1905-era fortifications and the bridge blown up in the 2022 film Narvik: Hitler’s First Defeat (decent movie). That walk lasted long enough that our bus driver took the easy-walkers, nine of us including me, back to Narvik and then returned for the rest of the group.

Dinner in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant. The food was good, the view excellent. Alan gave out award pins for people who had attended multiple tours. One of the participants has done 24! I was one of only two first-time attendees.

Sunday–Monday, September 13–14 — Tromsø, Oslo, Home

We had an early departure under light, rainy conditions, though the weather turned overcast and then sunny later in the day; we have been lucky to have had excellent touring weather on this trip. We drove about one hour and twenty minutes north to Bardufoss, whose airfield served as a key Allied airbase during the Norwegian Campaign. Until mid-May 1940, only small Norwegian Fokker biplanes mounted on skis could operate from the snow-covered field, but on May 21 two squadrons of British fighters, first the Gloster Gladiators of No. 263 Squadron and later the Hawker Hurricanes of No. 46 Squadron, landed on the improved airfield and helped keep the Luftwaffe at bay during the fighting on the Narvik front. The Norwegian army headquarters, retreating from Oslo, was temporarily located nearby at Nordmo. This was Dietl’s objective after the capture of Narvik, but as we’ve seen, he never got past Gratangen.

After the Allied withdrawal from Norway in early June, the Germans took over the airfield, upgraded it with a paved runway, and made it their most important airbase in North Norway, using it against the Arctic convoys for the remainder of the war. During the occupation, the Germans also established a camp at nearby Bjørnåsen for about three thousand Soviet prisoners of war, interned from July 1942 to May 1945; two hundred ninety-five died of hard labor, malnutrition, and disease, and a memorial to them now stands in the area.

We stopped at a Sami souvenir outpost—lovely merchandise, but super expensive. There was a cool stuffed wolverine on display.

By noon we reached the Tromsø (TROM-suh) area and the Tirpitz monument, just off a small island named Håkøya. The battleship was sunk there on November 12, 1944, in Operation Catechism, the third and final British attempt to destroy her that year. By late 1944 she had been moved north to Håkøya, where she served mainly as a coastal defense battery rather than as an active fleet unit.

RAF Avro Lancaster bombers attacked with 12,000-pound Tallboy earthquake bombs designed to penetrate her heavy armor. At least two Tallboys struck home, one detonating amidships and causing a catastrophic magazine explosion that tore open the hull. Tirpitz capsized within minutes, trapping hundreds of crew inside; estimates of the dead run between 950 and 1,200 men, though survivors were pulled from the wreck for days afterward by cutting through the exposed hull.

There is nothing visible left of the battleship above the surface today. A small monument made from a portion of the ship’s armor and a large Tallboy bomb crater filled with water are all there is to see. This site, at 69°38′54″ N latitude, featured the first really cold weather we’ve encountered on the trip, but at least it wasn’t raining.

Thirty minutes away is the Tromsø Defence Museum (Forsvarsmuseum). Tromsø is almost twice the size of Narvik, with roughly 75,000 people compared to Narvik’s 40,000, and looks more modern. The small museum is private, run by volunteers, and holds hundreds of weapons, pieces of gear, and artifacts, many related to Tirpitz; most of the text is in Norwegian only, though there was a YouTube video about Tirpitz.

We got to the airport two hours before our flight to Oslo. Many of our group are connecting on to Heathrow, but I booked a room at the airport Radisson for my flight home very early Monday: Lufthansa to Frankfurt and then direct to SFO, arriving early afternoon on Monday. The flight to Oslo was interesting because it had free Starlink WiFi; I measured 381 Mbps download, 22 upload. Thank you, Elon. The EES immigration process at Frankfurt took 30 minutes. The flight to SFO was in one of the last remaining Queens of the Sky, a 747-8. Business class was one of the old open setups—no private little cubbies—but was comfortable and the food was pretty good. I had a young, pretty stewardess who thought my rudimentary German sounded like a native’s!

I had an excellent trip with The Cultural Experience and intend to travel with them again in the future; I have booked a tour of MacArthur and the Philippines for next March. All the logistics worked flawlessly, the hotels and restaurant meals were very good, and the sites visited were informative and interesting. All of the attendees were friendly and motivated to learn. Alan was an outstanding tour manager, and Palle did a great job guiding us through World War II and modern Norwegian history. Norway is an interesting country: immaculately clean, safe cities, beautiful scenery, friendly people who all seem to speak English, but very expensive to eat and drive around; the gas stations were displaying prices that convert to $10–12/gallon.