Chasing Ghosts in the Midnight Sun

« Return to Norway

Narvik, Norway

Rain sprayed like bullets the night I found myself camping in an abandoned Nazi bunker, deep in the Arctic Circle. I had driven 3000 miles up Scandinavia in a station wagon, crossing Denmark, Sweden, and north into Norway. Everyman’s Right is a Scandinavian law that allows anyone to camp anywhere, so long as it’s not invading someone’s home. I camped beside highways, in mosquito infested forests, on concrete parking lots - but nothing quite as sinister and spooky as the deep, dark tunnels burrowed into the hills surrounding the port town of Narvik.

Having paid quite a bundle for the visa, I was disappointed to read the sign that I had officially entered Norway. No checkpoints, no guards, no nothing here in the tundra, where vegetation seldom grows beyond knee height and blue ice forms natural sculptures. We often had to stop the car to allow reindeer herds to cross the highway. The reindeer jerky I bought at a gas station did have a reddish tint to it, and I thought guiltily of Rudolph.

Oil rich Norway, once a colony of Denmark, is now the wealthiest country in Scandinavia, at one point conducting a study as to how it could distribute its vast cash surplus to its 5-million population without the country’s social structures collapsing. Subsequently, everything is expensive, and Norwegians are only too happy to enjoy poll position on the podium of a historically competitive region. It also takes gold in the natural beauty marathon - every corner unpeeling the wrapper of some new eye-popping candy. The dramatic, snowcapped mountains and clear glacier lakes contrast Denmark’s flat, prairie feel and Sweden’s never-ending, pine green forests. It was June, the height of summer and the only month many of these roads were open. The first glacial lake was so clean you could drink and swim simultaneously, and I did exactly that. Twelve seconds later I had swum enough, drunk my fill, and almost frozen to death. As we made our way south after crossing the border from Sweden, the first town we came to was Narvik, scene of an epic WWII battle between the Nazis and British and Polish troops. A major iron ore producer, Narvik was strategically important to both sides, and the Nazis quickly fortified its position when it occupied the region early in the war. The town itself did not offer much, although its war museum created a moving sense of history. Traveling with Troels, a Danish friend, we picked up supplies (salmon, of course) and drove on narrow roads and narrower bridges looking for somewhere to camp. That’s when we found the muddy turnoff, overgrown with lush, and followed it towards the fjord. At the bottom, two paths, one towards a house and another towards the sea. Twenty feet later, I saw the cannon turrets and the entrance to a bunker. It was already 8pm with the feel of early morning thanks to the Midnight Sun. Three months without stars, and you can kiss your moon goodbye. Of course, Arctic Night deprives the region of sun for four months over winter, so unless you’re a vampire, you don’t look for a tan in northern Scandinavia We did however have torches, and investigated the labyrinth of tunnels that connected the bunkers. It was damp, cold and muddy, but surprisingly clean of human occupation, as if it had hid itself from Narvik teenagers all these years. Rusted barbwire increased the Saving Private Ryan illusion, but it was not until I found a bent spoon with a swastika on the handle that I truly got spooked. Troels said that bunkers like these were common in Denmark, and suggested we camp here for the night that’s really a day. We faced a gorgeous fjord, surrounded by steep, icing-frosted mountains, and almost certainly well occupied by the ghosts of 400 Nazis.

Tweet