Have you ever visited Northern Norway and wondered why so many buildings seemed “new”? The story behind is as dramatic as it is sad: whole Troms and Finnmark region of 70 923 km² were burned to the ground by the Nazi troops, forcefully evacuating thousands of people from their homes.
Dramatic events unfolded fast
With the Nazi occupation of Norway coming to an end, Hitler had ordered all remaining German troops in Norway to withdraw in the autumn of 1944. German troops were pushed out of Finland after the “Lapland war” and cease fire between Finland and Soviet Union. Finnish troops and the Red Army of Soviet Russia pushed the Germans out from the east, and the Allies from the west of Norway. Being stuck between Tromsø and the Finnish/Russian border in the east, Hitler finalized the evacuation of German troops under “Operation Nordlicht” with 200 000 soliders, military equipment, supplies and prisoners of war hid behind “the Lyngen front” in Troms region. The fortification rebuilding led to an increased amount of deaths and torture for the prisoners, as the construction were led day and night for two weeks. At the 4th of October, Wehrmacht decided that local administrative representatives would cooperate with German generals to evacuate all the civilians of Finnmark and Troms region as the plan was to destroy all infrastructure and towns by burning it to the ground. This is a well-known tactic used by Vlad Tepes, during the Napoleon Wars and the American Civil War. All possible food resources, military objects or infrastructure to be used by the enemy should be destroyed, for the other part to get a head start or avoid casualities. For the Germans, the enemy was the Red Army.
Resistance and emergency assistance
The evacuation did not work well, and the locals resisted any form of threats, harassment or instructions from the administration, and after two weeks, Hitler’s manager in Norway, Terboven got offended and refused to wait any longer. To his collegaues he ordered the “command to be carried out recklessly” and with “no compassion to the civilians”. Hitler supported this idea, and from the 26th of October the destruction started while simultaneously forcing people out of their homes. Around 50 000 people from Troms and Finnmark regions left by boats ordered by the government, which would take them to Tromsø. During the autumn of 1944 around 30 000 evacuated people dropped by the town, plus the congestion of 14 000 German soliders. Tromsø were heavily stressed as bomb raids came close by, with allies sinking the German ship Tirpitz as the most dramatic event, where 1000 men died.
Despite all of these events most of the evacuated civilians survived, and 70% were replaced in neighbouring regions of Nordland or Sweden. Local fishermen, trucks or German instructed ships transported civilians to nearby towns where they lived in barracks or houses. Some of the bigger boats had terrible conditions, such as “Carl Arp” where 25 of 1800 people died. There were also some civlians who refused to evacuate all together, and went to live in caves, shelters or move around in the wilderness. Sadly some civilians died due to the lack of healthcare and hygiene while living under these conditions. When the Red Army came into Finnmark in late 1944, these civilians were the first to be freed and aided out by the Soviet in April to May 1945. Hence the locals saw the Red Army as liberators and treated them like heroes for chasing away the Nazies and giving them help in return. There were no reported negative treatment of the Norwegian civilians in Finnmark by the Red Army either, as opposed to the Eastern Front or other places. The Red Army did however stop by the Tana river in eastern Finnmark, and were replaced by Norwegian soliders trained in England.
“In it’s brutal simplicity, the problems are the following: For a population of 70,000 people, there are only houses for around 10,000 people.”
The quote from Prime Minister Gerhardsen showed the work that followed in the next ten years after the war was over. Thousands of people lived in barracks or harsh conditions where schooling or work were put on a pause. Some never learned to read or write properly and became illiterate as a result of being a refugee in their own country for too long. The amount of houses and homes that needed to be rebuilt were enormous, and while most families stationed in the south wanted to return home, it would take time. Inhabitants of Oslo and other towns in Norway had never seen or met a Northern Norwegian before, and negative stereotypes of these “unwashed and uneducated northerners” formed quickly, leading to a stronger need desire to return home. After 10 years the housing were at the same level as in pre-war Finnmark, most of them built on previous grounds.
This is why you will see mostly “modern” architecture while travelling in Northern Norway today.
Sources
Pictures and information in Norwegian:
