Some years ago I worked at the local museum which tells the story of the Soviet and Yugoslav prisoners of war that was sent to Northern Norway to work as slaves. One autumn we had a visit from Aleksey, an 83 year old man that was a slave in this area. It was a very strong meeting and ofcourse very interesting to hear his story. We took him around the valley visiting memorials and to one of the camps he had been held.

In springtime 1943 Aleksey and tens of thousands young and old men was taken by German forces in Ukraine. He was transfered through several camps before he was shipped out from Szcezecin in Poland heading for the unknown. The prisoners was put ashore in Oslo and transported to Trondheim where they spent a few weeks building an airport while waiting for transport further north.
 In northern Norway he also went through several camps, all the time under hard conditions. They knew nothing about what was going on outside the barbed wire fences, they had bad clothing and wooden clogs , no medical treatment, and the food was never even close to what a human needs to survive on. Around 140 gram of bread pr day and some thin cabbage soup. When walking to the camps after working on the tunnels for the railroad they had to walk arm in arm so not to fall over, they had become so thin and weak. Friends died almost every day and it seemed the death rate was climbing as the months drew on.
 When it became clear that Germany would loose the war the treatment got better and the guards wanted to know about Siberia, as they were probably afraid to be sent there.
When the liberation came, and the celebration cooled of during the summer every prisoner was to be sent back to Soviet and this was something many feared.
 Aleksey was transported by boat to Narvik, then by train through Sweden reaching Vyborg in Finland. Here they were sent of to different camps in Soviet. Aleksey was free to go home after just a few weeks, but he had to go through life as a second class citizen and lost several jobs as soon it became known he had been a prisoner during the war.

He was happy to have this visit, but said it was hard to look back at what he had been through, and by being here he remembered things forgotten and he seemed to often drift into his mind. As said it was very interesting to meet this old guy and I hope he is still going strong.

Nordland in Norway saw huge German activity during the years of occupation, in addition to fortifications and military installations the infra structures had to be built out. Roads and railroad in particular, and plans for this had already been laid. Org. Todt and its army of slave labourers was in charge for this. Hitler wanted the railroad, which by the outbreak of war hadn`t been laid further than Mo i Rana, to continue all the way through northern norway to eventually be connected to Finnish and Soviet railroads by Murmansk when the war there had been won. To begin with this work went slow and to speed it up huge numbers of war prisoners was directed up here and spread out in primitive camps throughout Nordland. The concentration of the slaves was put to work between Mo i Rana and Drag, south of Narvik, and on the mountain where the Polar Circle is crossing it was only 6-8 km between camps.

One of the more rainy days this autumn I was out searching for new dumping pits. I found an area full of signals and dug kilometers of old wire and hundreds of nails before I moved up to a patch with more interesting signals I had been digging the days before. I had found a broken marching compass,a nice Danish coin,spoons etc. scattered around just centimeters under the soil.