Yesterday I was in Finland picking up my brother and on the way back to Norway we spotted an interesting sign so we had to make a stop. Next to the road towards the Norwegian border the local municipality had built a small museum , and restored ca 1200 meter of the German defensive line "The Sturmbock Stellung". This was a strong position built in 1942 made to protect the important Norwegian harbours from a potential Red Army push. It was built by Pioneer troops, Org.Todt and around 3000 Soviet POWs. The trenchlines and positions has a great overview of the flat Finnish landscape and is overlooking some smaller hills in the distance and the road going towards the border. In October 1944 it was manned by 12000 troops from the 7th Gebirgsjäger Division,  but after the retreat of the German forces into the Lyngen line in Norway it was abandoned early January 1945 after smaller skirmishes with Finnish troops.
Walking around in the reconstructed positions was very interesting and the small exhibition in the Museum building is nicely made. There is also a cafeteria where you can grab a snack and a coffee.
This is a site one really need to visit if one is driving through the area :)

It has been a few weeks now since last digging so last night we decided to get out to the forest. Early morning today me and the Girlfriend prepared for a day out. The sky was grey and heavy with waterfilled clouds but when we got to the site the sky had cleared up a bit and the temperature was rising. Still, with the rays from the sun shining between the tree trunks there was no hiding that autumn is here. Leaves are getting yellow and the forest floor is becoming fiery red and filled with berries. 
I got the detector out and began searching while Girlfriend took out a bag and started looking for the delicious blueberries.
 I had got stuck in a small patch where it was signals everywhere. I dug out a large ditch with a big cast iron oven and four snow shovels plus a few rotten field torches. The next signal I had was of the type that can get the pulse up a notch, a live Tellermine on top of a pit filled with food tins, the strangest combination of relics I ve found in a dumping hole thats for sure. The teller got placed deep underground and the coordinates noted down for reporting it to the EOD.
The hours went by and Girlfriend had picked two big bags of berries while I had managed to  find a few relics worth saving when we decided to slowly find our way back to the car. Just a few hundred meter from the parking space I saw some relics peeking out from under the berry bushes so we took the time to check it. It was a small dumping pit but it held a good pile of nice relics. Several pocket knives, some uniform buttons, a couple of axe heads, a ton of melted glass, a fork with Waa and eagle stamps and some K98 ammo was some of the stuff I piled up for taking home. When I had found the edges of the pit and dug through it all I leaned back and said to Girlfriend "Thats it, no more relics here!" while I was grabbing a handfull of sand, but it wasn`t sand I got in my hand, but a War Merit Award with Swords!! A spectacular end of the day! We filled back the pit and got ourself home where we baked bread and made fresh blueberry jam,,,And we are probably going back out there tomorrow to get more rust and the Blue gold :)
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Next to the 800 year old Trondenes Church outside Harstad you can visit this Red Army POW memorial. During the war up to 1200 POWs suffered here crammed into a camp. They had been brought here for building the nearby coastal fortification "Batterie Theo" MKB 5/511 with its four massive 40,6 Cm guns. Approximately 800 of the prisoners died here through starvation, sickness, cold, hard labour and murder. The dead POWs was buried between the camp and the old church, and in 1951/52 the cemetery was exhumed and the bodies relocated to the War Cemetery at Tjøtta further south in Northern Norway in what became known as "Operation Asphalt".
In 2014 the area where the camp had been was reclaimed from the forest and a path with informational signs put up for visitors. The barracks and watchtower foundations is clearly visible and in the outskirts one can see the trail the German guards patrolled outside the camp fences. This is a place one should visit and pay ones respect when in the area as it tells a grim story in what is today idyllic surroundings.

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Outside Harstad in Northern Norway one can visit the famous "Adolf Cannons" on the former German coastal fortification MKB 5/511 Batterie Theo. The building of this large complex began in 1943 and consisted of four huge cannons, caliber 40.6 Cm. Organisation Todt was responsible for the construction and brought 1200 Soviet POWs for the labour. 
The cannons had been constructed in 1934 and was planned used on a huge "H" Class battleship but it was never built. 
The barrels are approximately 20 meter long and could fire shells up to a distance of 56 Kilometres. The guns could fire three different shells, High Explosive, High Explosive/Armour Piercing (both ca 1030 kg) and the special long range shells called the "Adolf Grenades" (ca 600 kg). The fire rate was 2 shells pr minute. Each shot would take with it 40 kg steel from the barrel so totally it would be able to fire 250-300 rounds. This batterie was never fired at enemies, but has been test fired several times, the last time in 1957.
Today one of the guns is open for the public, but only through guided tours as it is located inside an operative military base. We visited the gun and had a two hours tour through the bunker and the turret "Barbara" which is kept operative for museal purposes. I highly reccommend visiting this place if you are in Northern Norway as it is a spectacular site.

https://adolfkanonen.com/?lang=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40.6_cm_SK_C/34_gun

Yesterday was the last day me, Baard and his son could dig together this season. Their holiday is over and they have to go home. We met up early and went to the German camp where we had dug the large ditch with all the barrack ovens in as it needed to be completed. A bit after 09 we found the place and began removing the last layers of sand and rust in the ditch. It didn`t take long before we began pulling out some nicer relics. A bakelite drinking cup for a German field flask, another Heer belt buckle, a couple of tiny ashtrays and a göffel in very nice condition. We found more fieldkitchen related bits, a huge meat cleaver, a meat grinder and a large cheese grater. We also pulled out a closed metal jar marked "Borax" on the lid. We used a bayonet to carefully open it without damaging it and inside were some rests of borax which had crystalized. More relics found their way onto our piles - pocket knives, a couple of matchbox holders, forks, cream tubes and a toothbrush, also a inkwell full of blue ink and a nice axehead. On the bottom of the ditch were remains of a wooden crate and a half of a mortar grenade box. When we were sure the ditch was empty we filled it back in. 
The rest of the day, which became increasingly warm we roamed around digging signals. The result from that strolling was a pioneer axehead, a fieldflask clip, some training ammo with wooden tips, some live K98 rounds, an Esbit burner and lots of other rust. The heat killed our energy with great efficiency so after 8 hours we called it quits, gathered up our things and went home looking forward to next time.

After a long night fighting with mosquitoes I woke up early after getting a few minutes sleep between the battles. My friend Baard had gotten a hot tip about a Wehrmacht/Gebirgsjäger camp in his friends forest so we had some digging to do. I met up with him and his son by their cottage and we raced to the forest. It had been a rather large camp  and in the May days of 1945 near two thousand soldiers capitulated there. We pulled the detectors out of the van and headed in between the trees. Almost immediately we found proof of German activity as we began digging out horseshoes, some leather dispatch rider goggles and lots of the typical aluminium food tins. On the surface by a tree I found  a mystery piece, a grenade shell where someone had pressed a metal tube with a coned top over. I bet a week long soak in WD-40 will get it loose enough to open without damaging it so we ll know what is inside.
We spent some time checking signals which mostly was nails and the usual rubbish before we found a more interesting corner of the camp. I found myself a small ditch where I dug out a well rusted Daimon torch, some small bottles and a denazified Heer buckle. Then I heard Baard and Skule, his son, calling for me so I got up and rushed over, and then I saw the tables had turned. On our last digs together I ve been having the luck, but now it was Baards. He and Skule had dug a single iron signal in a trench on the outskirts of the camp and found an amazing piece of history. A blacksmithed very well made sign reading "Stab 199 J.D", a sign for the stab of the 199th Infanterie Division, which in Norway is a bit of a legendary unit as it was part of the invading forces fighting the Norwegians in 1940. A spectacular find one do not see often!! I felt a hasty sting of jealousy of course, but I am very happy for him and glad I could take part in the joy of having such a find.
 We had a lunch brake and continued searching. We dug up a big pit holding 99% broken bottles, and the next ditch was much the same but at least it kept more metal and we had a few great finds here. Baard picked a German Erkennungsmarke and I finally found a German toy soldier made from Elastolin which I needed for my kunststoff collection.
We had spent nearly 8 hours out there when we finally closed up the ditch and made a halfway plan for yet another dig together before his holiday is over.

​Keep fighting those biting midges and mosquitoes my friends:)

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My friend is still holidaying up North so yesterday morning I loaded up the car and went for a visit. I met him and his son by the roadside and we drove a kilometer down the valley to check out the remains of a German ammo camp. Just a few hundred meters in, we saw a pile of rust near some large boulders. It was lots of carrying racks for M24 stick grenades, M39 egg grenades, mine parts and a ton of boxes that had contained detonators. We spent a while there searching through the piles , picking out some nicer looking ones worth saving. Following the old road we found bunker after bunker, not the concrete ones but earthen dug outs, some walled up with natural stones. Most of the signals we dug here was wires, nails and rests of crates, but around one of the bunkers we picked up a good handfull of signal flares. 
It was a light rain all the time so after some hours we went soaking wet back to the piles of racks for lunch and to carry our rusted treasures back to the car. It had become dinner time but we decided to keep going. Baard showed the way a few kilometers more down through the valley to a site where it had been a Heer camp. On our stroll towards it we spotted a  close defence trench where we dug out three mortar grenade boxes and a few other relics. After that we went down a slope to where the camp had been. Here relics laid everywhere on the surface and we found large dug outs in the slope sides. Between two such dug outs it was a huge ditch with several barrack ovens sticking out from the ground. We began digging from each our corners. Time flew and relics kept pouring out like water from a faucet. All the usual bits was present, cutlery, porcelain, bottles of all kinds, food tins, bolts, a book, uniform parts, mystery bits and those ovens in the middle of the ditch. Baard had a really surprising find, an American coin from 1892! How on earth did that find it`s way there?? Finds like that really fuels the imagination.  Another mortar grenade box got dug out next to a 20 litre fuel can and a steel coffee box from a field kitchen.
To Baards growing frustration I kept pulling out belt buckles, two Heer buckles and a denazified DLV, Deutscher Luftfahrtverband, (German Aviation Association) buckle, and I found a nice "trench-art" ring. We reached the ovens and dug out all four or five of those heavy beasts and underneath them we found a whole bunch of chess and dam game pieces. We had been searching and digging since before lunch time and the clock crept close to 21 when I removed the last relic for the day, a aluminium field kitchen box in exellent condition. We stretched our old knees and backs, loaded up our finds and closed the ditch back up. It had been an awesome day and Baards son might have become bitten by the rust-hunter bug being out with us for all these hours.

Until next time, stay muddy and keep smiling :)

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Today we decided to visit a museum in Tromsø which we had wanted to see for a long time, the Tromsø Tirpitz Museum. It is located a short distance from the city center, in a German built ammo bunker that belonged to a nearby coastal fortification "Tromsö Süd MKB 1/512". We paid the entrance fee, 75 Nkr pr person, and got lost in history for the next hour or so.
The bunker is filled with items and relics from the battleship which met her fate outside Tromsø the 12th November 1944 when British bombers sunk her after a bombing raid where 971 of Tirpitz` crew lost their lives. The items is accompanied by lots of text and photos telling the story, and the guys running the museum is very knowledgeable and is happy to guide you and answer any questions. The museum can be visited every day during summer except Monday and Tuesday. Opening hours is from 1200 to 1700.
Outside the bunker you can visit the coastal fortification which still has two of the 10.5 cm gun positions intact with underground tunnels connecting them. There is also several other items spread out on the area, i.e a 200 cm searchlight and a rare 38 cm minethrower.
Across the road is another building with an exhibition, also filled with interesting items and photos, this exhibition is only open during the weekends though.
If you find yourself in Tromsø this is the place to visit, and if you want to read more about it or contact the museum here is their website:
​http://www.tromsoforsvarsmuseum.no/

The last week I`ve been busy working on a few diorama projects and enjoying sun, but yesterday it was time to visit forest again. I took the HobbyHistoricaMobil and went roadtripping a few hours Southwards, where a friend knew of some interesting places. I picked him up by the road and he guided us to a patch of forest where it had been a small POW- and WH camp during the war. After a few minutes of trying to figure out on which side of the road the camp lay, we got out the detectors and went in searching. Rust and relics poked out of the ground and the detectors picked up signals more or less all over the place. We dug out a big fire pit containing a ton of uniform buttons, crate- and wagon parts to start with, before we went deeper into the forest. Here and there we saw  foundations of barracks, camp roads were clearly visible and the side of the plateau the camp had stood  was covered by the collapsed barbed wire fences that had surrounded the camp.
After a couple of hours I found a small ditch which I decided needed to be dug out. It was a bit difficult because the top 30-40 cm had been covered with large rocks which roots had grown over and around. The ditch was full of metal and the shards from a thousand broken bottles and windowpanes, and for a while I was about to give up the whole project as no items of interest seemed to be down there. I took out a last shovelfull of the glass filled soil when I spotted a square familiar looking relic. A Stalag POW tag!! The ditch definately had to be completed. The next hours I was excavating the crap out of it while my friend roamed around the site.
The humidity from the soil and the sweat from me attracted every fly, mosquito and horsefly in a miles distance and everytime I stopped digging for just a moment they all seemed to land on me. When I took of my gloves the flies landed on my skin in such hordes that all their tiny legs made it feel like a cat rubbing its head on my hand. I wouldn`t have more tiny crawlers on me if I got buried in an antshill, and of course my can of Deet was safely placed in the car a kilometer away, so it all became an exercise in Zen.
In the end I managed to complete the ditch and the piles of rust and soil around me had grown big. A few good finds had been piled up on my backpack as well. A few nice small bottles, another POW tag was found, but it was unfortunately a steel version, a bunch of cutlery and the next best find of the day was a Kriegsmarine marked coffee mug.
The ditch was empty and the day was turning into evening so we packed up and decided for new adventures come next week.
Thanks for a great day, Baard.

Keep Smiling my friends :)

Feeling the edge of this separator I was sure I had a helmet..

Stalag 309 was a camp in Northern Finland, keeping Soviet soldiers captured on the Northern front. https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_309?fbclid=IwAR3Ro91xE0GY4j5ewjybbmPEZRTdT2xPWSB9c8x070m0z_4WUI1AdQ8Z_1U

The Norwegian summer keeps delivering a fantastic rainy weather with a stable temperature below +10 Celsius. This is exellent digging weather so instead of dreaming about sun and beer by the barn I went out to the dumping pits. I knew where I was going so I didn`t even bring the detector today, just a bag for finds and my shovel.  I went over to one of the places I marked off on my map and opened up the forest floor. After a short while I realized this was not a dumping pit, just the leftovers of a burning place full of nails, barrel bands and bits of a wooden crate.
The next place was the same, but on the third place it really was a dumping pit. I spent a good few hours sifting through it and it delivered much the same result as the previous pits I ve dug the last week. Lots of bottles of all kinds, some bakelite items, a bunch of tiny glass tubes, ampoules and lids from small zunder boxes. I had the weirdest find I ve ever made in a dumping pit too, a small dental bridge. I really wonder what made the person throw that away,,didn`t he need teeth now when the war had ended?! A small hoard of frost cream tubes came out from under the roots, three Esbit burners and the best find today was a german belt, sadly the belt buckle was nowhere to be found but next time I ll bring the detector and search the surrounding area in case it was taken off the belt and chucked into the woods.
​When I had filled back the pit I spent an hour wandering around checking for other ditches and I found a few places and marked them on the map, so lets hope for some real treasures next time :)