Traces of the Polarbahn

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.

Each nail on the map is a camp.

Most of the prisoners was from the Red Army, but there was also a smaller number of Polish POWs. They all lived under brutal conditions, bad and little food, violent treatment from the Germans and horrible winters so death was never far away. From 1942 it was sent aprx 145000 POWs to Norway and by the liberation in 1945 the count was aprx 87000, and when Red Cross surveyed the camps in may 1945 most of the POWs was sick. There was also another group of prisoners that lived under far worse conditions, the Yugoslavs, but thats for another article coming up soon.

Today there is still many traces of the camps along the railroad. Each camp had their own burial ground where memorials was erected after the war. Most of these lay in ruin today as the government destroyed them in a secret operation in 1951, "Operation Asphalt".
  Since many camps and memorials was close to sensitive military areas the government was afraid Soviet spies would visit and wanted to centralize the fallen POWs in one big graveyard on Tjøtta south of Mo i Rana, and so they did, destroying and desecrating the gravesites and memorials the liberated prisoners had made. A few memorials survived, and several more has been restored and maintained by locals and can be visited in the forests.

"To the memory of the Soviet soldiers that lost their lives in Norway 1941-1945 and that was buried here"

Many of the campsites is close to roads or trekking routes but is so overgrown and hidden by nature that only the ones with a interest in the subject knows they are there. I love going to these places as they have a eerie ghostly vibe to them. Often the camps was so infested with fleas and sickness that they was burned down and some was used to house Germans as they awaited transport back to their fallen reich. As time went any usable materials was removed by locals but as you ll see there is still lots of traces.

The two pics above, a view from a forest trekking path, then stepping 7-8 meters into the forest there is much to see..

Following a road, then turning left into the forest where the reindeer is and another camp is found.

Next to a drivers resting point is some very visible remains of a camp. This one housed 600-700 Soviet prisoners.