One thing I hated about my history classes was how absent Norway was in the text books and discussions of WW2. Besides reading comments from "historians" I want to hear from the real people of Norway of what was life like during that time.
If you have any relatives or stories that you can share, please let me know!
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Posted by batukaming
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What I’ve heard apart from the resistance work, things went along kind of like normal. There were rations though, hard to get enough supplies. I believe people for instance held pigs in the city, for food.
Scary if you were in the same area as Henry oliver Rinnan
My grandfather used to tell me it wasn’t really that bad (he was a child though so will likely have been oblivious) he did however get run over by a German truck and broke both his legs, the German infantry drove to the local hospital straight away and he made a full recovery. He did tell me after the war he was playing in a local park and found a K98 rifle buried in the mud, took it to his older brother who was in the norwegian army and got chastised by him, turned out it was still loaded, he marched them down to Stavanger harbour and threw it into the water, its probablly still down there over by the ferry terminal.
For being occupied, it wasn’t that bad for most people. Norwegian were not seen as an enemy race, an culture wise, we weren’t too different from them. German was the lingua franca in Norway before the war.
It was war and occupation, plus minority prosecution, and all the bad stuff that went on in the third reich, so it was pretty bad. But compared to places like Poland, or USSR, it was more a society full of restrictions, and very strict rules, rather then sheer terror.
People mostly had food, and was left alone.
Depends on what part of Norway and when. Northern part of Norway, mainly Finnmark were totally burned down and destroyed in the end parts of the war.. other parts of norway didn’t experienced that much of the war just carried on with their life. For the german soldiers in ww2, coming to norway was like holiday.. many of them finding norwegian girlfriends, learning to ski and other stuff.. you can find a several picture of it in the [digitalmuseum-site](https://digitaltmuseum.no/search?topic=%22Tysk+soldat%22). (pictures in link are of german soldiers in norway.. as we say in norway … picture tells more than thousand words). Keep in mind that norway were initially neutral in ww2 and many people then than today lived ruraly probably knowing not that much caring or knowing about stuff on the internantional arena.
Those experiencing the worst stuff here might probably have been the POW from places like Yugoslavia, Sovietunion and other places.. their fate was brutale. POWs captured in the balkans or in during barbarossa etc. were sent to built roads/railways and other stuff in norway almost working to death many of them. You can see a picture in [this article](https://www.nrk.no/trondelag/jugoslaviske-krigsfangers-historie-1.8273876) about them..
My father’s parents lived in Bergen, second largest city in Norway. They had shortages and lack of food. Nazis took everything for themselves. Nazis built military fortified installations next to civilian infrastructure like schools and residential buildings so when the allied bombed those they bombed us.
My grandfather on my mother’s side sailed in the merchant fleet so he spent the war in Britain when he was not on a ship in the Atlantic being hunted by nazi submarines. Insanely lucky man. The ships he was on got torpedoed three times, each time he was on shoreleave and survived.
My wife’s grandparents lived in the countryside outside of Bergen. And they were used to starving. Not much of interest where they lived so they grew potatoes and did fishing and lived off the land as they had always done.
Apparently in 1944, Edvard Munch died holed up in his flat in Oslo surrounded by his works, terrified.
He had been touted as an exemplar of Aryan artistry, but he wanted nothing to do with them. Poor guy.
I asked the old folks.
We were very very suspicious of other people. One could not know who was a nazi and would turn you in. We all kept very quiet.
The germans came to the farm and made records, so they could come back and confiscate the produce later. We hid away as much as we could, one time we hid some of the the calves in the silo.
They wanted to know tho owned the fishing boat. We told them the truth it was gunnar’s boat and gave them the address to the graveyard where he lies. The rouse kept fish on our table.
Eli was a nurse, she was forced to tend to wounded enemies. She remembered treating one officer and one private in particular.
«They would share the food when i did not look, the officers got better foodrations. I watered down the morphine for their surgeries. I was so angry with them.»
In a strange way, we came out of it with less debt (I wonder why aswell) and healthier. Apparently we are a lot of fish.
My late grandfather’s age was in the latter half of the single digits when the nazis occupied Norway, and according to him daily life went on pretty much as usual. That said, he did hate Germany until his last day, so I have a feeling there were things he learned after the fact and/or things he didn’t want to talk about.
Aside from him, I also remember older people from the area around his village talking about this and that person during the war, and which people they remembered being “a little striped” (a low-level collaborator) and one of them suddenly exclaiming with utter venom in her voice “On the contrary, <name I don’t remember> was a goddamn *Quisling*!”
Mostly boring, with some drama from time to time. My grandfather lived in Tretten. His direct experiences with the nazis were when they came to seize their farm animals.
He had to eat bark bread and could forget about any luxuries such as coffee or tobacco. He heard about people being arrested and tortured/killed, but no one talked about who were in the resistance. When the war was coming to a halt, a nazi informant was shot and killed in front of his wife, who never told the authorities who had killed him. A «tyskertøs» reported her husband to the nazis, who interned and tortured him, while she spent the rest of the war in a relationship with a German officer. After the war, she went back into relationship with her husband.
They were busy with getting by with what little they had, and stay away from trouble, as internment of someone wouldn’t just affect themselves but also their family, who relied on them.
My grandpa was a very strict and serious man. Listening to his wise words truly vaccinated me against Nazism.
My family in Trondheim and Frosta has some stories. Too many to recount here in detail but they range from resistance (there was a bombing at the nazi office), to survival (borrowing clothes to steal petrol and supplies), to Mr Churchill’s Easter eggs (depth charges dropped on Easter Sunday into fjord waters to target a German sub stationed nearby), to compassion for the teenage soldiers who were stationed in their homes (they were basically home sick teenager soldiers given a heavy task).
My grandfather had a general store back then.
He mostly complained about how hard it was to get goods, and how hard it was to get fuel for the fishing boats.
There wasn’t much specific to complain about, anyway. War is war, and it sucks for everyone, but it sucked significantly less here than in other places. There was one incident where a German soldier shot someone over a misunderstanding, but that soldier got transferred away right quick. No idea what happened to him, but hopefully they sent him somewhere he got to meet other trigger happy soldiers. There wasn’t much to bomb, so they just didn’t. Nobody could really escape anywhere, so the garrison wasn’t very big.
Since the fisheries were pretty good here, nobody really went hungry. The Germans paid well enough for what they took. Or perhaps they were cheap, but people weren’t used to seeing much money at the time, but they thought it was good enough payment to not complain.
Some Englishmen came and took the Germans away at the end of the war, and that was that.
Many cities was bombed and destroyed. Many ships were bombed and sank. People who resisted were sent to camps where they were tortured and also killed by the nazis. Food were rationed. The north of Troms and Finnmark were burnt down in 1944. My mothers family lost everything when the nazis burned it down. My uncle was in the navy and was killed when the ship was bombed, 23 years old. Another uncle attended the D-day in Normandie and was shot, but survived. My father was a sailor during the war. He was only 17 years when he startet working on «Hurtigruten» ship i 1940. He was lucky to survive, because three of the ships he worked on was later attacked. One of them sunk and all the passengers and crew died.
770 jews was deported to concentration camps. It was the «state police», norwegians who did it, on command from the nazis. After that they stole all the belongings and homes of the jews. Norway had a nazi government during the war, and Vidkun Quisling proclaimed himself the leader.
Towns that was bombed:
Kirkenes: Was one of the most bombed cities in Europe, with over 300 bombing raids from Soviet aircraft.
Bodø: Was subjected to heavy German bombing in May 1940, which left large parts of the city in ruins.
Namsos: Was hit hard by German air raids in April 1940, and large parts of the wooden buildings burned down.
Kristiansund: Was subjected to extensive German bombing early in the war, which resulted in great destruction.
Steinkjer: Large parts of the city were destroyed by German bombing in April 1940.
Molde: Was bombed in April 1940 when the city served as a residence for the Norwegian government and the king.
Elverum: Was bombed by German aircraft on April 11, 1940.
Bergen: Exposed to both Allied bombing raids (including against Laksevåg in 1944 and 1945) and accidental explosions.
Oslo: Bombed on several occasions, including Victoria Terrace in 1945.
Narvik: Fierce fighting and bombing during the Battle of Narvik in 1940.
Source: forsvaretsforum
I highly recommend reading Norway’s War by Ferguson.
My grandmother was like 6yrs old when the occupation started. Her and her 8 sibling and parents lived in a rather small home for the size of the family out in the contryside close to sweden along the coast. Despite being so many they only had 3 beds in the house, one of them being in the livingroom by an outside door they no longer used. At some point a group of german soldiers came up to the house and knocked on that door as it was the most obvious door from the road. It scared the living crap out of everyone who was sitting on the bed at the time. Her father went out the back door and around the house to greet the soldiers. They were looking for houses to take for themselves and other soldiers to live in. He invited them inside and apparently they thankfully decided after seeing a family of 11 sharing 3 beds that they would leave the house alone.
During the next few years she and her friends would go up to passing soldiers and ask for chocolates, they usually got some aswell. Apparently the german chocolate was better than the norwegian one…
She had at other times seen some bombers flying overhead towards the bigger city that was closest aswell as towards the coastal fortifications that were in her area.
I wish i had gotten more stories out of her while her memory was still strong, now the dementia has taken over sadly.
My mom was 5 years old when the war started, and my grandfather was active in the resistance, so I heard many stories.
My grandfather was also a fisherman so they had more food than most. The cattle and other animals on the farm were reserved for the Nazis though. But the absence of food and things was a constant.
Coz my mom was a kid, she needed new shoes as she grew, and that was hard to come by. Even the materials for shoes. A friend of the family was a cobbler, so managed to make shoes out of fish leather. Not very durable.
She would also often tell me of one birthday, when she got a new jacket. Very proud of something new, she wore it to school that day. Walking home it was raining, and the jacket just … dissolved. Turns out it was made of paper material.
My grandfather was also chair of the commission for the poor in his town, so I heard a lot about their struggle to give the poor and old food. The Nazis wouldn’t allocate food for them, so my grandfather had to raise it in donations from the community. He also forged the numbers of food in stock so they could steal from the Germans that way. On a regular basis he would then gather the food, and row it across the fjord in the dead of night to where the poorhouse was. If they were caught they would have been arrested.
Also, at some point in the war the allies/Norwegians abroad started bombing German bases in Norway. Consequently the German troops were quartered in private homes. Our family farm was one of those. Tanks were stored in the barn, and the Nazis basically took over the house, leaving the family of 5 with only one room. That experience was very traumatizing for my mom, as from that point onward she dealt with the occupying force every day.
My (German) grandfather was stationed in Norway for about a year. He was a motorcycle driver somewhere in western Norway and had very positive memories in general. He said multiple times Norwegians tried to buy the motorcycle from him and kids wanted to ride in the side wagon. (which he was not allowed to say yes to)
In general he really liked the place and MUCH preferred it to Africa, where he was then later deployed.
My grandfather was in prison for most of it and my grandmother smuggled cash for the resistance in my uncle’s stroller.
Sadly none of them liked to talk about it and neither are alive today but i don’t get the impression they found it very enjoyable.
I dont have too much time right now but i can share some short stories my grandpa told me.
He lived on a farm where parts of it ended up being used by german soldiers and they obviously had no choice when the soldiers said “we need to use this building” etc. My grandpa was a teenager during the war so plenty of the soldiers where not that much older. He talked about them mostly behaving nice and respectful but some of them were known to be angry or authoritative.
One story were about my grandpa and some friends laughing loudly while going past some soldiers and at least one of the soldiers thought they were laughing and making jokes on the soldiers expense, they ended up putting my grandpa against the barn wall and aiming rifles against him, they obviously did not shoot but they locked him in an attic until the next morning as punishment for laughing. My grandpa said he did not remember if he actually had made a joke about the Germans but he said it was quite likely that he did haha.
Generally for my grandpa life on a farm during the occupation was not to bad, food was not really a issue because there were a lot of bartering going on even though getting some food from shops were harder. My granpa actually grew tobacco and foraged items to trade and since tobacco was harder to buy (i think) he did decent with that. Even though there were soldiers stationed in the village and in his family’s farm (for some duration at least) it was probably easier to pretend life was going as normal on the country side.
The “generational” trauma was still something that affected him towards the end of his life, he was very afraid of the worlds direction towards conflict because he had seen first hand what war did (he was stationed in Berlin in 1946 as part of the peace keeping force) and i also believe there were stories about the occupation he did not want to talk about (even when some of the stories he shared were quite extreme, like the put up against the wall for laughing)
My grandmother was a teenager at the time. They lived in southern Norway, and were occupied. The Nazis were living in their house alongside the family. My grandmother never really talked about it, the only thing she would say was that the soldiers were very polite. Eventually her parents decided it would be safer for her if she left. She got on a ship and came to America by herself at 18 years old.
It probably varied from place to place and what type of soldiers you got.
I’ll just say that my grandmother was afraid of Germans her entire life. She got visibly upset if she heard German spoken around her.
Hard but not hardest among occupied countries.
It was not fun
My family in the centre of Bergen were heavily impacted. My great great grandma was tortured by the nazis because they were looking for her sons. My grandmother and her siblings were moved to family in the countryside for protection.
My other family from the countryside around Bergen said life was pretty normal, except for the Nazis in the streets. They were poor farmers, so they were already struggling.
My mother was a little girl during the war, in one of the bigger cities. There was never quite enough food. Everybody were extremely skinny, after the war she was told by the doctor to drink cream to gain some fat on her body.
On her way to school she would pass a prison camp for Russian prisoners of war. There was a hand sticking out under the fence, and she would place her packed lunch in it every day. The hand would give back little carved wooden birds or toys made from woodchips. I still have some of the birds.
One day as she gave away her lunch, the gate opened and a huge German shepard dog charged out and attacked her. The German guard who followed it called it back when he saw that it was just a little girl. But my mother is afraid of dogs to this day.
One night the nazis charged their apartment and arrested my grandfather. My grandmother couldn’t get out of bed, because she had thrown her clothes on top of the illegal radio when she went to bed.
My grandfather was released after a few days, but his best friend was shot.
My husband’s mother lived on a farm that was occupied by the Germans.
Everybody refused to talk about it after the war. Even when asked. We can only speculate.
My parents were in their teens in Norway during the war. They rarely talked about it. Mostly it was the general hardship around shortages in certain foodstuffs and supplies that they recalled. It was oppressive and disturbing and never far away. It set Norwegians against Norwegians which was a bitter pill.
Sadly I didnt ask much about the war when my grandparents were still alive. They were all kids/early teens during the war. It didnt sound like they had much negative to say about it.
My grandmother (father side) told me people from the resistance were hiding in their attic. She was not told about it until later because she was so young that she probably could not hold the secret. Her uncle was in the local resistance and was supposedly captured and on the way to some camp when the war ended.
My other grandmother (mother side) told me they got candy from the German soldiers. She also told about a radio that was hidden in the Hamnsundhellar.
As a Sami, i can tell about what my grandparents experienced. Both my grandparents were a part of a reindeer herding family. They kept their animals more spread out so that planes flying above them didn’t think that the herd was being watched by anyone. They would also be careful with fires as to make sure no one saw the smoke.
The reindeer herders were ordered to go to Helligskogen in the Lyngen area, where their animals would get butchered to feed the army. Many herding families went into hiding because of this in order to save their animals, and both my grandparent’s families did just that
My grandma spoke German, so they forced her to be an interpreter. She hated it!
I never heard much from my grandpa about it, but he did somehow smuggle food to Soviet POWs in his village.
(A lot of soviet prisoners were used to build «Festung Norwegen» – the defenses along the coast in anticipation of an Allied attack)
My great-grandfather was taken to Bergen and interrogated by the nazis, as they heard he was a “communist”. He was eventually released as they realised he was just an “organist” in the church.
It was quite tough. My grandparents on both sides had their teenage years under occupation.
(For context all 4 lives from around Hønefoss to Ski, so eastern Norway in general – in 4 different places).
A few tidbits, they needed to put curtains up at night – afraid to get bombed. They had youth parties, but the only alcohol they had was homemade Aquavit from Caraway – popularly called nakkeskudd, or neckshot. Food was rationed and hard to come by, most people had chickens / bunnies in their garden for feasts and what not.
I’ll contribute with the largely failed attempt at building a nazi state i Norway during the war.
Fascism was a big thing in the interwar period. While Italy and Germany are the most obvious examples, most European countries had their own home grown strain of fascism, usually in the mold of Italian fascism. The British Union of Fascists and its leader Oswald Mosley are good examples of failed fascist parties.
Norway was no different. Initially, Norwegian right wing populism was manifested in the Fatherland League (Fedrelandslaget). Founded by Joakim Lemkuhl (son of Kristofer Lemkuhl for howm “Statsraad Lemkuhl” is named). Founded the party on the basis of conservatism, anti-communism, corporatism and nationalism. The Fatherland League was heavily inspired by Mussolini’s Italian Fascism, and at its height in 1930 counted 100 000 members. One famous member was polar explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, who passed that same year. For reasons that will become obvious, the Fatherland League never really got anywhere in the long term.
However, the fascist strain that would artificially take root in Norway was Vidkun Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling (National Assembly/Joining/Meeting, it’s difficult to translate). Quisling was a rather eccentric character, obsessed with Norse mythology and racial theories. He worked with Nansen in Russia during the civil war, providing humanitarian aid to the stricken populace. While there, he married a Ukrainian woman (two actually. At the same time. No time to get into that, but nevertheless a hilarious anecdote) named Maria, who would ultimately care for his memory as a widow.
Back in Norway he served briefly as minister of defense in a conservative coalition for the Farmer Party, where he ordered troops out to crush a workers’ strike in Menstad (Menstadslaget). While no Norwegian soldiers would ultimately fire on civilian striking workers, Quisling was largely blamed for their deployment. When out of government he founded NS in 1933, which was a cardboard copy of the German Nazi party, just with a different logo. NS saw no electoral success during its existence, and Quisling was largely mocked for his Nazi LARP stance. After the rise of Nazism in Germany, and their crimes became largely publicized, fascism and right wing populism became a lot less popular in Scandinavia. In 1936 the social democratic Labor Party (Arbeiderpartiet, DNA) was able to form a government for the first time, signifying the Norwegian people’s shift away from the right.
Quisling colluded with the Germans to facilitate the German invasion in 1940. As German troops entered Oslo, Quisling made his way down to the national radio broadcasting studio and announced himself as the new leader of Norway. Exactly no one, not even the Germans, recognized this move. However, as Germany completed the occupation of mainland Norway, they set up an occupation authority under Reichskommisar Josef Terboven. Initially, Terboven tried to rid himself of Quisling altogether, but Quisling received support from Hitler, and an awkward diarchy was established in Norway between Quisling and Terboven. NS became the only legal party in Norway and tried to build a corporatist fascist state on the German model in Norway. Quisling attempted to cloak his regime in a veneer of legitimacy by making some rather creative readings of the constitution. This was mostly in vain as NS was a transparent German puppet regime and Norway was an occupied country. While NS membership ranks swelled, this was mostly because party membership meant some special privileges and better rations.
He tried to force all Norwegian teachers into joining the NS in order to start ideological education of the youth. This policy largely failed because of the civil disobedience of the teachers. Mandatory conscription into labor service to aid the German war effort also came to naught because of civil disobedience and sabotage by the resistance. Quisling did ultimately help Himmler raise Norwegian SS regiments who would dishonor themselves and their nation by aiding and abating in the genocide of Slavs and Jews on the eastern front. The SS-men themselves would claim to their dying days that they only fought in combat operations against armed opponents, thus their self-styled name “Frontkjempere” (Front fighters).
The NS-regime came to its ignominious end in the May days of 1945 as the German war effort collapsed. Resistance men came from the woods to disarm the German garrisons. The police seamlessly switched allegiance back to the legal government in London, and Quisling was arrested. He was tried and convicted for treason and ultimately executed by firing squad as a traitor.
His legacy is mostly his name, as “Quisling” has crept into the vocabulary, both of Norwegian and English, as a byword for traitor.
Not so good from 40-45
My grandparents where kids/teens during the war so they where kept away as much as possible but my step grandpa in particular had many stories, he hid radios and guns in the woods and helped people escape. Just a young boy/man, should have been in school but he was skiing miles in the woods to hide stuff, and guide people to freedom in Sweden. My great grandma was a seamstress so she traded clothes and other sewing things for food to keep her family fed and doing alright trough it all. Step grandpa was a farmer, close ISH to the Swedish boarder so he and his friends and family did what they could. One of their neighbours was a known nazi and Gramps never stoped being suspicious of that family 😂 they currently have a confederation flag painted caravan outside their house sooo… .
Fishermen with nothing
Overall, if you didn’t get engaged with the resistance or the nazi regime, it want to bad. My grandmother got what i suspect is a mild case of ptsd from the bombing raids in Bergen. The rest of her life, she hid in a windowless room on new year’s eve.
A cousin of my father’s fought against the Germans in Gloppedalsura in 1940, and then later escaped to England via Sweden, Finland, Soviet, India and finally a boat around Africa. He served in the Norwegian regiment in Scotland, got transferred to an MTB to see some action, and finally got dropped into the area North of Oslo to help organise the resistance in case the allied had to dig out the Germans. He published a book that’s available on Nationalbiblioteket, “Eplekart er kjøretøy”. I vaguely remember meeting him as a kid, and he was far too patient with my pestering about the war, which I considered to be a cool thing at the time.
I have some diary enterys from when my grandfather was born in Oslo, nothing spectacular, but a view into daily life in Oslo during the occupation.
Today you were born (September 1942). And what a day! War and unrest ravaged the country. In the third year, Norway is now a participant in the most total and destructive war ever waged. It spans all continents and from the North Pole to the South Pole there are acts of war.
In the fourth year, Norway is now isolated from all imports and communication with its connections and with a foreign occupying power in the country, rations are getting smaller and smaller.
Not only food, but also all other necessities are rationed and practically removed from the market.
The joy of your birth is great and all-conquering, but is sometimes divided by the thought of what the future will bring. Even daily needs cause difficulties and worries. None of what you as a newborn should and must have can be bought in the ordinary way. There is a fight for the smallest thing. A pacifier, for example. The city had to be combed by relatives and friends. I have not yet got hold of a pram and things are looking bad so far.
Food and sustenance for you and your mother is also a huge problem, but in this too grandparents, aunts and uncles etc. etc. help to a tolerably good result. The biggest problem, however, is how to get you the warmth you need. Here it is very little scorching and cold and unpleasant. All in all, a boring season for your entrance, but rest assured – we will manage, and we will manage well!
So you were born on … September 1942 during the second air raid warning of the day. Earlier in the afternoon, Allied planes had dropped bombs on the city and people were in a great mood for various reasons. The party that was in power in Norway at the time – thanks to the enemy forces that kept the country occupied, had called a large meeting on the 25th: “Historical and of eternal significance”, they said themselves. – In reality, statistics and falsification.
My grandma lived in Namsos during the war, and as have been mentioned, the city was heavily bombed at the start of the war. She remembers running to the woods and hiding from the planes. She has told me about the Slavic POW that were brought to the city to build roads and other infrastructure, how most of the Germans would look the other way when the Norwegians gave the prisoners food. One day there was a new officer in town, and he reacted when my grandma gave a prisoner some bread. He put his rifle against her breast and berated her for giving food to the beasts. When my grandma told my great grandma, my great grandma went to the head of the city and told him off. They never saw that officer again. My great grandma truly had guts!
they burned down my grandmothers village so she was forced to move into shelter barracks, which were pretty bad, with very meager rations
Glad i wasn’t born yet until 95!.
Or else i would’ve have been the hero who defeated the Nazis and gotten all the sexy broads.