December 9, 2018
In the northern part of Norway, the Hålogaland Bridge in Narvik Municipality made its formal debut. This suspension bridge crosses the mouth of the fjord known as the Rombaken. The Hålogaland Bridge carries European Route E6, a major north-south thoroughfare for Norway as well as the western coast of Sweden, across that fjord.
With a total length of 5,030 feet (1,533 meters), the Hålogaland Bridge is one of Norway’s longest bridges. At the time of its completion, this structure was also the longest suspension bridge within the entire Arctic Circle.
Work on the Hålogaland Bridge began on February 18, 2013. During the spring of 2018, the construction of this bridge was featured on an episode of the Science Channel TV series Building Giants.
The inauguration of the Hålogaland Bridge on December 9 of that year was marked with considerable fanfare. Those festivities began at noon with attendees allowed to walk across the new bridge. Other highlights of that afternoon’s dedication of the Hålogaland Bridge included several speeches and cultural performances. The ribbon-cutting for the bridge took place at 3:00 p.m. Erna Solberg, who served as prime minister of Norway from 2013 to 2021, carried out that ceremonial duty. At 4:30 p.m. that day, the Hålogaland Bridge was first opened to regular traffic.
Photo Credit: Karl Brodowsky (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Hålogaland Bridge, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A5logaland_Bridge
Transportation History 