Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 1, 1946 A major European airline was established to handle the intercontinental flights of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This new entity was named Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), and it specifically started out as a consortium pooling together the operations and resources of Swedish Intercontinental Airlines, Danish Air Lines and Norwegian Air Lines. Per A.... Continue Reading →
Maritime transportation entrepreneur Thea Foss was born in the hamlet of Eidsberg in Norway in 1857. She immigrated to the United States in the early 1880s. Not long after arriving in her new homeland, she married fellow Norwegian immigrant Andreas Oleson in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (The couple subsequently changed their last name to Fossen to distinguish themselves... Continue Reading →
November 26, 1902 The Skreia Line, a railway line in eastern Norway, made its debut. Measuring a little over 13 miles (20.9 kilometers) in length, this single-track rail was a branch line from the GjøvikLine. The Skreia Line specifically ran between the villages of Reinsvoll and Skreia in the district of Toten. Paul Due One... Continue Reading →
August 16, 1983 The first subsea (underwater) tunnel in Norway made its formal debut. This two-lane vehicular tunnel, measuring 9,480 feet (2,890 meters) in length, was built during the course of three years beneath the Bussesundet strait in northeastern Norway. The tunnel connects the town of Vardø on the island of Vardøya with the village... Continue Reading →
A new railway line made its official debut in south Norway. The Krøderen Line, spanning 16 miles (26 kilometers) from the Krøderen lake to the town of Vikersund, was built as a narrow-gauge branch line of the Radsfjorden Line. The formal opening of the Krøderen Line took place without any fanfare; the actual celebration for... Continue Reading →
Jens Theodor Paludan Vogt, a civil engineer, and public transportation pioneer died at the age of 62 in Norway’s capital city of Kristiania. (In 1924, the city formally readopted its original name of Oslo.) Vogt had been born in 1830 in the Norwegian parish of Fiskum. To say that Jens Vogt came from a highly... Continue Reading →
In southeastern Norway, a new railway line connecting the village of Eidsfoss with the municipality of Tønsberg was dedicated. Jørgen Løvland, who was the minister of labor at the time and would briefly serve as prime minister of Norway later in the decade, officially opened the Tønsberg-Eidsfoss Line (Tønsberg-Eidsfossbanen, or TEB). At the time of... Continue Reading →
The Tjeldsund Bridge in northern Norway made its debut. The 3,304-foot-long suspension road bridge, which has 32 spans altogether, crosses the Tjeldsundet strait between the municipalities of Skånland on the mainland and Harstad on the island of Hinnøya. The Tjeldsund Bridge took 30 months to build, with 112,000 bags of cement and 1,200 tons of... Continue Reading →
One of the first bus routes in Norway began regular service between Steinkjer and Namsos in the central part of the country. This bus route also had the distinction of being the first one in Norway to transport mail, with stops en route at a total of six post offices. This considerably shortened the time... Continue Reading →
Pioneering canal engineer Engebret Soot was born in the municipality of Aurskog (now part of Aurskog-Høland) in southeastern Norway. At the time of Soot’s birth, the Kingdom of Norway was united with the Kingdom of Denmark as a state known as Denmark-Norway; this integrated state remained in existence until 1814, when Norway established itself as... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 