Norddalsbrua, a bridge that resisted being blown up during World War II

In the face of a war, infrastructure such as railways and roads become strategically important for any country.

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These communication routes are of key importance for the movement of an army, facilitating the arrival of troops and supplies. The problem is that these infrastructures are a double-edged sword, since they can also be used by the enemy. For this reason, throughout history many of these infrastructures have been designed to be easy to destroy in the event of war.

In 1883, a British company began construction of the Ofotbanen, a 43-kilometre railway line between the Norwegian port of Narvik and Luleå, Sweden. This line was of great industrial and strategic importance, as it allowed iron extracted from Swedish mines to be transported to the aforementioned Norwegian port, thus avoiding the passage of merchant ships through the Danish straits.

At that time, the main threat to this railway line was in the east. Finland had been incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1809 and this railway line passed within 130 kilometres of the border between Norway and Finland. If the Russians captured this railway line, it would be easy for them to reach the port of Narvik, the most important port in northern Norway.

Therefore, when the railway line between Narvik and Luleå was built, the Norwegian Army demanded that a special bridge be built that would be easy to destroy. The bridge was built in a valley 22 kilometres east of Narvik, from the top of Norddalen. This special bridge, known as Norddalsbrua, was prefabricated in Germany. The pier parts were transported to the site by horse-drawn cart from Rombaksbotn, about 9 kilometres away. Once the piers were installed, the rest of the bridge parts were brought in from Narvik.

The Norddalsbrua was first built on 15 November 1902. As the Museum Nord Norway notes, it was 180 metres long and was a pendulum-pillar bridge: "In the foundations of the bridge at the far end were explosion chambers, and railway employees living in the railway guard houses at the end of Norddalen were guards," the museum notes. Everything was in place to blow up the Norddalsbrua as soon as the Russian Army invaded Norway.

But the Russians never made an appearance there. Other invaders did. On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway. Narvik became a place of utmost strategic importance, as the Norwegian government moved from Oslo to the northern city. In addition, the British and French sent troops to support Norway, landing at Narvik, a port that the Germans wanted to control in order to secure supplies from Sweden's iron mines.

Between April and June 1940, Narvik was the scene of fierce fighting. On 14 April 1940, the Norwegian Army blew up the Norddalsbrua. Or at least they tried to: they detonated dynamite charges on the bridge pillars, as planned, and the bridge was damaged but did not collapse. It took the Germans a few weeks to repair it (after all, the bridge had been prefabricated in Germany, which in 1940 certainly did not seem like such a good idea). In May 1940, there was another attempt to blow up the bridge, again without success.

Eventually, the Germans fortified the Norddalsbrua to prevent further attacks. For the rest of the war, the bridge was used to transport valuable iron from Swedish mines to Narvik. After the war, the bridge continued to operate normally, until a serious derailment in March 1975 caused damage to the track. On 1 October 1988, the bridge was no longer in use, following the construction of a new railway line. Today, the Norddalsbrua is abandoned, although it is classified as a monument. You can see its current state here, in a video published by CM Exploration a few days ago (the video is in Swedish, you can activate automatic subtitles in English in the bottom bar of the player):

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Main photo: Eckhard Pecher. The Norddalsbrua in a photo taken in 2005.