Why The Quiet Heroism Of Norway's War Sailors Is As Relevant As Ever

Forbes

08-05-2025

D/S Hestmanden, one of Norway's many cargo ships that played a key role in the Allied war effort.
On the Shetland Islands today, a poignant 80th commemoration of Victory in Europe Day in 1945 has been going on all day. Alongside the harbour in Lerwick are five fishing boats, once part of the clandestine Anglo-Norwegian Shetland Bus mission, and the wartime cargo ship Hestmanden. Among the Norwegians who have sailed the boats over to thank the people of Scotland for their help in the World War II are the descendants of crews from the Shetland Buses and many other Norwegian war sailors.
The story of the Norwegian war sailors is one of courage, resilience and humility. Although Norway's population was fewer than 3mn when the war began, it had the fourth largest merchant naval in the world. Norwegian ships carried oil, coal, wool, food, medical and other essential supplies from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
'Britain and Norway have always had a close friendship," observes Jorn Madslien, the grandson of a Norwegian war sailor. 'It's particularly relevant today when maritime co-operation is essential. But without the Norwegian merchant navy, the U.S. could not have got involved in the war."
Over the Second World War, more than 4,000 ordinary Norwegian sailors - mostly men - were killed. Yet they went unrewarded and unrecognised even by their own government. Many died before an incremental pension contribution was made many years later while the government only issued an official apology in 2003.
Many of the survivors remained deeply traumatised by what they saw and experienced during the war. Most barely spoke about it, some never. Besides, few Norwegians wanted to talk much about the war, with recriminations over collaboration fresh.
Today, however, with the help of service archives, the families involved and tales handed down from survivors, we know more. More recently, War Sailor, the most expensive Norwegian film ever made, has told the story on Netflix.
Jorn Madslien, grandson of Norwegian war sailor Jorge Maslien.
Jorgen Madslien was a policeman in the Norwegian police force when Germany invaded Norway. When he was offered promotion to a senior level, he chose to go to sea rather than remain in the police force under the Nazis.
Sailing may have been helpful in his work with the Norwegian Resistance; only last summer did the family realise that Madslien had played a far greater role in the than he had let on. Madslien became the commander of a small local group.
Archives reveal Madslein's cell was betrayed. He was arrested, tortured and imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp until the end of the war, when he weighed just 42 kilos.
'We only know this because he wrote a letter to my grandmother when he was freed,' his grandson Jorn Maslien says.'He never spoke about it to anyone other than his next-door neighbour.'
In total, over 2,000 men and women from the Resistance were executed or died in died concentration camps. Reprisals against civilians following Resistance Operations were also often harsh. Yet theirr activities forced Germany to keep as many as 300,000 - 350,000 men in Norway, preventing them from fighting elsewhere.
When German troops landed in Norway's key ports in April 1940, the command was given that all Norwegian sailors should sail their boats back into Norwegian waters or German ports. None did.
Most of the Norwegian fleet was at sea, and so beyond German control. Many sailors initially headed for Norway's northern ports, which were close to an early counteroffensive brought to an end by the fall of France and the Allied withdrawal.
The King, Crown Prince and government escaped to London, where they set up the Norwegian government in exile. Crown Prince, later King Olav, was appointed Chief of Defence. Throughout the war, the Norwegians worked closely with the British government and Allied forces.
Control of the merchant fleet was vested in the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission, Notraship, a joint organisation run from the U.K. by Norwegian and British officials.
An encounter between the factory vessel "Jan Wellem" of the German whaling fleet and the "Norvinn" ... More of the Norwegian merchant fleet, 1930s. (Photo by: United Archives/M-Verlag Berlin/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
In June 1940, the Allies requested that Norwegian boats outside Norway sail to Allied or neutral ports if safe to do so. Not all, but the majority did.
Several Norwegian ships were in Swedish ports. Among them were vessels containing steel and ball bearings, badly needed by the U.K. to make aircraft and tank parts. Germany demanded that Sweden seize the ships, but Sweden, a neutral country, replied that it had no powers to prevent these ships from sailing to England.
Between 1940 - 41, five ships made the voyage successfully. Swedish and British lawyers also strengthened the law concerning vessels from an occupied country sailing from a neutral third country. Germany tried to put a kvarstad (stay put in Swedish) order on the remaining vessels.
Operation Performance, the second effort to get the ships out of Sweden was however a disaster. Many of the ships sunk as soon as they reached Karingon, the last island in the Gothenburg archipelago.
Ragnhild Bie's grandfather was on board only one of the two out of ten British and Norwegian ships that made it. 'They were called the Lucky Ships.'
Her grandfather then returned to for the third and final operation. This time, his ship was hit and sunk. He escaped on a lifeboat to Norway and made it back to neutral Sweden, from where he flew to England, where he spent the remainder of the war running refugee camps as well as working for the Special Operations Executive (who masterminded the Shetland Bus missions).
'In 1943, the U.S. government donated three submarine chasers, cutting losses on Norwegian cargo ships and ensuring the rest of the Shetland Bus missions were successful," says Bie, a war historian.
The Berganger, torpedoed later in the Atlantic
In 1940, Harald Lunde was a young Norwegian merchant navy sailor on board D/S Davanger when it was struck by a German U-boat (U-48) as it sailed from Curaçao on September 14 1940, carrying nearly 10,000 tons of fuel oil en route to Bermuda.
The ship sank within four minutes. Lunde managed to escape onto a lifeboat, which drifted in the Atlantic for a week before reaching Ireland. Lunde saw friends die on the raft. Only 12 men out of a crew of 29 survived.
He went back to sea, but on June 2 1942, his ship the Berganger was torpedoed en route from Buenos Aires and Santos to New York and Boston.
This is the report he gave his superiors. By today's standards, it's a model of understatement.
After a day, the two consignments of surviving crew were picked up by Norwegian cargo ship and a U.S. destroyer.
Chart showing the position where Berganger was sunk
Lunde had joined the merchant fleet as a seaman in 1934. He did not return home until 1946. From 1948 - 1973, he sailed for Westfal-Larsen, often as captain on the South American route.
Communication between those at sea and their families was almsost entirely through letters. 'It could take months between each message,' says his granddaughter Vilde Regine Villnes.
His sons, Oddvar and Gunnar, were only around two and a half years old when they first met their father. 'Of the 25 years he worked at sea, he was away for 20. The older children describe him as somewhat of a stranger, while my mother, the youngest, has a very different and more personal memory of him,' she says.
The Norwegian government only officially acknowledged his wartime service in 1973. Lunde was given nothing by the Norwegian government until 1973. ''He received 9,000 NOK in compensation (equivalent to 180 kroner per month), which felt like a token sum considering the sacrifices he had made.'
'Whenever I face doubt or fear, I think of him — a young man adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, holding on to hope and refusing to give up,' Vilde says.
The story of these quiet war heroes is about humility, courage and resilience - all qualities that make great leaders. Their history is as relevant today as ever.