Hessdalen Lights
The Hessdalen lights also subsided in 1986, but for a period of several years they were the target of a determined investigation which combined the efforts of ufologists, scientists, and locals.The Hessdalen Valley, stretching across 7½ miles of central Norway near the Swedish border and holding no more than 150 inhabitants, began to experience odd luminous phenomena in November 1981.
The lights sometimes appeared as often as 4 times a day, often below the horizon along mountain tops, near the ground, or on the roofs of houses.
Usually white or yellow/white, they typically were shaped like cigars, spheres, or an upside down Christmas tree.
In this last instance, according to miner Bjarne Lillevold, the light was bigger than the cottage beside it.
It was about 10' above the hill and had a red blinking light on it, there seemed also to be a curious blanket over the whole thing.
The object moved up and down like a yo yo for about 20 minutes.
When it was close to the ground, the light faded, but at the height of the maneuver it was so bright that I could not look at it for long.
When the light was near the ground, I could see through it as though it was made of glass.
Occasionally, according to other witnesses, a red light maintained a position in front.
The lights hovered, sometimes for an hour, then shot off at extraordinary speed.
Most of the time they traveled from North to South.
Investigators from UFO Norway brought valley residents together to discuss their sightings on March 26, 1982.
Of the 130 who attended, 35 said they had seen the lights.
Soon afterwards 2 Norwegian Air Force officers interviewed natives and later told reporters that the people of Hessdalen have been seeing luminous objects since 1944, but many years passed before they dared to talk about the sightings.
It is unclear what the 1944 reference means, numerous sightings of what would come to be called UFOs occurred in northern Europe during World War 11, but such sporadic, seemingly random reports should not be confused with the phenomena that took place with great frequency in Hessdalen in the early to mid 1980s.
The 1944 reference may be to one of the former.
No one else was told of such recurring lights prior to 1981.
Though sightings declined for a time in 1983, that summer Scandinavian ufologists formed Project Hessdalen and secured technical assistance, including the active participation of scientists, from the Universities of Oslo and Bergen.
A variety of equipment was set up on 3 mountains.
The results from the month long winter vigil January 21 to February 26, 1984 were interesting but inconclusive, some sightings, radar trackings, and photographs.
When laser beams were aimed at passing lights, the lights seemed to respond.
Once, on February 12, one such object changed its flashing sequence from a regular flashing light to a regular double flashing light, flash flash, flash flash, flash flash.
After a few seconds we stopped the laser and the light immediately changed back to its previous flashing sequence.
After about 10 seconds we repeated the exercise and again the light responded by changing to a double flash sequence.
In all we repeated this exercise 4 times and every time we got the same reaction from the light.
The investigators disagreed on what the phenomena could be, with some holding forth for a geophysical explanation and others suspecting some guiding intelligence.
Erling Strand, one of Project Hessdalen's directors, thought it strange that they, the lights, existed for a 5 year period to be recorded in Hessdalen and nowhere else.
Another investigator, Leif Havik, wrote of the coincidences that enlivened the investigation:
On 4 separate occasions, it happened that we came to the top of Varuskjolen, stopped the car, went outside, and there it came immediately and passed by us.
The same thing happened once on Aspaskjolen.
All these instances happened at different times of the day and most of the time it was an impulse which made us take an evening trip to Hessdalen by car.
On some occasions other observers had been looking for hours without success.
Coincidences also happened to the video equipment which recorded the radar screen.
One evening the pen of the magnetograph failed to work.
At the same time the video tape had come to an end, and the phenomenon appeared less than one minute later.
The next evening we made certain that the pen had sufficient ink and turned on the video recorder 10 minutes later than the night before.
We thought that now everything was ready for the usual 10:47 message.
One light appeared regularly at 10:47 p.m.
The video tape ran out at 10:57 p.m., and we thought that tonight it had failed us.
But at 10:58 the usual phenomenon appeared.
In terms of hard scientific data, the results were disappointing.
Project investigators logged 188 sightings.
Some, they determined, were of passing aircraft.
Of 4 photographs taken through special lens gratings, only 2 showed light spectra of sufficient clarity to be analyzed.
Project adviser Paul Devereux said of these:
One spectrum of one high strangeness object was analyzed and showed a wavelength range from 560 nanometers to the maximum the film could respond to, 630 nanometers.
The spectrum analyzer did not register anything unusual while lights were being seen, but odd readings were obtained at times.
These showed up as spikes at approximately 80 megaHerz.
In 40% of the sightings, changes in the magnetic field registered on the instruments.
Looking back on the episode, University of Oslo physicist Elvand Thrane, who had participated in the research, remarked:
I'm sure the lights were real, it's a pity we cannot explain them.