Why a Booktrail?
WW2: This story is based on the real life adventures of Norwegian Erling Storrusten
Shadow on the Mountain
What you need to know before your trail
Shadow on the Mountain is about the adventures of a Norwegian boy during World War Two.
After Nazi Germany invades and occupies Norway, Espen and his friends are swept up in the Norwegian resistance movement. Fourteen-year old Espen gets his start by delivering underground (and illegal) newspapers, graduates to the role of courier and finally becomes a spy, dodging the Gestapo along the way. During five years under the Nazi fist, he gains–and loses–friends, falls in love and makes one small mistake that threatens to catch up with him, even as he sets out to escape over the mountains to Sweden on skis.
Locations
Reset- Norway - Lillehammer
- A: Lillehammer Art Museum
- B: Maihaugenen - open air museum
- C: Norwegian Resistance Museum
Travel Guide
Norway
Just before dawn on April 9, 19409, Nazi Germany invaded Norway, a neutral and peace-loving country of only three million people. the Norwegians were completely unprepared for the onslaught of eight hundred aircraft, ten thousand advance troops. and almost the entireGerman navy. by Noon, the Wehrmacht had taken control of Oslo, two major airports and the most important coastal cities. The Norwegians scrambled to organise a military response, and for a few desperate weeks, aided by a small force of Allied troops, the put up a valiant but ultimately futile fight
The occupying Germans had expected the Norwegians to welcome them as protectors agains the Soviet Union. They were unprepared for the hostility they encountered. Even ordinary Norwegians found ways of resisting…
Summarised/translated from the Norwegian on The Norwegian Museum of Travel and Tourism
As a schoolboy in Lillehammer, he became a courier for Milorg [the Norwegian Resistance] during 1942. It was in 1944 that the Germans made Lille hammer their new base and took over many residential buildings as well as hotels and businesses for their use.
Storrusten, in his role for the Resistance, strolled around the German areas carrying sacks of boiled pototaoes and other food pretending to be doing trade with the prisoners held there. Such a young and innocent looking young boy was left alone by the Germans who thought him a nuisance and nothing more
What he was actually doing was drawing mental planes of the entire occupied areas.
March of 1945
He is forced to escape to Sweden and then to Britain. He joined the Norwegian Air Force and was stationed at Fornebu.
He then ended up in a career in travel working for DNL and later, SAS
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Shadow on the Mountain
Destination: Norway, Lillehammer Author/Guide: Margi Preus Departure Time: WW2
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