The story of "Ice Bear" and the evacuation of Svalbard
Early one November morning in 1941, one of the Oslo ferries docks at a pier on Håøya in the Oslo Fjord. Six miners from Longyearbyen are led one by one to a mass grave where they are shot by German marines.
On May 29, they had hijacked the icebreaker "Isbjørn" to go to an Allied port and join the resistance against Nazi Germany. Due to bad weather and poor navigation skills, they had to give up and were taken to Tromsø.
At the same time as the trial in Oslo, Svalbard is evacuated and the mining facilities destroyed. This leads to the second act in this Arctic drama. The director of Store Norske and 14 other Norwegians are killed by German air raids outside the Russian mining town of Barentsburg as they attempt to retake the mines.
This is the first comprehensive account of the tragic events that took place in the Arctic Ocean and the Oslo Fjord 70 years ago.
