Historic viking battle cruise

THE NAVAL BATTLE IN A NUTSHELL

• In the evening of the 15th of June 1184 Magnus Erlingsson and Sverre Sigurdsson clashed in a major naval battle off the hamlet of Fimreite.

• The main part of the battle evidently took place inside the small island of Storholmen. There is more uncertainty concerning where the battle was decided, but there are indications that the ships drifted further into the fjord towards the farm of Høi before the battle came to an end.

• The naval battle lasted about four hours. At sunset the battle was over. Sverre came out victorious after a tactical triumph over his main adversary.

• Forty longships took part in the battle; Magnus with 26 ships compared to Sigurd’s 14. Magnus’s army counted about 3200 men, whereas Sverre could muster about 1900. In other words, 5000 soldiers took part in the battle.

• The battle at Fimreite was a brutal affair. According to the Sverre saga, 2160 men lost their lives. Magnus suffered the heaviest losses by far. Many of his men lost their lives by drowning when three or four big battleships sank because of the extra weight of the soldiers who fled in panic from these ships.

• King Magnus was among those who drowned at Fimreite. His body was found nine days after the battle. The corpse was taken to Bergen where he was buried. A number of those who lost their lives were buried at Danøyri on the Slinde side of the Sogndalsfjord.

During the peak of the cold war:
The dramatic submarine chase in the Sognefjord

• Sunday 12 November 1972 five persons at Vangsnes observed a periscope in the sea heading further into the fjord. The Royal Norwegian Navy considered this observation to be reliable and responded quickly. Major defence resources were put into action, both at sea and in the air.

• Monday 13 November the wife of the sheriff in Luster observed a periscope-like object in the fjord at Høyheimsvik.

• Wednesday 14 November, in the evening the car ferry “Vangsnes” had radar contact with an unidentified small vessel on its way out from the Årdalsfjord. The vessel then disappeared from the radar.

• Monday 20 November the frigate KNM “Trondheim” used depth charges against what was understood to be a foreign submarine at Breisnes in the Aurlandsfjord.

• Tuesday 21 November, in the evening five or six red rockets were observed by people on land and the crew of an MTB. These rockets came up from the sea at Hermansverk. Depth charges and grenades were then used.

• Wednesday 22 November the KNM “Trondheim” had sonar contact with what the crew considered to be a submarine in the Sogndalsfjord. An anti-submarine missile was used against the target. The naval authorities thought that the unknown submarine could have become trapped.

• Thursday 23 November, in the morning a dark object was observed in the sea at Kinserdal in the Lustefjord. After seven minutes the object disappeared under water. In the evening lights in the mountainside at Breisnes were observed twice without any clear answer to what this could have been.

• Friday 24 November the submarine chase was concentrated in the westernmost part of the Sognefjord. Depth charges were used in the fjord at Solund. The Norwegian Minister of Defence Johan Kleppe confirmed that the naval authorities thought this was an unknown submarine in the Sognefjord.

• Saturday 25 November at 3 a.m. the unknown submarine left Norwegian waters, according to the newspaper Aftenposten. Military sources had revealed to the paper that this was a Soviet W-class submarine, operating out of Poland or East Germany.