Summary: Hessdalen is a valley in central Norway. It lies southeast of Trondheim and about 30 kilometres northwest of the town of Roros. The whole valley stretches 12 kilometres in length and has only around 200 inhabitants. The valley is special for one very unusual thing - strange and mysterious nocturnal lights.
Hessdalen is a valley in central Norway. It lies southeast of Trondheim and about 30 kilometres northwest of the town of Roros. The whole valley stretches 12 kilometres in length and has only around 200 inhabitants. The valley is special for one very unusual thing - strange and mysterious nocturnal lights.
In December 1981, unknown lights suddenly started to appear in the skies above Hessdalen. These lights could sometimes stand still for more than an hour. They were also seen to move around slowly before stopping, and sometimes they were observed travelling at a fast rate of speed.
At one time the lights were tracked on radar and were estimated to be travelling at approximately 8,500 meters per second. These lights were observed just about everywhere and more often than not, they were below the horizon down in the valley and not high up in the sky. It has to be said that the vast majority of the lights were reported to be below the tops of nearby mountains.
No one in Hessdalen could offer an explanation for these strange lights. The lights themselves appeared to have several different shapes. This was something that became quite apparent when the lights were photographed. The main shapes were; bullet shaped, with the sharp end down, a round football shape, and an upside down Christmas tree shape. There were other shapes but the above three were the main ones.
The colours of the lights were mostly white or a yellow/white. Sometimes a small red light could be seen amongst the white. On a few occasions the lights were made up of every colour in the rainbow. The lights could be observed several times a day, but they were seen more during the night.
At the most they were observed four times a day. There were more reports of the lights in the winter rather than the summer. One reason for this might be the fact that in summer Hessdalen has almost perpetual daylight.
The reports of the strange lights carried on throughout l982, but suddenly in the spring of l983, sightings of them dropped rapidly. By the summer of l983 there were no reports of the lights at all. However, in the autumn and winter of l983 the sightings began again but in far fewer numbers than before. Things changed somewhat in the autumn of l984 as the sightings began once more to increase.
As no official institute with governmental support in Norway seemed to be interested in these strange lights, five individual researchers began their own research project: Project Hessdalen. Their aim was simple, to discover what the lights in Hessdalen were.
One of the leading researchers for UFO Norway and Project Hessdalen is Odd-Gunnar Roed from Tonsberg in southern Norway. This is what he said when asked what these strange lights could be: “Well that is almost an impossible question to answer.
First these lights appear intelligent then on the other hand they don’t appear to be that intelligent as they are travelling through this remote valley doing absolutely nothing.
We never witnessed anything of a structured nature, only lights. However, the local people have reported close encounter type cases and close-up UFO sightings of cigar shaped objects. We have had the lights react to us, for example, we decided to turn off our instrumentation and the sightings increased, when we decided to turn it back on again the sightings decreased.
This was when we decided to do this not when we actually hit the switch. It is very difficult to answer this question but I would go as far as to call these lights a natural phenomena.”