Hessdalen — the lights

OVERVIEW

The Hessdalen lights are unidentified lights observed along a 12-kilometre stretch of the Hessdalen valley in rural central Norway, periodically since at least the 1930s. They appear by day and by night and seem to float through and above the valley, usually bright white, yellow or red, above and below the horizon. A sighting may last a few seconds or well over an hour. Sometimes the lights move at enormous speed; at others they sway slowly back and forth, or hang in mid-air.

HISTORY

Unusual lights have been reported in the district since the 1930s. Activity was exceptionally high between December 1981 and the middle of 1984, when the lights were seen 15 to 20 times a week and the valley filled with people who had come to sit out at night and watch. By 2010 the rate had fallen to 10 or 20 sightings a year.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

What makes Hessdalen different from every other light-in-the-sky report on this map is the response. Project Hessdalen began field investigations in 1983; an automatic measurement station was installed in 1998 and a field station followed, run with Østfold University College, and students have taken instruments into the valley every year since. The phenomenon has been photographed, tracked on radar and measured on spectrometers, and hypotheses put forward include ionised dust from the valley's mineral-rich rock, a natural battery effect in the sulphurous ground, and burning dust clouds. None is settled. The entry records an anomaly that has been treated as a research problem for forty years rather than as a story.

VISITING

Open country in Holtålen, reached from Route 30 south of Ålen. The field station and the Hessdalen interest association run observation weeks; anyone can sit out. Norwegian upland weather, so go equipped.