The invasion of Norway involved three major powers...the British, the French and the Germans. Norwegians found themselves a global football in a world war. Enemy armies vying for control of its strategic minerals, ports and location. Allied control would bottle up the German surface fleet and German control would provide airfields for long range bombers to harass convoys to Russia as well as the fiords to conceal German battleships and surface raiders.
During the campaign to seize Trondheim, British forces landed at Andalsnes and began driving into the scenic and historic Romsdalen valley...home to such features as the Trollveggen (The Troll Wall): Rising over 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) vertically above the valley, it is Europe’s tallest vertical, overhanging rock face and a historic crown jewel for world-class rock climbers. And also, the Trollstigen (The Troll's Ladder): Located just off the main valley, this iconic, hairpin-curved mountain road twists up the steep mountainside and is part of Norway's National Tourist Routes.
By mid-April the British forces were being driven back towards Andalsnes and eventual evacuation.
The Germans advanced rapidly to control Narvik and Trondheim. During an night advance across the bridges across the Romsdalen Valley...infantry of the 181st Infantry Division and supporting armor would be attacked by unknown forces during the night. They would suffer heavy losses.
General Kurt Woytasch (far right after capture in Berlin 1945) was commanding the 181st Infantry Division during this campaign. Woytasch received the reports of the night attack while at his mobile headquarters miles down the road from Romsdalen Valley. According to reports provided by survivors...the Germans had been attacked by non-human opponents...and the word Troll was repeated throughout the after action reports. Incredulous at such nonsensical explanations for a severe defeat, Woytasch drove immediately to the site of the encounter to inspect it for himself. Upon arriving on scene, smoke was still drifting across the valley from burning trucks and panzers on the bridge. The medical tent was full of badly mauled grenadiers...with severe cuts, lacerations and bites. Deeply disturbed, Woytasch met privately with Hauptmann Ernst Rossmeyer, who had led the survivors to safety.
Rossmeyer, a decorated officer sat with General Woytasch in his field tent to describe in detail what he witnessed the night before. Rossmeyer's report would later be turned over to General Falkenhorst.
General Falkenhorst (center) was a no-nonsense commander. He was working closely with General Dietl to close out the Norwegian campaign. The idea that trolls had inflicted severe losses on a German column was absurd. He personally censured Falkenhorst for submitting such nonsense to OKW. He ordered Falkenhorst to assume responsibility for his defeat at the hands of British and Norwegian resistance.
Since General Falkenhorst and the High Command (OKW) suppressed the report, they couldn't just leave the matter uninvestigated. While they officially blamed Woytasch's "incompetence" or "battle fatigue" to protect military morale, a specialist—Hauptmann Dieter Schattental was dispatched by Abwehr to investigate on behalf of the Office of Anomalous Reconnaissance & Strategic Mythological Evaluation.
Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Hauptmann von Schattental was an academic in folklore and geological history at the University of Heidelberg. He was secretly recruited by military intelligence in 1937 following his independent paper on "The Geomorphic Memory of European Mountain Ranges." Unlike the fanatical occultists of the SS Ahnenerbe, von Schattental is a cold pragmatist. He does not view myths as magic; he views them as biological and geological anomalies that the Reich can either weaponize or must neutralize.
Following the catastrophic, suppressed failure of Generalmajor Woytasch’s 181st Infantry Division on the night of April 25th, von Schattental was flown directly into Åndalsnes. His cover story is an internal audit of "equipment failure and logistical sabotage." His true directive from OKW is to ascertain the physical reality of the "Trolls" that shattered the German vanguard.
28 April 1940 — Romsdalen Valley
The wreckage of the 181st's advance column still sits in the gorge below the Trollveggen. Falkenhorst’s official report attributes the destruction to British artillery and royal engineer demolitions. But the physics do not align. The roof of a Panzer II does not cave inward by three feet from an explosive blast; it caves from a blunt, localized kinetic strike. Like a boulder dropped from a height no human hand could manage.
The local Norwegians are tight-lipped, but their silence carries a strange smugness. I interviewed a captured resistance courier today. He didn't beg. He simply looked up at the mist-shrouded peaks and whispered, 'The land remembers who it belongs to.'
We are setting up a seismic listening post near the base of the wall tonight. The scouts claim they hear rhythmic, heavy thudding echoing through the stone whenever the fog rolls in...
FIELD LOG NO. 04: THE ROMSDALEN GORGE
Date: 30 April 1940
Location: Base of the Trollveggen (Troll Wall), Romsdalen, Norway
Author: Hauptmann D. von Schattental
The wreckage of the 181st’s armor is an insult to German engineering. General Falkenhorst wants to believe a British demolition team caught Woytasch in a bottleneck. He is wrong. I examined a crushed Krupp Protze truck today. The chassis was bent entirely in half, snapped like a dry twig. The puncture marks in the sheet metal don't match anti-tank rifle fire—they match five-pronged grip marks, each digit the thickness of a birch trunk.
The local resistance elements are not fighting us here. They don't need to. They are merely waiting.
At 0200 hours, our seismic equipment picked up low-frequency tremors radiating from deep within the Trollveggen limestone. These aren't tectonic. The rhythms are steady, mimicking a resting heart rate of four beats per minute. When the sun dips behind the peaks, the rocks seem to bleed a heavy, calcified odor that makes the tracking hounds lose their minds.
My scouts located an opening two hundred meters up the sheer cliff face, hidden by dead pines. The entrance is choked with the skeletal remains of livestock, some dating back a century, others fresh. I am taking a team of four men inside at dawn. We are equipping ourselves with high-intensity magnesium flares. If the local folklore holds true, these subterranean entities possess an acute aversion to intense, concentrated UV radiation.
If I do not return, this log must bypass Falkenhorst entirely and go straight to Berlin. We are not dealing with a localized resistance group. We have invaded a territory guarded by an apex predator that pre-dates the Roman Empire.
TACTICAL FIELD DIRECTIVE: "OPERATION STEINADLER"
Von Schattental requested the immediate shipment of the following specialized equipment to the Romsdalen sector under total radio silence:
- Sonder-Flammenwerfer 40: High-output thermite-based fuel variants, theorized to counteract the calcified epidermal layering of the entities.
- Heavy Drilling Apparatus: To seal known fissures along the Trollveggen by controlled detonation before winter arrives.
- Linguistic Assets: An interrogation team fluent in ancient Old Norse dialects, as local folklore suggests the entities respond to specific sub-vocal frequencies.
After identifying a prospective cave system for explorations, von Schattental sent in a combat team to explore. What follows is their radio transmissions:
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: OPERATION STEINADLER
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET // GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHE
RECORDING DATE: 01 May 1940 / 05:42 Hours
SOURCE: Field Radio Receiver Type Torn.E.b (Assigned to Sonderkommando Romsdalen)
MONITORED BY: Unteroffizier H. Miller (Base Camp, Romsdalen Valley Floor)
PATROL TEAM: Hauptmann Dieter von Schattental (Lead), Feldwebel Krauss, Jaeger Lehmann, Jaeger Becker.
[05:42] (Static hissed loudly over the line, followed by the heavy, rhythmic scraping of boots on loose gravel.)
VON SCHATTENTAL: Base Camp, this is Schattental. We have breached the threshold of the fissure. Altitude is approximately 210 meters above the valley floor. The air inside is remarkably warm. Substantial smell of sulfur and… rotting organic matter. Do you copy, Base?
BASE CAMP: Copy, Hauptmann. Signal is weak but legible. Interference is climbing. Please confirm structural stability of the cave mouth.
VON SCHATTENTAL: Stable. Solid limestone. But the walls are smooth, Base. Not from water erosion. They are polished. Like something immense has been dragging its flanks against the stone for generations. Becker, get that magnesium lamp fired up. The shadows in here are dense.
[05:45] (A loud, sharp pop is heard on the audio, followed by the intense, crackling hiss of a high-intensity magnesium flare illuminating the cavern. Distant water drops echo.)
JAEGER BECKER: Mein Gott… Hauptmann, look at the ceiling.
VON SCHATTENTAL: Keep your voice down, Becker. Move the light to the left.
FELDWEBEL KRAUSS: Are those… uniforms?
VON SCHATTENTAL: (Voice tight, close to the microphone) Base Camp, take note. We have located the missing reconnaissance motorcycle patrol from the 181st. The vehicle is crushed into a sphere of scrap metal roughly one meter wide. The riders are… integrated into the debris. It looks like a child’s ball of clay. The structural force required to compress steel like this is—
[05:48] (A sudden, low-frequency vibration hums through the audio track. The frequency is so low it distorts the radio diaphragm, causing a deep, rattling static.)
JAEGER LEHMANN: (Whispering) The ground. Hauptmann, the floor is moving.
VON SCHATTENTAL: Stand fast! Nobody fire. Krauss, check the seismic gauge.
FELDWEBEL KRAUSS: The needle is pegged, sir! But it’s not an earthquake. It’s… it’s rhythmic. It’s a stride. Es kommt auf uns zu. It’s coming toward us from the deep tunnel.
[05:50] (A sound echoes through the receiver that does not sound animalistic, but rather like two massive boulders grinding together under immense tectonic pressure. It forms a gutteral, booming vibration that rattles the cavern.)
JAEGER BECKER: (Panicking) That’s not a rock! That’s a face! The wall is opening its eyes!
VON SCHATTENTAL: Becker! Hold your position! Aim the magnesium lamp directly at the forward mass! Lehmann, prime the thermite grenade!
[05:51] (Deafening roar. The sound is a mix of a mountain landslide and a predatory growl. The audio distorts heavily. Sharp, rapid bursts of an MP40 submachine gun echo through the cavern, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space.)
VON SCHATTENTAL: Stop firing! Stop firing, you fools! Conventional rounds are just fracturing the top layer! It’s solid granite! It’s—
FELDWEBEL KRAUSS: (Screaming) Becker is gone! It just reached out of the dark and—oh Christ, look at the size of it! It’s twelve meters tall!
JAEGER LEHMANN: (Screaming over the roar of the entity) The light! It hates the light! Burn it! Burn it!
[05:52] (The distinct, blinding whoosh of a thermite grenade detonating. A brilliant, white-hot hiss fills the audio. A secondary, agonized roar from the creature echoes—sounding like shattering glass and cracking stone.)
VON SCHATTENTAL: (Coughing heavily through smoke) It’s retreating! The thermal heat is melting the calcified skin! Lehmann, grab Becker’s radio pack! We are falling back! Fall back to the—
[05:53] (A massive, concussive THUD vibrates through the line. The sound of tonnes of rock collapsing fills the audio. The men scream as the tunnel roof is deliberately brought down.)
FELDWEBEL KRAUSS: (Acoustics change; voice is trapped behind a wall of fallen stone) Hauptmann! The entrance is blocked! The exit is sealed! We are cut off!
VON SCHATTENTAL: (Breathing heavily, remarkably calm despite the situation) Base Camp. If you can hear this… Woytasch was telling the truth. Tell Falkenhorst… it isn’t a myth. The mountain is alive. And it knows we are here. We are moving deeper into the secondary fissure to find a bypass. Do not send a rescue party. Bring the heavy artillery. Target the peak of the Trollveggen and bring the whole damn thing down.
[05:55] (A deep, echoing crunch is heard close to the microphone, followed by the sound of breaking bone and tearing canvas. The radio signal cuts sharply to static.)
MONITOR’S NOTE: Following transmission loss, three distinct seismic shocks were recorded from the interior of the Trollveggen within forty minutes. Hauptmann von Schattental would be the only survivor of the incursion into the troll caves. His notes were kept sealed and confidential.
Hauptmann von Schattental would be called to other investigations more important to the Fuehrer's obsession with the occult. He would escape from Berlin with top secret German Paranormal information. Allied and Soviet intelligence agents would search for him for many years...before consigning him to history.
The people of Norway would never forget the night the Mountains Remembered...
