The Ofoten Line

The Ofoten Railway connects Narvik with Sweden and is one of Norway’s most remarkable railway lines. It is also quite unusual. Although the railway is part of the Norwegian rail network, it has no direct rail connection with the rest of Norway. Instead, the line continues east across the Swedish border. The reason the railway was built lies on the other side of those mountains: iron ore. Large deposits of iron ore had been known in northern Sweden for centuries. But for a long time, transporting large quantities of ore from the mining areas to the coast was extremely difficult. By the late 1800s, growing industrial demand for iron made a railway increasingly important. Narvik offered something the mining industry needed: a deep, ice-free harbour on the Atlantic coast. Construction of the railway through the mountains was a major undertaking. Thousands of workers were involved, working with the equipment and methods available at the end of the 19th century, through steep terrain and demanding Arctic weather. The railway was completed and put into operation in 1902, with the official opening taking place the following year, in 1903. Since then, the railway has been modernised considerably. It was electrified in the 1920s, and today powerful electric locomotives haul enormous iron ore trains along the same route. More than 120 years after the railway was completed, transporting iron ore from northern Sweden to the harbour in Narvik remains its most important purpose. And tonight, we are travelling along that same historic railway – although for a very different reason.