The Norwegian Arctic holds an immense amount of WWII heritage: crashed planes, shipwrecks, graves, bunkers…
For this film, I joined Norwegian divers in Tromsø who were visiting the wrecked German battleship Tirpitz, military expert Rune Rautio took me on a journey around German bunkers that have become forever engraved in the landscape of Kirkenes, and I also met the Kirkenes Mushroom Society who search for fungi that Germans brought on their boots and wheels to the region 80 years ago.
One of the most important dates in this region is October 25th, when the liberation of East Finnmark by the Soviet Red Army in 1944 is celebrated. Kirkenes was essentially flattened, initially by Allied bombings, and then by Nazis carrying out their scorched earth policy during retreat. Rune provided a unique archive of photos of Soviet and German soldiers in Kirkenes. History becomes alive.
Before researching this story I had not realised the extent to how fortified this little peaceful town of Kirkenes was during the war. Seeing the scale of this frightening Nazi war machine is a powerful reminder of the barbarity and waste that war brings.
