Qualla: Saltdal Municipality

Saltdal Municipality: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frankemann, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 14 July 1943 a Yugoslav prisoner named Miloš Banjac was shot dead by a guard on the road his fellow prisoners were building through the Saltdal valley in Arctic Norway. His brother went to the rock face beside the body and drew a cross on it with the dead man's blood. People living in the valley began calling the road Blodvegen - the Blood Road - and in the eighty years since, the cross has been repainted in red again and again, by successive generations who decided it was not going to be allowed to fade into just another stretch of highway. You can still walk the section from Saltnes to Saksenvika. Most of it now lies under the E6, the road that carries traffic the length of Norway.

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Image: Frankemann | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saltdal Municipality: Blodvegen

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manxruler, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Germans demanded the road in December 1941. The plan was ambitious to the point of fantasy: extend both the highway and the Nordland Line railway north from Lønsdal on the Saltfjellet plateau, on to Narvik and eventually to Kirkenes on the Russian border. Over three years of ...

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Image: Manxruler | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saltdal Municipality: Botn

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Foto. Geir Tore Mjønes, CC BY-SA 3.0. The camp at Botn, two kilometres from Rognan, ran from July 1942 to June 1944, and its arithmetic is stark enough to be read on its own. Four hundred and seventy-two Yugoslav prisoners arrived on 25 July 1942. By April 1943, at least 302 of them were dead. Three hundred more arri...

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Image: Foto. Geir Tore Mjønes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saltdal Municipality: A Valley That Used to Be a Fjord

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Orcaborealis, CC BY-SA 3.0. Geology in Saltdal works on a scale that makes the war feel recent. When the ice melted nine thousand years ago the land was still pressed down under its own memory of that weight, and the sea reached what is now 120 metres of altitude - the whole valley floor was salt water. It ...

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Image: Orcaborealis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saltdal Municipality: The Strong Stream

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jürgen Howaldt, CC BY-SA 2.0 de. The name is older than any of this. It comes from the Saltdalselva, the river running the length of the valley, whose Old Norse name was Salpti, from a root meaning strong stream. Add dalr, valley, and you have the whole thing. The spelling was Saltdalen until a royal resolution ...

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Image: Jürgen Howaldt | CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Saltdal Municipality: Boats, Cables and a Wrestler

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Before the war, boatbuilding in local timber employed a substantial share of everybody in Saltdal - a valley economy built on the forest at one end and the fjord at the other. The largest employer now is the Nexans plant at Rognan, which makes telecommunications, fibre-optic and ...

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Image: Public domain