The Hessdalen Lights

Hessdalen is a valley in Holtålen Municipality, central Norway. It runs about 12 km, and in 1984 about 150 people lived there. Lights had been reported in the valley at least since the 1930s. Then came the winter of 1981. A wave of UFO reports had just swept Arendal in southern Norway. Hessdalen was next.

December 8, 1981. Åge and Ruth Marry Moe looked out of their kitchen window and saw "a burning fireball" in the evening sky. Soon the valley was logging 15 to 20 sightings a week. Farmer Lars Lillevold saw an egg-shaped object hovering about 30 metres from his house. Leif Havik of UFO-Norge watched an oblong object pass slowly along the valley in front of the facing mountain. Silent. With a strange light configuration.

Most reports were lights. Bright white, yellow or red, often round. Some would "stand still for more than an hour." Others would "move around slowly down in the valley, stop sometimes for minutes, start moving again." Some flashed white high over the mountaintops for a few seconds. A few, seen in daylight, were metallic cigar shapes. Writing in Magonia in 1983, Hilary Evans noted what was missing. Sound. In a valley where engine noise carries for kilometres, that silence stood out.

UFO-Norge and UFO-Sverige launched Project Hessdalen on 3 June 1983. From 21 January to 26 February 1984, a team led by Erling P. Strand watched the valley with radar, a magnetometer, a seismograph, Geiger counters and spectrum cameras. They logged 188 sighting reports. J. Allen Hynek sat on the advisory committee. "Hessdalen is really a UFO-laboratory," he said.

January 25, 1984. 17:32. "A big object came from the south, moving towards north over the mountain Finnsåhøgda." The radar picked it up at the same moment. Two nights later, two echoes implied a speed of 8,000 to 9,000 m/s. On 12 February a regularly flashing light was lit with a laser. Its pattern changed from single to double flashes, then returned when the laser stopped. The final report was candid. "We have not found out what this phenomenon is… But we know that the phenomenon, whatever it is, can be measured."

In 1997 Strand presented Hessdalen to the Sturrock Panel at Tarrytown, New York. On 7 August 1998 an automatic station, the "Blue Box," began watching the valley in partnership with Østfold University College. From 2000 to 2002 the EMBLA missions brought in Italy's National Research Council. Massimo Teodorani described light balls that form clusters and throw off smaller "mini light balls," with radiant power up to 19 kW.

Project Hessdalen itself says some recordings are aircraft, distant car headlights, astronomical objects or mirages. In 2003 Matteo Leone argued that some EMBLA 2002 lights were headlights. Teodorani replied that headlight spectra are "totally different." Natural theories multiplied. Bjørn Gitle Hauge proposed burning scandium-bearing dust from the old mining area, and Norwegian papers announced "The Mystery in Hessdalen is Solved." Others proposed dusty plasma in air ionised by radon, strained quartz-bearing rock, or a natural battery with the river Hesja, fed acid from an abandoned mine, as its electrolyte.

As of 2010 the valley still produced about 10 to 20 sightings a year. Today Project Hessdalen is a volunteer citizen-science group with livestreams, public data and field trips. The lights have drawn documentaries, podcasts and television crews. Hynek called Hessdalen a laboratory. The laboratory is still open.