The Village Hit by Two Tsunamis – Loen, Norway 1905 and 1936

English version of LOEN. Norwegian original:    • Bygda som ble rammet av flodbølge to gange...   The Loen disasters, Norway: twice the mountain collapsed into the lake Lovatnet in Loen, at the head of the Nordfjord, and the tsunamis wiped out the hamlets of Bødal and Nesdal. On 15 January 1905, just before midnight, a block of rock broke loose about 500 metres up the mountain Ramnefjellet. The wave reached 40 metres at Nesodden and around 15 metres in the hamlets. 61 people died, and only nine were ever found. The tourist steamer “Lodalen” was thrown several hundred metres inland. The hamlets were rebuilt, higher up the hillside. On 13 September 1936, just before five in the morning, around a million cubic metres of rock fell from the same mountain. This time the wave went straight over Nesodden and ran up to 74 metres high. 74 people died (some sources say 73), and 41 of them were never found. Among the dead was Oskar, who at the age of four was the only one in his house to survive in 1905. Two years earlier, the rockslide tsunami in Tafjord had taken 40 lives. After 1936, Bødal and Nesdal were abandoned. 0:00 Introduction 0:14 Loen and Lovatnet (map) 0:34 15 January 1905 1:45 How the 1905 slide happened (map) 1:59 31 years: rebuilding and tourists 2:35 Tafjord 1934 2:43 13 September 1936 3:56 The aftermath 4:28 1905 and 1936 compared (map) 4:54 Lovatnet today 5:34 Thanks and sources ABOUT THE FILM The images and video clips are made with AI, except for two real archive photographs: the steamer “Lodalen” washed ashore in 1905 (Hans Henrik Reusch / NGU) and Bødal after the 1936 slide (Anders Beer Wilse / Norsk Folkemuseum). Both are in the public domain, and they have been colourised and animated with AI. The sound is made with ElevenLabs. Research, script and direction: Vidar Vestnes, with AI tools. The AI was given the sources, eyewitness accounts and old photographs as reference, and created its own version of what it may have looked like. Think of it as a police composite sketch: never quite right, but not pure fantasy either. Events and figures are based on the sources below. Where the sources disagree, the film uses the best documented figure. The maps are drawn with code from the open map data of the Norwegian Mapping Authority (Kartverket), with north up and real coordinates. The arrows and hatching on the summary map show the direction the waves travelled, not exactly how far they reached. The names of those who died are on the memorial stones at Loen Church and on the copper plaque by the road to Kjenndalen. Thanks to everyone who has kept the story alive: Sources Sigurd Nesdal: “Lodalen – fager og fårleg” (Norsk folkeminnelag, 1983), and everyone in Lodalen who shared their stories Hans Reusch: “Skredet i Loen 15de januar 1905”, Yearbook of the Geological Survey of Norway, 1907 Waldmann et al.: “Anatomy of a Catastrophe”, Frontiers in Earth Science 2021 (doi:10.3389/feart.2021.671378) Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) NRK Sogn og Fjordane – Fylkesleksikon (Ottar Starheim) Store norske leksikon National Library of Norway newspaper archive: newspapers from 1905 and 1936 Aftenposten 5.9.2004 · Visit Nordfjord · Lokalhistoriewiki Archive photos (public domain) Hans Henrik Reusch / NGU: The steamer “Lodalen” ashore, 1905 (NGU 001234) Anders Beer Wilse / Norsk Folkemuseum: “Loenvann Bødal Raset” (NF.W45491) Image references for the AI National Library of Norway · Vestland County Archives (J. K. Maurseth) · Anders Beer Wilse · Axel Lindahl · Knud Knudsen · Digitalt Museum · Wikimedia Commons Map data: © Kartverket (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth Do you have memories, stories or photos from Loen, Bødal or Nesdal? Please share them in the comments. #Loen #Norway #Tsunami 2026 - Vidar Vestnes