Vassdalen is a valley and rural village area in

Narvik Municipality ( se, Áhkanjárga) is the third-largest List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Nordland Counties of Norway, county, Norway, by population. The administrative centre of the municipality is the Narvik (town), town of Narvik. Some of t ...

Nordland Nordland (; smj, Nordlánnda, sma, Nordlaante, sme, Nordlánda, en, Northland) is a county in Norway in the Northern Norway region, the least populous of all 11 counties, bordering Troms og Finnmark in the north, Trøndelag in the south, N ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. The river Vassdalselva flows through Vassdalen into the lake of

Hartvikvatnet or is a lake in Narvik Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The lake is located about east of the village of Bjerkvik and just less than with the border with Sweden. The Elvegårdsmoen military camp lies just west of the lake. See al ...

. The river from Hartvikvatnet is called ''Elvegårdselva'', flowing westwards and emptying into the

Herjangsfjorden or (or unofficially: ''Herjangen'') is a fjord that branches off of the Ofotfjorden in Narvik Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The long fjord is located just north of the Rombaken fjord. The villages along the fjord are Bjerkvik and He ...

at the village of

Bjerkvik Bjerkvik is a village in Narvik Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The village is located at the end of Herjangsfjorden, an arm of Ofotfjorden. Bjerkvik sits less than south of the border of Troms county and about across the fjord from t ...

1986 avalanche

avalanche An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be set off spontaneously, by such factors as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, animals, and earth ...

in Vassdalen on 5 March 1986 struck 31 soldiers from the North Norway Brigade who took part in the

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

winter exercise ''Anchor Express''. Sixteen soldiers were killed in the accident. The avalanche came from the mountain of Storebalak (766

m.a.s.l. Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The com ...

) and hit the valley about five kilometers upwards from Hartvikvatnet.

References

Valleys of Nordland Narvik {{Nordland-geo-stub