Hegra Fortress

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Hegra festning
Hegra, Norway
Built	1907–1910
In use	1907–1926 and 1940
Controlled by	Norway, Germany
Commanders	Hans Reidar Holtermann (1940)
Battles/wars	German invasion 1940

Hegra fortress (Norw., Hegra festning) is a small mountain fortress in Hegra, Stjørdal, in the county of Nord-Trøndelag, Norway. It was built in the years 1907–10 as a defence against perceived threat of Swedish invasion (no such invasion came). The use of the fortress was discontinued in 1926.

[edit] The fortress in the Norwegian Campaign

In 1940, from April 15 to May 5, Hegra was attacked by the Germany|German invaders. During the first week the attacks consisted of two infantry assaults; however in the last two weeks attacks also featured heavy artillery fire and Luftwaffe bombing.

The Norwegian defenders were 200-300 volunteer soldiers, most of them from the area Hegra/Stjørdal/Trondheim, equipped with Krag-Jørgensen rifles, Madsen light machine guns and Colt heavy machine guns. Most of these men had been mobilized to Artillery Regiment no. 3 at Øyanmoen army camp near Værnes and were brought to Hegra to continue the mobilization after the Germans had reached their camp. The fortress at Hegra was originally only intended as a temporary refuge for the artillery regiment, but ended up as the centre of the volunteers' war in 1940.

The fortress' artillery consisted of two 7,5 cm and four 10.5 cm positional artillery pieces, as well as a small number of 19th century model 8,4 cm field guns (described by the Germans after the surrender as Napoleonic). During the siege large portions of the fort was covered in snow, and as all plans of the fort was stored in German-occupied Trondheim several sections of the fortifications were not discovered by the defenders before the May 5 surrender.

The attacking force was the German/Austrian 138. Gebirgsjaegerregiment (a part of the 3. Gebirgsdivision), which landed in Trondheim on April 9. Later, from about April 25, the Germans started to substitute the 138. Gbg.Rgt. with other Wehrmacht-units.

Six Norwegian soldiers were killed in action (all in the first days of the fighting) and about 30 wounded. In the first years after World War II the number of Germans KIA was said to be as high as 800–1000, but later this number is reduced to a probably more correct number, between five and twenty Wehrmacht soldiers KIA in Hegra.