Qualla: Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp

Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 13 April 1940, the German destroyer Erich Koellner sank during the naval battles off Narvik, and its captain, Fregattenkapitan Alfred Schulze-Hinrichs, was pulled from the frigid Norwegian Sea as a prisoner of war. Within weeks he would find himself on Skorpa, a small, isolated island in Kvaenangenfjord, Troms county -- the most improbable prison camp in Northern Norway, where 500 German soldiers and civilians were held behind barbed wire on a rocky outcrop accessible only by boat, 10 to 12 hours from the nearest Norwegian garrison.

Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp: An Island Becomes a Prison

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Norwegian 6th Division faced a logistical problem unique to the northern front. Unlike in southern Norway, where advancing German forces quickly liberated their captured comrades, the prisoners taken during the Battles of Narvik were trapped behind Allied lines with no prospe...

Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp: Prisoners from Sea and Sky

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Schulze-Hinrichs arrived with 154 fellow prisoners, shipped first to Vardoehus Fortress in Finnmark aboard the 1,382-ton Norwegian steamship Nova, then transferred to Skorpa on the same vessel with 25 additional prisoners collected at Hammerfest along the way. The escort was the ...

Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp: Eighty Guards on a Rock

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The camp's guard force was as improvised as everything else. Eighty Norwegian soldiers held the island: 45 from the Varanger Battalion of eastern Finnmark, and 35 who had escaped the fighting's collapse in southern Norway, making their way north through neutral Sweden. Command fe...

Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp: The Camp Unravels

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 5 June, district command called Skorpa asking how many airmen the camp held. The answer was 40, but 51 more prisoners arrived that same day, 19 of them Luftwaffe personnel. An order came that evening to transfer 40 airmen to Harstad for interrogation at the British headquarter...

Skorpa Prisoner of War Camp: Scattered by War

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the camp dissolved, many of the Norwegian guards made their way over the mountains to Sweden rather than submit to German occupation. Captain Sandberg was less fortunate. The Gestapo arrested him in Trondheim on 28 June 1940, accusing him of mistreating prisoners during his...