Program · 3 June 1983 · Hessdalen valley, Holtålen, Trøndelag, Norway
Project Hessdalen
Also known as Hessdalen lights, Hessdalen phenomenon, Hessdalen, EMBLA
The Hessdalen lights are lights reported since late 1981 in the Hessdalen valley in central Norway, a 12 km valley of about 150 people south-east of Trondheim: white or yellow-white balls that hover for long periods near the ground or over the ridges, sometimes moving fast, and short white or blue flashes. Project Hessdalen was founded in June 1983 by a handful of Norwegian researchers led by the electrical engineer Erling Strand, because no official body was studying them. It is a private research project, not a government programme, though its first campaign drew on help from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and two universities.
Its first field campaign, from 21 January to 26 February 1984, ran radar, a spectrum analyser, a magnetometer, a laser, a seismograph, a geiger counter and cameras. It logged 188 sighting reports, only six of them with no likely known explanation, and 36 radar returns, three of which matched lights seen at the same moment. The technical report concludes that the phenomenon had not been identified, only measured. After the 1997 Pocantico workshop of the Sturrock panel, Strand and Bjørn Gitle Hauge, both then assistant professors at Østfold University College, set up a permanent automatic measurement station with video cameras watching the valley, and from 1998 Italian researchers (the EMBLA project) joined.
What the instruments recorded (radar returns, low-resolution spectra, photographs) is distinct from what has been inferred from them (speeds, luminous powers up to tens of kilowatts, chemical composition), and the inferences are disputed. A 2021 review finds no consensus; the physicist Matteo Leone identified at least one of the lights the EMBLA team photographed in 2002 as car headlights and rejected its power estimates.
Sources: E. Strand, Project Hessdalen 1984: Final Technical Report (hessdalen.org) · G. Pascoli, Journal of Scientific Exploration 35(3), 2021 · M. Leone, Zeitschrift für Anomalistik 6, 2006
Facts and claims
- claimed The project's 1984 technical report says unknown lights began to appear in the Hessdalen valley, south-east of Trondheim, in December 1981: they could stand still for more than an hour, move slowly or stop, and once “a speed of about 8500 m/s was tracked by radar”. Reports fell off sharply in spring 1983. Source: old.hessdalen.org (archived)
- documented It was a private initiative: “As no official institutes with governmental support seemed to care about these unknown lights, five persons started their own project.” Founded on 3 June 1983, it drew on a local expert group from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE) and the universities of Oslo and Bergen, and ran instruments in the field from 21 January to 26 February 1984. Source: old.hessdalen.org (archived)
- documented Instrument results of the 1984 campaign, as reported: 188 sighting reports, of which only 6 were graded F9 or higher on the project's scale for how unlikely a known explanation was; “Totally, we have 36 radar recordings.” Of these, “Three of those were probably also seen as lights”, while photographs taken where the radar showed returns showed nothing unusual. Source: old.hessdalen.org (archived)
- claimed The report quotes an NDRE radar expert on a photographed return as strong as those from the mountains: “If this isn't a reflection of a solid object, but only gas in the air, the gas has to be locally and strongly ionised.” Source: old.hessdalen.org (archived)
- claimed Its author, Erling Strand, also reports that on 12 February 1984 a flashing light changed to a double-flash in 8 of 9 times a laser was pointed at it, judged by an observer with binoculars who could not see where the laser pointed. This is the team's own observation, not an instrument record. Source: old.hessdalen.org (archived)
- documented The report's conclusion: “We have not found out what this phenomenon is.” It says the phenomenon can be measured by radar and laser besides photographs, while the magnetometer and spectrum-analyser readings needed more measurements before they could be tied to it; the geiger counter, seismograph and IR viewer recorded nothing. Source: old.hessdalen.org (archived)
- documented A 2021 review in the Journal of Scientific Exploration says that after Project Hessdalen (from 1983) and the Italian EMBLA project (from 1998), decades of campaigns have produced large datasets but “no consensus has been established”; it notes that the spectra said to show nitrogen, oxygen, scandium and iron were taken with low-resolution gratings on video and SLR cameras, so the line identifications are questionable. Source: doc-pascoli-hessdalen-2021.pdf
- documented Proposed natural mechanisms include a dusty plasma from radon decay (Paiva and Taft, 2010) and the valley's geology acting as a giant battery (Monari et al., 2013), as summarised in the same review; none is established. Source: doc-pascoli-hessdalen-2021.pdf
- claimed The physicist Matteo Leone (University of Bari) rejected the EMBLA 2002 report's conclusion of an unknown light “able to produce a luminous power of up to 100 kW”: viewing one of the team's near-stationary lights through a telescope on 7 August 2002 he identified it as a pair of car headlights, and he argued that “an explanation is proposed that satisfactorily explains the evidence in terms of a known phenomenon”. The EMBLA physicist Massimo Teodorani replied that the real phenomenon was elsewhere. Source: doc-leone-embla-rebuttal-2006.pdf
- documented Leone's paper records that, following the Pocantico workshop, Erling Strand and Bjørn Gitle Hauge, assistant professors at Østfold University College, set up a permanent automatic measurement station in Hessdalen to watch the west side of the valley with automatic video cameras; the college is the project's current base. Source: doc-leone-embla-rebuttal-2006.pdf
Connected files
Documents
- Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: the Sturrock panel (Pocantico workshop, 1997; report 1998) (discussed in) — Section 6: Erling Strand presented the Hessdalen Project's video records and spectroscopic data
More programs
- Sky Canada Project
- Setka ("Net"): Soviet state programme on anomalous phenomena, 1978–1990
- Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program
- Project Condign
- Condon Committee (University of Colorado UFO Project)
- Project Magnet
Links
- Project Hessdalen 1984: Final Technical Report (E. Strand)
- Project Hessdalen (official site)
- Pascoli, Journal of Scientific Exploration 35(3), 2021 (PDF)
- Leone, Zeitschrift für Anomalistik 6, 2006 (PDF, German, English abstract)