(Mirror.)
History would be nowhere nearly as potent if it had no archaeology to support it. The various fragments left over from a generation ago can collectively tell a story that a document cannot. These researchers did find a few documents (mostly newspaper fragments), but what was primarily of concern to them were the potsherds, cartridges, glass, coke, coal, trinkets, tools, footwear, bones, and other crap left over when the camp’s employés dismantled almost everything in November 1944.
They analysed 10,034 animal bone fragments. That is correct: they examined over ten thousand bones. Since there was a coast nearby, almost all of these bones were piscine, but they also found avian and mammal bones. Unusually, they even found a few canine bones; somebody at the POW camp ate one fox and one dog, presumably as last resorts.
Even though the prisoners of war were Soviet, in this case their diets might not have been vastly worse than those of the Axis employés. Indeed, these prisoners might have even had access to alcohol, if only for special occasions. In many cases, the Axis scheduled Soviet prisoners for previsible extermination, seeing as how the Western Axis wanted their land and other resources. In this instance, however, the Axis kept these Soviets around for exploitation and presumably did not plan to terminate them until after the war, but we should note that the locals often gave the prisoners spare food out of sympathy.
Very unusually, the most well preserved remnant of this POW camp is a Russian oven, and yes, it was in the prisoner section of the camp. The likeliest explanation is that the employés assumed that it was inculpable and thus not worth the time and effort to dismantle like everything else in the camp, but it is possible that somebody spared it out of pity for an inmate. Receiving insufficient exposure to Axis propaganda, somebody might have grown fond of the prisoners, at least in the same condescending way that somebody feels fondness for a dog.
Even prisoners trapped in the most miserable conditions are going to come up with ways to pass the time. The archaeologists found chess sets and other gaming pieces in the ruins, and they found evidence that one of the prisoners likely had an instrument. Of course, there were doubtless cheaper ways to pass the time: singing, joking, spinning yarns, and other ways of socialising, as long as nobody peaked out of a window to tell them to shut up.
As you might have guessed, the Axis employés had more ways to deal with their homesickness and boredom: reading, board games, card games, drinking, cinema, performances, fishing, and of course hunting. The staff also had porcelain ware and other trinkets to create a sense of homeliness. Although it is technically possible that an employé had some innocent and friendly interactions with the prisoners, the class and racial divisions between the prisoners and the staff makes this unlikely.
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The remains of most buildings inside the camp indicate that they were taken down and dismantled in a relatively controlled manner prior to the final withdrawal. One trivial but telling indication relates to the remains of the roof anchors of structure 5 where all the wires for this barrack were systematically cut right above the stone weights and removed. The situation, however, proved to be very different for the second barrack, structure 6.
The excavation of a 5 × 8‐metre trench yielded finds suggestive of a third and final phase of the POW camp, probably associated with the last days or weeks up to the Wehrmacht evacuation of Sværholt between November 11 and 15, 1944 (Gamst 1984, 119). During this time the remaining prisoners were crammed into this lone, remaining camp dwelling where they stayed until the building was set ablaze before the ultimate withdrawal.
Indicative of this final event are the complete stretches of roof‐anchor wire splayed over the barrack area and still secured to large boulders — a telling indication of their sudden collapse (Figure 7). Along the outer walls heaps of broken glass, deformed by fire, mark the location of the windows; inside, pieces of a smashed stove were dispersed across the site alongside burnt wood and other evidence of intensive burning (Grabowski et al. 2014, 11–13, 15–20).
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Two middens or refuse dumps were excavated in the course of our fieldwork. Displaying both the highest phosphate and MS‐levels within the sampled area, the first midden was identified just a few metres outside the northern perimeter of the camp. The soil science mapping combined with excavation and test‐pitting indicate that the dump covers an area of at least 60 m². Two trenches, one measuring 1 × 4 m from 2011 and 2012, the other, 2 × 1 m from 2015, showed that the trash was deposited in pits, up to 0.7 m deep (Figure 10).
Huge amounts of garbage were recovered, including alcohol and medicine bottles, tin cans, pieces of rubber and leather, iron heel and toe plates, cartridges, fishing equipment, textile fragments, buttons, coins, nails, bolts, washers, window glass, potsherds, bits of plastic/bakelite, string/wires, slag, coke and coal, and myriad wood fragments (Figure 11). The midden also contained faunal material.
A total of 3177 bone fragments (weighing 1652 grams) suggests a diet predominantly composed of fish (98%), mostly cod supplemented by haddock and plaice (Figure 12 a, b). The cod was primarily from small to medium sized specimens (shorter than 60 cm), and the many head bones indicate that whole and therefore likely fresh cod were brought to the camp.
There were, however, also crushed bones, which probably represent dried cod and cod‐heads. About 2% of the bones were from mammals and birds — cattle, sheep/goat, fox, pig, and seagulls (Vretemark 2013, 2016). The presence of fox is intriguing, especially since one hipbone had clear traces of butchering, suggesting that even Vulpes vulpes occasionally was consumed.
Another conspicuous feature is the number of alcohol bottles in this midden. Red wine (Bordeaux and Bourgogne types), white wine (Alsace/Mosel/Rhine types), and even several champagne bottles are common alongside beer bottles as well as bottles for schnapps or other hard liqueurs (see Olsen and Witmore 2014, 185–186).
A broken brown glass bottle with a screw cap marked ‘E. Merck Darmstadt’, may be indicative of other stimulants. Merck is a German pharmaceutical company that pioneered the commercial manufacture of methamphetamines, opiates, and cocaine. During WW2 the company was a major supplier of the narcotics used by Wehrmacht personnel and its director was closely associated with the [NSDAP] (Steinkamp 2008; Ohler 2015).
Though the traces of intoxicants may suggest that the guards shared the dump with the prisoners, and thus represent their consumption and possibly the need to get rid of evidence of on‐duty drinking, alcohol bottles, as we have seen, were also found inside the camp (Grabowski et al. 2014, 15–16). While reuse to hold drinking water is possible, alcohol consumption among the POWs is mentioned in local testimonies (Sagen, interview).
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The faunal material, on the other hand, was considerably more abundant compared to the first midden. A total of 13,530 bone fragments (6801 g) were recovered, and, as with the first midden, the overwhelming majority derives from fish (97.5%). The remaining 2.5% are from reindeer, cattle, dog, sheep/goat, and bird (a few bones of seagull, oaks, duck, and ptarmigan) (Vretemark 2020, 2–3).
Among the mammal remains, reindeer is most common with 112 bones (with another 86 undecided cattle/reindeer), followed by cattle, dog and sheep/goat. The latter is hardly represented (one bone only) — as in the first midden, caprine remains are rare. This is intriguing given that sheep were the predominant livestock in this area (and most likely the one present in the material rather than the less common goat).
The presence of reindeer and dog is new compared to the first midden, and it should be noted that some of the dog bones (all likely from a young specimen), have traces of butchering (Vretemark 2020, 4).²
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The material from these middens adds considerable nuance to common assumptions concerning POW diet derived from the available ration lists from WWII [in Europe].
Though these rations varied over time, between areas, and with respect to the prisoners concerned, one gets an impression that the per‐week rations given in 1942 to a Soviet POW classified as ‘normal worker’ (Normalarbeiter) in Norway consisted of: bread (2600 g), meat (250 g), fat (130 g), potatoes (5250 g), ‘nutrition’ (150 g), sugar (110 g), tea (14 g), and vegetables (‘only if available’) (Lundemo 2010, 42–43).
As one can see, the prescribed staple consists of bread and potatoes, while fish, which dominates in the middens, find no mention. Needless to say, neither are intoxicants listed among such rations. Though the remains of tinned food are quite plentiful in the two middens, the faunal remains suggest that local resources, especially fish, constituted a very important addition to the diet.
The surprising presence of fish equipment in the first dump, with numerous hooks and large fragments of a cotton fishnet, along with a needle for net mending found in structure 2, may support oral statements that the inmates were allowed to fish in the hamlet harbour area where they commonly worked (see Figures 11 and 12b). This was also where the hamlet fishermen brought their catch ashore, and there are testimonies of fish changing hands during these frequent encounters (interviews Gunnlaug Sagen and Oddvar Sjøveian).
:::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (September 6).
1915: Franz Josef Strauss, former Axis soldier and educator, was born.
1917: Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, Wehrmacht Major who conspired to murder the Third Reich’s head of state, was born.
1939: South Africa declared war on the Third Reich (around the same time that friendly fire at the Battle of Barking Creek resulted in the British Royal Air Force suffering its first WWII fighter pilot casualty).
1940: King Carol II of Romania abdicated and was succeeded by his son Michael; General Ion Antonescu became the Conducător of Romania.
1944: The Axis lost the cities of Ypres, Belgium and Tartu, Estonia to Allied forces.
1978: Adolf Dassler, bourgeois Fascist, dropped dead.