In 1940, following the German invasion, hundreds of Norwegian and Danish exiles – men, women and children – sailed across the North Sea in small fishing boats to seek refuge in Scotland.  Many of these exiles settled in Buckie, a community of some eight thousand people on the Moray Firth coast, and the town often became described as ‘Little Norway’ during the war years.  There was a Norwegian Consulate, reading room, shops, and Sjømannskirken opened in the main street in 1942. King Haakon VII visited the town in the summer of 1943 and that event ‘the day the King of Norway came to town’ remains a widely known part of the community’s narrative. There was also a Danish exiled population, although smaller, it was no less significant a part of the town’s wartime experience and collective memory.    

Little Norway project was a partnership involving led by Professor Peter Reid at Robert Gordon University with Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Centre. It was part of European Year of Culture Heritage 2018 and included a funded artist residency. It drew extensively on archival sources, oral history testimony, personal narratives and storytelling (now largely second generation), photographic collections (both publicly accessible such as the extensive holdings of the heritage society and those personally retained by individuals), newspaper reports and other sources to explore the stories of the Norwegian and Danish communities. 

The principal issue in the project was capturing and presenting the stories of diverse communities in an authentic, sensitive, and respect fashion. The Scandinavian exiles were warmly welcomed for the most part; but there were occasional tensions. The Norwegian community were displaced from their homes and their stories included all the tragedies that such a wartime exile brings. They liked Scotland well enough but they longed for home (and this was an important, and prevailing narrative across the story telling); equally for the host community (which, on the whole, welcomed them with openness and generosity) had to live their wartime reality with approximately a tenth of the town’s population being Norwegian or Danish.   

The diversity of voices was central to the project. This was achieved through extensive archival research in collections in the United Kingdom, Norway, and Denmark, and also most valuably through oral testimony from the dwindling band of people directly involved or from their children. The storytelling sought to present a ‘rounded picture’; there were heroic stories, tragic stories, hard stories, silly stories, difficult stories, men, women, children individually, groups, the community, and society collectively. This plurality of both voice and approach facilitated the creation of story bank that gives a deep sense of the town of Buckie as Little Norway between 1940 and 1946.

The stories of Little Norway can be found at www.littlenorway.org.uk.

Image credit: Press and Journal