page_title: Troms og Finnmark
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Troms og Finnmark / History / World War II
context_page_description: Troms og Finnmark is a county in northern Norway that was established on 1 January 2020 as the result of a regional reform. It is the largest county by area in Norway, encompassing about 75,000 square kilometres. It was formed by the merger of the former Finnmark and Troms counties plus Tjeldsund Municipality from Nordland county.
  The administrative centre of the county is split between two towns. The political and administrative offices are based in city of Tromsø. The county governor is based in town of Vadsø. The two towns are about 800 kilometres apart, approximately a 10-hour drive by car. On 1 January 2019, Elisabeth Aspaker was appointed as the County Governor of Troms og Finnmark. Previously, she had been the County Governor of Troms county.
  The merger has not been popular, especially in the old Finnmark county. A county-wide non-binding referendum was held in which it was opposed by about 87% of Finnmark residents who voted, but the Storting did not reverse its decision to merge the county. Some political parties have since been campaigning to reverse the merger in the next parliamentary term.
context_section_description: Per Fugelli has said that World War II resulted in many persons acquiring psychiatric disorders (psykiske senskadene) which could be from experiencing "bombing, accidents involving mines, burning down of homes, forcible evacuation, illness and starvation during the war and liberation. But it was maybe in particular the treatment of Russian prisoners that left marks on the local population."
  Towards the end of World War II, with Operation Nordlicht, the Germans used the scorched earth tactic in Finnmark and northern Troms to halt the Red Army. As a consequence of this, few houses survived the war, and a large part of the population was forcefully evacuated further south (Tromsø was crowded), but many people avoided evacuation by hiding in caves and mountain huts and waited until the Germans were gone, then inspected their burned homes. There were 11,000 houses, 4,700 cow sheds, 106 schools, 27 churches, and 21 hospitals burned. There were 22,000 communications lines destroyed, roads were blown up, boats destroyed, animals killed, and 1,000 children separated from their parents.
  However, after taking the town of Kirkenes on 25 October 1944 (as the first town in Norway), the Red Army did not attempt further offensives in Norway. Free Norwegian forces arrived from Britain and liberated the rest of the county. When war was over, more than 70,000 people were left homeless in Finnmark. The government imposed a temporary ban on residents returning to Finnmark because of the danger of landmines. The ban lasted until the summer of 1945 when evacuees were told that they could finally return home.
caption: Fra Hammerfest by Peder Balke (1851)
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