Torghatten
Interesting facts
- The mountain's name joins the island of Torget with the Norwegian word for hat, describing the peak's rounded, hat-like silhouette.
- Geologists found no rounded cobbles or boulders inside the tunnel, the debris that would be expected if waves had done most of the carving.
- Polished rock on the tunnel's northern wall and a curving channel near the eastern entrance point to high-pressure meltwater flowing beneath the ice sheet.
- The granite's layering stands almost vertical, creating natural lines of weakness that ice and water could exploit to open the passage.
- When the ice retreated about 12,000 years ago the sea stood roughly 100 metres higher, and an old beach ridge of rounded boulders survives on the mountain's north-eastern side.
- Even at that post-glacial high stand the sea stayed about 15 metres below the floor of the tunnel, so waves could only have finished a hole that already existed.
- The troll legend of Torghatten belongs to a larger cycle of Nordland tales that also explains the Seven Sisters range and other peaks along the Helgeland coast.
- The aircraft that struck the mountain in 1988 was a de Havilland Canada Dash 7, and the crash remains one of the worst in Norwegian civil aviation.
- Around 100,000 people a year climb to the hole, making it one of the best-known natural landmarks of northern Norway.
Why it is worth it
Torghatten is a granite mountain on the island of Torget off the coast of Helgeland in northern Norway, and right through its middle runs a natural tunnel big enough to hold a cathedral nave. The hole is 166 metres long, on average 18 metres wide and 41 metres high, and from the sea it shows as a patch of daylight in the dome of the peak, which rises to 258 metres. The opening lies about 115 metres above present sea level, and from inside it frames the flat skerries and open water of the coast.
The mountain is made of foliated Proterozoic granite. For a long time the hole was explained simply as the work of waves when the sea stood higher after the last ice age, but more recent research points to several processes acting over at least two glacial cycles: meltwater draining beneath the ice, the movement of the ice itself, and wave erosion. At the height of the last glaciation, some 20,000 years ago, the area lay under roughly a kilometre of ice.
Local legend gives a livelier account. The troll Hestmannen, the horseman, was pursuing the beautiful maiden Lekamøya and shot an arrow at her when she would not stop; to save her, the troll king of Sømna threw his hat in the arrow's path, and the arrow pierced it. At sunrise all the figures turned to stone, and the hat became Torghatten with a hole through the middle, while Hestmannen and Lekamøya stand as other mountains along the coast. On 6 May 1988 Widerøe Flight 710 crashed into the mountain on its approach to Brønnøysund, killing all 36 people on board. The name of the peak was later taken by the ferry company Torghatten, based in Brønnøysund.
Getting there
Torghatten is on the island of Torget in Brønnøy Municipality, Nordland, just south of the town of Brønnøysund, to which Torget is linked by the Brønnøysund Bridge. The nearest airport is Brønnøysund Airport (BNN), about 9 km away, with flights to Bodø, Trondheim and Oslo. A road leads around the island to the foot of the mountain, from where a footpath climbs to the tunnel.
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From the encyclopaedia
Torghatten is a granite dome on the island of Torget in Brønnøy Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. It is known for its characteristic hole, or natural tunnel, through its centre. It is possible to walk up to the tunnel on a well-prepared path, and through it on a natural path.
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