Town Hall square

It was Princess Astrid, the elder sister of King Harald V of Norway, who officially unveiled the statue you see here, honoring Joachim Rønneberg. Born in Ålesund on August 30, 1919, he later became one of the city’s most celebrated figures from the Second World War. Joachim had just completed his studies in 1939 when the war began. In 1940, Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany, and the following year, at only twenty-one years old, Rønneberg escaped the country with eight friends aboard a small fishing boat, heading across the North Sea to Great Britain. There, he joined a Norwegian unit of the legendary Special Operations Executive, known as the SOE, where he received intensive training in sabotage and covert operations aimed at disrupting Nazi military efforts. In 1943, the Allies faced a serious threat: Nazi Germany was trying to develop an atomic bomb. One of the key elements needed for that project was heavy water, and at the time it was produced in Europe only at a single factory in Norway. A first British attempt to destroy the facility ended in disaster. Rønneberg, who had been appointed commander of Operation Gunnerside, chose a completely different approach, relying on stealth instead of direct attack. He assembled a small team of six highly trained Norwegian commandos, all expert skiers, who were parachuted into the mountains near the factory. After being trapped for five days in an isolated cabin during a fierce snowstorm, the group finally set out across the harsh winter landscape. They managed to infiltrate the heavily guarded industrial complex without being detected and placed explosive charges at key points inside the plant. The entire operation was completed without a single shot being fired. Once the sabotage was discovered, thousands of German soldiers began searching the region. Rønneberg and five of his men escaped by skiing nearly four hundred kilometers over fourteen days, eventually reaching neutral Sweden. After the war, Joachim Rønneberg never sought fame or recognition for what he had done. He returned to Ålesund and became a journalist for the Norwegian public radio station NRK, where he worked until his retirement in 1988. He passed away in his hometown in 2018 at the age of ninety-nine. By then, he was the last surviving member of the Gunnerside team. Despite the major impact of his actions on the course of the war, those who knew him often described him as a remarkably modest and humble man.