A Norwegian man who lives by the coast was “astonished” to discover an enormous cargo ship in his backyard after it ran aground in the early hours of the morning.
The 443-foot vessel smashed into the shoreline just yards from Johan Helberg’s house at around 5 a.m. on Thursday. Helberg slept soundly through the incident, oblivious to the chaos outside.
He was only alerted to the disaster after a panicked neighbor who had witnessed the crash rang his doorbell “at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” to check if he was ok.
“I didn’t hear anything. I was sleeping seven metres (22ft) from the bow,” Helberg told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I went to the window and was quite astonished to see a big ship,” he later told The Guardian. “I had to bend my neck to see the top of it. It was so unreal.”
He added: “It was lucky that it went ashore there. Five metres further south, and it would have entered the bedroom. And that wouldn’t have been particularly pleasant.”
Helberg’s neighbor Jostein Jorgensen said he awoke to see the ship heading directly into the shore. “I went out and called and shouted and whistled without anything happening,” he told local outlet TV2, before rushing to his neighbor’s house.
“I was sure that he was already outside, but no, there was no sign of life. I rang the doorbell many times and nothing,” Jorgensen said.
“And it was only when I called him on the phone that I managed to contact him.”
The NCL Salten had 16 people on board and was bound for Cyprus before it ran aground. The vessel was traveling southwest through the Trondheim Fjord to Orkanger before it veered off course.
Nobody was injured during the accident, and Norwegian police are investigating the cause of the crash. A potential suspect has been identified, although authorities have ruled out drugs or alcohol as a reason for the error.
The head of shipping company NCL, which chartered the ship, said the incident was a “very serious error” and expressed relief that nobody was hurt.
“There was no reason to believe this was intentional,” NCL executive Bente Hetland said in a statement. “Incidents like this should not happen, and we have started an investigation into the causes. Today, we are relieved that there were no injuries, and our main focus is on the people near the ship and our crew.”
A first attempt to remove the ship on Thursday failed, and a second attempt will be made at high tide. The cargo ship had run aground once before, in 2023, when it floated free without external help.
