The West Ice accidents occurred around April 5, 1952 when the five Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 seal hunting

Seal hunting

Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. The hunt is currently practiced in five countries: Canada, where most of the world's seal hunting takes place, Namibia, the Danish region of Greenland, Norway and Russia...

 vessels "Ringsel", "Brattind" and "Vårglimt" from Troms

Troms

or Romsa is a county in North Norway, bordering Finnmark to the northeast and Nordland in the southwest. To the south is Norrbotten Län in Sweden and further southeast is a shorter border with Lapland Province in Finland. To the west is the Norwegian Sea...

 and "Buskøy" and "Pels" from Sunnmøre

Sunnmøre

Sunnmøre is the southernmost traditional district of the western Norwegian county of Møre og Romsdal. Its main city is Ålesund. The region comprises the municipalities of Giske, Hareid, Herøy, Norddal, Sande, Skodje, Haram, Stordal, Stranda, Sula, Sykkylven, Ulstein, Vanylven, Volda, Ørskog,...

 with a total of 78 men vanished in the midst of a severe storm

Storm

A storm is any disturbed state of an astronomical body's atmosphere, especially affecting its surface, and strongly implying severe weather...

 in the West Ice

West Ice

The West Ice is a patch of the Greenland Sea covered by pack ice during winter time. It is located north of Iceland, between Greenland and Jan Mayen island....

, east of Greenland

Greenland

Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

.

Despite search and rescue operations for many days involving planes and naval ships, no traces of the missing boats were discovered. During Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

 that year 53 Norwegian vessels were participating in seal hunting in the West Ice. Of these 7 shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

ed, 5 of these disappeared without a trace. The first vessel to shipwreck was the Møre

Møre

Møre is the name of two traditional districts in different parts of Scandinavia.*Møre og Romsdal, Norway.*Möre, Sweden....

 boat "Vestis", however the crew of this boat was rescued.

External links

Da alarmen gikk i Vestisen "When the Alarm Called in the West Ice"

Literature

• Arnold Farstad: Mysteriet i Vestisen: selfangsttragedien som lamslo nasjonen, ("The West Ice Mystery: The Seal Hunting Tragedy that Stunned the Nation") Samlaget, 2001, ISBN 82-521-5849-8
• Asbjørn T. Aagaard: Vesterisen 1952, 1995 (diary notes published by Hilde Aagaard) ISBN 82-993655-0-3