(dramatic music)
- My name is Erling Strand.
I'm an assistant professor
at Østfold University College in Norway.
My teaching is physics and chemistry.
I'm also working on doing a project,
which is called Project Hessdalen,
which goes on to study some strange phenomenon.
(soft, dramatic music)
It started back in 1981 up in Hessdalen Valley.
It's a small valley in the southern Norway
where the inhabitants up there
started to see these strange lights
moving around their houses close to the ground.
Actually, it's not correct to say started
because we have found in 1900, five stories,
in 1800, a couple of stories.
Even before 1800,
we have found something in some local history writing.
But the high intensity with up to 20 observation a week
started late 1981.
That lasted for two or three years.
I went up there for my first time
in September, 1982.
And I was standing out in the mountain
together with some friends,
and we saw this huge light in the mountain side,
and then I knew there was a real phenomenon.
Before that, most people didn't take it seriously.
You have scientists who ridiculed
the whole thing.
We thought, why isn't there any research?
Well, maybe we can do it.
So we started what we call Project Hessdalen
to, first of all, find some more data.
It's possible to measure,
so it is really something up there.
(eerie music)
Some lights, you see a big flash, and then it's gone.
These flashes, normally when they start,
more of them are coming.
Also, another type is balls of light.
It can stand still for minutes on one location.
It can move slowly,
and it can move very fast.
No sound.
So is it several different things,
or is it one answer on what it is?
It's very easy to think that it must be one thing
which do all this
because it happened in one place,
such a small valley,
and everything is happening up there.
(soft, tense music)
We had long power line to our field station,
which was standing up in the mountains.
And normally, it was working very perfectly,
but sometimes the power disappear.
And it seems that this disappearing happened
when the phenomenon was coming.
What is it?
What's so specific with Hessdalen?
Natural battery theory is one theory
because the mountains in the east has a lot of copper in it.
The mountains in the west has more iron.
And if you bring these elements together,
you get the battery.
But the problem with that theory is that
the voltage is depending on the elements,
which make up this battery.
And with the elements we have,
it's only maybe one volt,
and that's too little to be able to create these lights.
When you have studied so much,
and you haven't found any answer
which lies inside ordinary known physics,
it must be something new.
There's much more between heaven and Earth
than we know today. (intense music)
And when we get more knowledge
about our universe, our earth,
maybe we can use that knowledge
so we can maybe treat our world better.
(dramatic music)