NATO Soldiers as Security Risk, Stupidity Edition, or: Norway, c. 2026.

We can’t do doom and gloom all day, everyday, hence today I have a gem for you (and, yes, it’s a real piece of rah-portin™, if you can believe it).

Chuckle away, and keep ‘em comments coming.

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.

Several moose signs disappeared at the same time as the military exercise Cold Response was carried out. We know nothing about this, says the Armed Forces.

By Ann-Kristin Hanssen, Malin Straumsnes, and Marita Andersen, NRK.no, 24 Aug. 2026 [source; archived]

‘It’s quite high up. Maybe someone has stood on someone’s shoulders, or someone has brought a ladder to reach up’, says deputy chairman of the Målselv Wildlife Board Tor Eriksen.

He shows one of the places where the sign was stolen near Bardufoss. Here, only the pole is left. Eriksen estimates that the danger signs that have disappeared hang at least three metres above the ground.

It was Folkebladet that first reported [sic] on the moose sign mystery [their header incl. the oft-used trope ‘never seen before’].

Eriksen does not know exactly how many signs have been stolen, but estimates that at least 8–10 signs have disappeared between Bardufoss and Rundhaug.

The disappearance of moose signs is not a new problem in Norway. In 2017, for example, ten moose signs disappeared in a short time in the Narvik area [archived link; the tag line of that piece was: ‘stolen roadsigns pose a great danger to motorists, the Norwegian Road Administration fears’].

In Målselv, moose warning signs have also disappeared before, but not to the extent they did this spring [at this junction, here’s how that original rah-portin™ in the Folkebladet was framed:

Moose roadsigns disappeared along the roads: ‘never seen this before’.

Nevermind the notion that a) it has happened before (as per the same dude) in the same area and b) elsewhere: a mystery™, if there ever was one]

Tor Eriksen himself is from the area and suddenly discovered that several moose signs were missing. He then approached the county [orig. fylkeskommune] and learned that the county had removed the signs to replace them with new ones [so, the guy is a local, sees no signs one day, gets excited, and learns the county took ‘em off: we do need way more rah-portin™ like this].

Troms County Council does not have a full overview of how many moose signs have disappeared [but I’m sure we should trust them with, say, utilities, safe drinking water, and public finances, right? Right *sigh*].

We have many operating contracts and this happens from time to time. The problem is not a very big one.

Thus Øyvind Strømseth, head of the infrastructure department in the transport department in Troms County Council.

He has no statistics on how often signs are stolen.

‘From time to time, we lose signs because they are attractive as souvenirs. It is mainly tourists who want to take a souvenir from the north with them’, says Strømseth.

[NRK] What makes these moose signs so popular among tourists?

[Strømseth] I don’t really know, but this has been popular among European tourists. Moose are a bit exotic when you come from Europe to Norway [I’m unsure about this, but it’s also quite wild to make such comments, which I’d range from mildly amusing, albeit in a stoopid way, to inane beyond the pale].

Strømseth has no faith that they will find out who has taken the signs, and therefore will not report the thefts [did I mention official stats being a tad … useless, by the way?].

The deputy chairman of the wildlife board in Målselv has heard that the road authorities elsewhere in the country have welded the signs to the pole to prevent theft.

‘It is something Troms County Council must consider, if the challenge continues’, says Eriksen [yeah, let’s dumb-proof everything: next up, walls must be coated with rubber to make them less dangerous™ and knives must be dull].

Strømseth says they are considering measures [these will, of course, work as planned™, and I’m sure these people will then have stats™ to back up such claims], adding:

What we can consider is grinding away the edge of the nuts so that it becomes more difficult to remove the signs [no comment].

Even though no one has seen the signs being removed, the Wildlife Board has a suspicion about who is behind it.

Eriksen says that the signs disappeared between the end of February and the beginning of March. The large military exercise Cold Response was underway at the time [as rah-ported™ by our intrepid state broadcaster journos™ at the time; my favourite piece is this one where it was rah-ported™ that British troops walked up to reindeers to ‘take pictures’ but ‘bothered’ the animals (archived)].

The suspicion is that allied NATO soldiers have taken the moose signs with them as a souvenir. Eriksen:

Of course, it is an assumption, but we know that it is during that period that the signs disappeared [correlation is causation, once again].

And if that is the case, it would have been interesting to know how they managed to get it through the security check … [in their checked baggage, I suppose].

Øyvind Strømseth of Troms County Municipality also notes that the signs disappeared in February/March. He has no idea who took them:

It was during that period, but I will not blame the Armed Forces. It could have been anyone who removed the signs.

Both the Army and the Armed Forces’ Operational Headquarters say it is completely unknown to them that several moose signs are missing, and that there is speculation that allied soldiers have taken the signs with them:

Similar signs have disappeared from Norwegian roads over time, and based on the facts disclosed, a suspicion against allied forces appears to be unfounded [NRK rah-ported™ there were British troops there].

Thus Vegard Finberg, Head of Communications at the Armed Forces’ Operational Headquarters, in an email to NRK, adding:

However, danger signs that disappear pose a safety risk, and the Armed Forces take the information submitted into account.

Deputy chairman of the Målselv wildlife committee, Tor Eriksen, is aware that it is serious when moose signs disappear:

The signs are not randomly placed. This has been carefully assessed by the Wildlife Board together with the road authorities. The signs are put up where there is the greatest risk of moose encounters.

The work in Målselv was done a few years ago, and on many stretches of road there are annual moose collisions.

Now the aim is to get new warning signs up before the winter season starts, so that motorists are warned about the danger of moose [ah, that should be do-able as it’s only late August: how long could it possibly take for new signs to be placed there?].

[Eriksen] Even if it is not winter, the moose also cross the road at this time of year.

The county confirms that new signs have been ordered:

‘When the suppliers deliver them, we get new signs screwed up. I can’t say exactly when’, says Strømseth.

A new sign costs NOK 800 [about US$ 80, a bargain, I’m sure].

It’s easy to make fun of such rah-portin™, but here’s why I’m bothering:

NRK sent three (!) journos™ to essentially re-do a story™ that was first done by the local newspaper, Folkebladet. Their journos™ already took pictures on-site with Mr. Eriksen of the Wildlife Board, yet the NRK journos™ spent their time and resources on yet another such trip. And pictures of nuts and screws.

Then there’s the entire notion of troops doing stuff, and while I think this is a likely culprit, it’s the price one pays for having foreign troops on one’s soil. It’s always been thus, and it will always be like this. It’s also a kind of nothingburger, to be honest.

Hence, I’ll share some other anecdote about the Norwegian mind.

Earlier this week, I was out with a friend on the occasion of his b-day, and I had the profound misfortune of chatting with some of my friend’s acquaintances, too. At some point in our conversation, I mentioned that the Covid shitshow was all fake, lies, and then some—which triggered two of my interlocutors who insisted, despite being unable to cite a single shred of evidence, that ‘the vaccines are safe’.

Needless to say, I repeatedly pointed to names, dates, facts, and then some, but my interlocutors’ remained unperturbed by the evidence before them, making increasingly absurd excuses, with my reference to modRNA poison/death tech being, well, ‘gene therapy’, as Moderna called it in 2020, being responded to as follows:

Well, we eat GMO food all the time, too.

The fact that there being a difference between transfection of human cells plus the potential of genome contamination with synthetic DNA etc. was simply brushed aside.

The same was done to ‘off-label’ mandated use of face diapers by politicos™ (which means quackery, in terms intelligible to those who understand the criminal code) or social-distancing or the fact that 23 elderly died in Norwegian care homes within a few days of the roll-out of the poison/death juices in late December 2020:

You can’t make this up, and it’s now 6+ years and some people still can’t wrap their heads around gov’t not exactly having their best interests at-heart.

And this is the same kind of obfuscatory blabber we see with the moose signs.

Stuff happens, certain aspects are ruled out a priori and discounted right away.

The proverbial drunkard looking for last car keys under the street lamp ‘cause there’s some light.

Same shit, different smell.

Oh, and morons, all of them.