During the 1960s, the Royal Norwegian military, with the backing of some $500 million in NATO funds (about $3.5 billion in today’s cash), built a huge and very secretive (at the time) base that would make a Bond super villain squeal like a little girl.
It doesn’t look like much on the outside…
But its big enough to store all of Uncle Olaf’s submarine fleet and then some
This place was made back when tunneling into mountains was the “in” thing baby, yeah.
The Olavsvern Naval Base, with some 145,000-square feet of above-ground buildings and nearly 270,000-square feet of bombproof interior mountain space shields a submarine dry dock, a tunnel system, an emergency power system and enough storerooms for an infantry brigade in its protective rock.
The thing is, the Cold War ended officially in about 1990-ish and by 2009, the Norwegians pulled the plug on the base located near Tromso, putting it up for lease.
And now the Russians have moved in after assuming a $17 million lease.
Cue the rimshot.
