The flat farmland around Lillestrøm doesn't look like much from the motorway. But this area, called Kjeller, is where Norwegian aviation and nuclear research both started.
In September 1912, two military pilots scouted the area looking for somewhere flat enough to land an aeroplane. They found it here. Norway's first airport opened that month, with a hangar built by the local woodwork factory in just two weeks. Roald Amundsen, fresh from reaching the South Pole, came here to learn to fly and took Norway's first civilian pilot's license in 1914.
During World War II, the Germans took over Kjeller and used it to maintain Luftwaffe aircraft. The British bombed it twice - in 1943 and 1944 - to stop the repairs. Twelve civilians died in the raids.
In October 2024, the municipality voted to close the airfield after over 112 years of operation. The area will become housing and commercial development. There's been considerable debate about preserving some of the historic buildings and the veteran aircraft collection.
But there's more hidden here. In 1948, the Institute for Nuclear Energy was established at Kjeller. Three years later, Norway became only the sixth country in the world to operate a nuclear reactor. The reactor produced radiopharmaceuticals for cancer treatment until it was shut down in 2019 and is now being decommissioned.
The research centre is still there, along with the Defence Research Establishment and several other high-tech institutes. Around 3,000 people work at Kjeller Technology Park. None of this is visible from the E6, but it explains why this unremarkable landscape has produced some remarkable firsts.