The Stad peninsula is the point where the North Sea meets the Norwegian Sea, and it is one of the most dangerous stretches of coast in Norway. Stadhavet is exposed to storms 90 to 110 days a year, with unpredictable combinations of wind, currents, and waves that can linger for days even after the wind dies down. There are 58 known shipwrecks on the seabed here, and since World War II over 30 people have drowned trying to round this cape. Even the Vikings avoided it. In prehistoric times, seafarers dragged their boats across the peninsula on logs rather than sail around.
The idea of solving this with a tunnel is not new. The first proposal appeared in a newspaper in 1874. Since then the project has been studied more than 20 times. The plan was for a 1.7-kilometre tunnel through the rock, 36 metres wide and 50 metres high, large enough for Hurtigruten ships and coastal freight vessels. It would have been the world's first full-size ship tunnel.
In 2021, the Norwegian parliament approved the project. Only the Green Party voted against. Construction was supposed to start soon after, and Kystverket, the coastal administration, began buying land, doing geological surveys, and running tender processes. By that point they had already spent around 290 million kroner on planning.
Then the price started climbing. The original cost estimate was around 5 billion kroner. By 2023 it had risen to 7.1 billion, and the government hit pause. By 2025, the estimate reached 9.4 billion. On 10 October 2025, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre announced the tunnel was dead. Too expensive, he said, not responsible to continue.
What he did not say was that the price estimate had been ready since June, and that his government had ordered Kystverket to stop negotiating with the three construction companies who had submitted bids. The contractors were never given a chance to propose cost cuts. This came out after the election, and the reaction was fierce. The opposition accused Arbeiderpartiet of deliberately hiding the decision until after the vote. Sp leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum called it a deliberate short-circuiting of the process. Former Stad mayor Alfred Bjørlo from Venstre called it another in a series of Labour bluffs to voters along the coast. The transport committee chair threatened to summon the minister to explain himself.
It got worse. The three municipalities that had spent years preparing for the tunnel, Stad, Kinn, and Vanylven, said they had spent 100 million kroner of their own money on preparations. They asked for compensation. Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg essentially said no, noting that municipalities sometimes spend money on projects that do not happen. Some residents had already sold their homes for the tunnel route.
Four days after the project was declared dead, Sp, KrF, and Venstre put forward a joint proposal in parliament to override the government and let Kystverket negotiate after all. Frp and Høyre supported it, giving it a majority. Parliament overruled the government. Kystverket went back to the contractors, and by early 2026 they came back with lower prices, cutting several hundred million kroner. As of now, the tunnel is not quite dead and not quite alive. The final price is being worked out, and whether it actually gets built depends on whether the numbers come down enough for politicians to say yes again.
The whole saga is a textbook case of how infrastructure projects work in Norway: a good idea from 1874, 150 years of studies, near-death experiences, political games, and a country that still cannot decide whether to build a hole through a mountain so boats do not sink.
The idea of solving this with a tunnel is not new. The first proposal appeared in a newspaper in 1874. Since then the project has been studied more than 20 times. The plan was for a 1.7-kilometre tunnel through the rock, 36 metres wide and 50 metres high, large enough for Hurtigruten ships and coastal freight vessels. It would have been the world's first full-size ship tunnel.
In 2021, the Norwegian parliament approved the project. Only the Green Party voted against. Construction was supposed to start soon after, and Kystverket, the coastal administration, began buying land, doing geological surveys, and running tender processes. By that point they had already spent around 290 million kroner on planning.
Then the price started climbing. The original cost estimate was around 5 billion kroner. By 2023 it had risen to 7.1 billion, and the government hit pause. By 2025, the estimate reached 9.4 billion. On 10 October 2025, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre announced the tunnel was dead. Too expensive, he said, not responsible to continue.
What he did not say was that the price estimate had been ready since June, and that his government had ordered Kystverket to stop negotiating with the three construction companies who had submitted bids. The contractors were never given a chance to propose cost cuts. This came out after the election, and the reaction was fierce. The opposition accused Arbeiderpartiet of deliberately hiding the decision until after the vote. Sp leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum called it a deliberate short-circuiting of the process. Former Stad mayor Alfred Bjørlo from Venstre called it another in a series of Labour bluffs to voters along the coast. The transport committee chair threatened to summon the minister to explain himself.
It got worse. The three municipalities that had spent years preparing for the tunnel, Stad, Kinn, and Vanylven, said they had spent 100 million kroner of their own money on preparations. They asked for compensation. Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg essentially said no, noting that municipalities sometimes spend money on projects that do not happen. Some residents had already sold their homes for the tunnel route.
Four days after the project was declared dead, Sp, KrF, and Venstre put forward a joint proposal in parliament to override the government and let Kystverket negotiate after all. Frp and Høyre supported it, giving it a majority. Parliament overruled the government. Kystverket went back to the contractors, and by early 2026 they came back with lower prices, cutting several hundred million kroner. As of now, the tunnel is not quite dead and not quite alive. The final price is being worked out, and whether it actually gets built depends on whether the numbers come down enough for politicians to say yes again.
The whole saga is a textbook case of how infrastructure projects work in Norway: a good idea from 1874, 150 years of studies, near-death experiences, political games, and a country that still cannot decide whether to build a hole through a mountain so boats do not sink.