Morten Krøgholt (62) and his son (15) had been on a skiing holiday near Sälen in Sweden, and were to drive home again to Copenhagen in Denmark.

They started the trip home at 06.30 on Thursday morning, and were soon after met by a snowstorm.

It was Swedish SVT who first mentioned the case.

– Norwegian writing on the signs

– We were in the middle of a snowstorm, and we could not see a meter in front of us. There are three GPS routes from Sälen, and we chose to follow the shortest. It would have taken 1.5 hours longer if we chose one of the others, Krøgholt tells Dagbladet.

After a while, father and son discovered that they were on wild roads.

– We drove on small roads up in the mountains, and quickly we see that there is Norwegian writing on the signs. So we look at the GPS, and I just thought, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no. This was not so smart, “says Krøgholt.

From 28 December, Sweden flocked to the entry rules, and requires that foreigners have documentation on a negative coronate test if they want to enter the country.

– We first tried to drive back, but when we were met by Swedish police at the border who asked us to go back to Norway to take a PCR test. Then I thought again “oh no”. In Denmark, you have to be lucky if you get the result within twelve hours, so we were afraid that we would now have to find a hotel in Oslo, and that we did not make it home for New Year’s Eve, he says.

The test can be of either PCR or antigen type (rapid test), but must be documented and a maximum of 48 hours old. It does not hold to be the fastest at home.

Got police escort

– My son was going home to launch rockets with friends, so he became very anxious that we would not make it, Krøgholt says.

The 62-year-old says that they were escorted by a police car back to Norway.

In Norway, they were referred by the police to a shopping center in Halden, which was ten minutes away from the Norwegian border police.

– They had set up stalls inside the shopping center where they sold antigen tests for 1000 Norwegian kroner per piece. There were many Danes and Germans who had fallen into the same trap as us, he says, and continues:

Several are shown away

– And you know, Danes are known for being safe in line, so there were many who were in a bad mood. Wives scolded the men because they had not read the rules, he says, and chuckles.

Father and son each took their own test. After a couple of hours, they each got their own sheet which showed negative test results, and they could drive into Sweden again, 2000 kroner poorer.

– It was just very special to experience this. I have taken all three doses of the vaccine, and I am in favor of both the bandages and the restrictions given by the authorities. I’m not a corona denier, but this reminded me of the border crossing in Eastern Europe when I worked as a journalist down there, Krøgholt says.