Kvarstad vessels

[1] The ships had been visiting Swedish ports when the German invasion of Norway took place in April 1940.

The fate of the ships was disputed through a number of diplomatic notes and trials between the involved parties.

[7] In January 1941 the British Operation Rubble succeeded in bringing five of the ships to the Orkney Islands.

The captured sailors were brought to German prisons, first to the prisoner-of-war camp Marlag und Milag Nord near Bremen, where they were treated relatively well.

While the British remained in the Milag camp, the Norwegian sailors were subject to war trials (at the Sondergericht in Rendsburg), and were eventually transferred to other prisons, as Nacht und Nebel prisoners with much tougher conditions.