2009 Norwegian Spiral Anomaly

The Norwegian spiral anomaly of 2009 (Norwegian: det spiralformede lysmønsteret, "the spiral-form light pattern", det spiralformede lysfenomenet, "the spiral-form light phenomenon") was a light phenomenon that appeared in the night sky over Norway in the morning of 9 December 2009. It was visible from, and photographed from, northern Norway and Sweden. The spiral consisted of a blue beam of light with a greyish spiral emanating from one end of it.

The light could be seen in all of Trøndelag to the south (the two red counties on the map to the right) and all across the three northern counties which compose Northern Norway, as well as from Northern Sweden and it lasted for 10 minutes. According to sources, it looked like a blue light coming from behind a mountain, stopping in mid-air, and starting to spiral outwards. A similar, though less spectacular event had also occurred in Norway the month before. Both events had visual features of failed flights of Russian RSM-56 Bulava SLBMs, and the Russian Defence Ministry said shortly after that such an event had taken place on 9 December.

Source Title

Wikipedia: 2009 Norwegian spiral anomaly

Source URL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Norwegian_spiral_anomaly

Source Notes

Imported from Wikipedia REST, MediaWiki, and Wikidata sources on 2026-07-06. Review article citations and edit details before saving. Wikimedia image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Norway_Spiral.webp. Coordinates inferred from location context using OpenStreetMap Nominatim query: Trøndelag, Norway.

1. Occurred Dec 9, 2009 12:00 AM UTC
2. Submitted Jul 6, 2026 10:19 AM Historical Archive created
3. Approved Jul 6, 2026 10:19 AM Moderator reviewed
4. Media Uploaded Jul 6, 2026 10:20 AM 2 media files