Old Bridge
The 200-metre (660 ft) long original bridge is a steel through arch bridge. It is still standing, but is not in regular use. The Omsund Bridge was opened for traffic in April 1940, but with no opening ceremony because of World War II. Local young men just tore down the barricades in the middle of the night. On 22 April 1940, German bombers tried to destroy the new bridge, but missed and managed only to kill 15 year old Ingolf Vatten on a bike several hundred meters away on Frei, and set the forest on fire on Nordlandet. In May, the new bridge was crucial during the emergency evacuation of the burning of Kristiansund.
This bridge to Frei made it possible to shorten the ferry trip between Kristiansund and Gjemnes on the main land by 15 kilometres (9.3 mi), when a new road crossing Frei was completed in the 1940s. The ferry was finally replaced with an undersea tunnel in 1992 as part of the Kristiansund Mainland Connection.
The old bridge was replaced in 1981, but it finally opened "officially" in a ceremony on 24 April 2005, 65 years late, and 24 years after it was replaced. It was then made accessible again for pedestrians and cyclists, and protected as an important sample of Norwegian bridges built in the 1930s.
Read more about this topic: Omsund Bridge
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