Norway’s Stad Penninsula might be achingly beautiful but it’s also incredibly dangerous for ships to pass around.
To find a solution the Norwegian Coastal Administration has come up with an ambitious billion pound project to build the world’s first full-scale ‘ship tunnel’.
If completed it’ll be a towering piece of engineering: A mile-long tunnel that’s 37m high and 26.5m wide making it large enough for Norway’s cruise ships.
The project is still in the early stages but if approved it would become the first tunnel of its kind and would become a huge engineering project.
To create the tunnel they would have to blast through a staggering 7.5 million tons of rock.
Once approved the tunnel would take three to four years to complete and when finished would actually leave the Norwegian government at a loss.
Despite the financial concerns the tunnel’s main reason for existing would be safety.
“The Kråkenes lighthouse, just south of Stad, is the meteorological weather station with the most stormy days, which can be anything from 45 to 106 days per year.” explains the administration.
“The combination of wind, currents and waves around this part of the coastline make this section a particularly demanding part of the Norwegian coast.”