Håkon Lønøy
Fjell
Håkon Lønøy was ten years old when he arrived in Scotland. His father, Jens Lønøy was skipper of the M/S Lygrefjord (H 31 F) and transported one of the largest of the Shetland Bus escapes on the boat.
They left Fjell on 26th August 1941 with no fewer than 34 people on board (including four women and two children). They arrived in Lerwick on 28th August. On board were skipper and owner Jens Lønøy, his wife Borghild and sons Sverre (born 1928) and Håkon (born 1931). The others were Frithjof Apelthun, Oscar Bildøy, Nils Blommenfjeld, Gudrun Dalen, Aksel Davanger, Jakob Karlsen Fjeld, Karl Fjeld, Leif Fjeld, Reidar Fjeld, Sverre Nilsen Fjeld, Ivar Johannes Grindheim, Adolf Helleseth, Peder Andersen Kobbeltvedt, Olav Leirvik, Agnes Lokøen, the owner's brother, Halvard Lønøy (also later involved in rescues on board M/B Sjøglimt), Karl Lønøy, Thomas Jacobsen Lønøy, Mathias Mjåtveit, Gunhild Møvig, Kjell Stub Møvik, Lars Møvig, Frithjof Ivar Rogde, Gunnar Gams Steine, Anton Strømme, Ingvald Strømme, Oskar Strømme, Nils Thorsen, Nils Ulveseth, Odd Normann Ulveseth. Some of these people later made their way to Buckie. Jens and Borghild together with their children settled in Peterhythe, and attended Portessie School. Later, Sverre and Håkon spent time at Drumtochty Castle in Kincardineshire which had served as a boarding school for the children of Norwegian refugees. Whilst at Drumtochty, he was, like all Norwegian children in Scotland, he taken to the Post Office where he was issued with a PO Savings Book (below) with four shillings in the account. Charlotte McIntosh, the daughter of another neighbour in Portessie, remembers Mrs Lønøy knitting her a beautiful black and white jersey. At the end of the war the family returned to Norway. Before they departed, Fru Lønøy left the Håkon's PO Savings Book with her neighbour, Mrs Aitken. It is today in the possession of Joe Aitken, her son. |
Jens Lønøy received the Royal Medal of Honour after the War. In the early 1990s, Charlotte McIntosh, their childhood neighbour from Portessie was on a cruise in Norway and met a man by the name of Einar Johannesen, from Bergen, and told him of the Norwegians in Buckie and particularly about Sverre and Håkon Lønøy.
Einar managed to track Håkon down and, in 1992, Charlotte and he met in Norway, for the first time in nearly fifty years. The story was covered by the Banffshire Advertiser which - true to its wartime tradition - managed to spell all the Norwegian names wrongly throughout the article. Charlotte discovered that Sverre had died aged only 49 in the late 1970s. Sadly, Håkon also died not long after Charlotte met him. |