May 10, 2015 Tsunami: Northern Norway
A tsunami caused by a landslide began at Northern Norway on May 10, 2015.
Where the waves reached
The source of the tsunami. No runup with a place is recorded for it.
- Under 1 m
- 1 to 3 m
- 3 to 10 m
- 10 to 30 m
- 30 m and more
- Height not recorded
Travel times
How long the first wave took to reach each part of the ocean, one line for each hour up to 24, estimated from the source and the depth of the sea.
The travel times are computed in your browser, which needs JavaScript.
- 1 to 4 hours
- 5 to 6 hours
- 7 to 14 hours
- 15 hours and more
Computed in your browser the way NOAA’s own travel time maps are: the wave travels at the square root of gravity times the depth, over NOAA’s ETOPO1 depths averaged to a 10 arc-minute grid. Checked against NOAA NCEI’s maps for 21 tsunamis over the first 24 hours, these lines fall within 10 minutes of NCEI’s at half the points compared and within 52 minutes at 9 in 10. They give when the first wave could arrive, not how high it is; bays, harbors and island chains finer than the grid can see it later. Not for use in a warning: see tsunami.gov.
The tsunami
- Date
- May 10, 2015
- Source
- Northern Norway
- Cause
- Landslide
- Runups recorded
- 0
- Waters
- Ocean
- How certain
- Definite tsunami
- Source location
- 69.800° N, 20.920° E
The toll
- Damage
- Limited (under about $1 million) with the earthquake or eruption that caused it
Where the literature gives no number, NCEI records a description on a scale of 1 to 4, printed here in its words. Damage is in millions of US dollars of the year of the event, not adjusted for inflation.
What the record says
NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.
A shoreline landslide of between 1,1 and 1.4 million m3 took place close to the village of Soerkjosen in Northern Norway during the night of the 9th to the 10th May 2015 (see location in Fig. 1). The shoreline was destroyed over a distance of more than one kilometer. In the north a warehouse slumped into the sea whereas in the south a pier sank in the fjord, destroying a harbor. A small tsunami was triggered in the fjord. No casualties were encountered, but the landslide closed the main road, E6, connecting North and South in Norway.
The Soerkjosen landslide happened between 2 and 3 am in the morning, Sunday, 10th of May 2015. Located almost at latitude 70 degrees north it was daylight and eye witnesses were soon aware of what was going on. Several photos were taken, and the time stamps on the photos show that the whole kilometer of shoreline slumped into the fjord within only a few minutes. The witnesses could not tell where along the shoreline the slide actually started. A moderate height tsunami was seen travelling across the fjord towards east. (reference #12039)
More
Every tsunami in 2015The 2000sTsunamis of NorwayThis day in weather historyAlerts in force
Sources
Tsunami events and runups from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI tsunami event 5674.