UFO or small green men from Snarum?

Last Thursday Bjørn Roar Hartz was about to cut an oat field that lies a little out-of-the-way down by the Snarum River. He was surprised to discover a circle, ten metres across, in the middle of the field. In the circle all the grain was layed down flat and all the straw was bent clockwise. There are five burnt areas in the circle, one in the middle and four in the periphery, to make it look like the imprints of the five legs of a UFO.

"First I was convinced that some youngsters I know had done it, but they persistently deny it", laughs Hartz. But he still believes that someone has played a trick on him.

- "But it must have taken a long time to make the circle. It has to have been people with little to do", expresses Hartz.

When Bygdeposten (the local newspaper Ed.) went with Hartz down to the field Monday, they measured the distance from the central burned area to the edge of the circle. It was exactly five and a half meters. Between the burnt areas at the periphery the distance varied from five to six metres. The burnt areas were exactly two feet across. Bjørn Roar Hartz feels that it’s a bit strange that there are no human tracks left by intruders in the oats, neither form the road nor from the fiver. When recently, he picked wild oat together with another farmer, there was no circle there.

- "The straw would not have regained an upright position if anybody had entered the field after that", says Hartz. He feels that the ones, who set fire to the grains to create the five burnt areas, were really foolhardy. "The whole field might have caught fire", he said.

- "When the perpetrators read this, they’ll probably get a good laugh. I believe that there is more between heaven and earth than we know, but I don’t believe in UFOs", laughs Hartz. He thinks the small green Martians are from Modum.

Can the imprint be due to a strike of lightening? Meteorologist Børje Johanson at The Institute of Meteorology in Oslo comments that the lightening does not usually strike on flat ground. "The lightening seeks out points that protrude from the landscape", he says. Understandably the meteorologist was not very interested to comment whether a UFO had landed in the field.

Photograph: Eli Bondlid Sund

Survey

He feels that the size of the circle corresponds well with earlier unexplainable observations in Modum, of which he has received several reports lately. Carlsen is a sober fellow who works with information technology with an airline, and he is known to have both feet firmly planted on the ground.

If people have made the circle, it is strange that they chose a field so out-of -the-way. It would have been natural to make the circle in a place where it would draw more attention. Where we have seen such imprints, the ones who have made them have often made several circles while they’re at it, says Stein Carlsen.

The society gathers and processes all available information about UFOs in Norway. And according to their homepage they are trying to "employ scientific principles and methods in their research". The samples of the flattened grain and of the soil in the burned areas that Carlsen has gathered will be sent for scientific analyses. They then expect to know whether fuel have been applied and the grain set on fire.

In the burned areas there is nothing to indicate that legs belonging to a heavy craft have been positioned there, says the UFO expert. He does not want to draw any premature conclusions, but will be in touch as soon as the results of the tests are ready. – However it is no problem to make such a circle by the use of rope attached in the centre, and a piece of plank. But it is clear that there is some activity in this area, says Stein Carlsen who has recently received reports from persons at Åmot (small community about ten km away. Ed.) and from persons at Ringerike (nearby district), who have had strange experiences lately.