The 50-year old was hoping to evade quarantine rules in his country by crossing over mountains from Sweden but bad weather thwarted his plan, emergency services said.
ADVERTISEMENTA Norwegian returning home tried to evade quarantine rules by skiing over the Norway-Sweden border.
But the attempt did not end well.
The 50-year-old had to be rescued after he ran into bad weather. He was later handed over to the police and now faces prosecution, emergency services said.
Under Norwegian law, the man should have tested negative and spent ten days in quarantine in a hotel, a local police spokesperson told AFP.
"He wanted to return to Norway to get hold of some documents, then return to Sweden where he has a work in progress," Trond Helge Rønning of Norske Folkehjelp rescue agency told AFP. "But to avoid quarantine, he decided to cross the border through the mountains."
"In all, it was about 40 kilometres," according to the rescuer based in Tydal, a Norwegian village near the Swedish border.
But, after about 25 kilometres, the skier got caught in bad weather. He was first rescued by a reindeer breeder, who then handed him over to two fishermen a few kilometres away near Lake Essandsjø until rescue services arrived, Rønning said.
"It was wet and it was cold," he said, describing a difficult area "with fairly high mountains."
Rescuers then handed over the man to police for violating pandemic rules. Rønning said the man was "pissed off and did not apologise".
He is currently in a local hotel doing the quarantine he had tried to avoid.