Snow Treasure

In Marie McSwigan’s Snow Treasure, children in Nazi-occupied Norway smuggle gold bars past watching German sentries to a rendezvous with a Norwegian shipping vessel in a nearby fiord. Their bravery safeguards millions of dollars of Norwegian wealth, which is taken to America at the end of the novel. Written for middle-grade readers and published in 1942, McSwigan’s novel was originally considered to be a work of historical fiction based on a contemporary true story. However, subsequent publications of Snow Treasure have articulated in a foreword that there is no proof the events described ever took place. Snow Treasure won the Young Reader’s Choice Award in 1945.

This guide uses the 1995 Scholastic Paperbacks edition.

Plot Summary

As the story begins, Peter Lundstrom, a 12-year-old boy who lives with his family in Riswyk, Norway, plays with his sister, Lovisa Lundstrom, and his friends, Michael and Helga Thomsen, as they all race on their sleds and have a snowball fight. Looking down into the fiord below, they notice that Peter and Lovisa’s uncle, Victor Lundstrom, has returned to Riswyk. The children call to Victor, but he seems distracted and preoccupied. At a meeting in Peter’s home that night, a group of men discuss the threat of the Nazi invasion of Norway. Peter emerges in his pajamas. When Victor sees Peter, he is struck by inspiration and claims to have found the solution to the problem of safeguarding Norwegian gold in the face of Nazi invasion. He proposes that the children can transport it. Peter is eager to be involved in the plot, although he doesn’t fully understand it, but Victor’s father, Lars Lundstrom, is concerned about Peter’s safety.

Uncle Victor visits Peter and Lovisa’s school to organize the children into a Defense Club, of which Peter is to be the president. They conduct air raid drills, and Peter learns more about the role of the Defense Club. Under the guise of playing on their sleds, the children are to transport gold to the Snake fiord, located a couple of miles outside of town. The gold will be strapped to their sleds and tied down under potato sacks. Once at Snake fiord beach, the children will bury the gold and build snowmen on top of it to indicate its location. Uncle Victor, with his friend and first mate Rolls, will remove the gold by night and move it onto his fishing vessel, the Cleng Peerson, which will be disguised nearby. The gold will eventually be taken to America, where it will be held safely on behalf of all of Norway, rather than falling into Nazi hands.

Lars, who has been convinced to agree with the plan, takes Peter at night on skis to see a cave in the woods where the gold bars are stockpiled. Soon after, Peter leads his friends Michael and Helga and his sister Lovisa to the cave. There, Per Garson, the Lundstroms’ family servant, loads the children’s sleds with the first 16 gold bars. Passing the Nazi soldiers is a tense and stressful moment for the children, and Peter almost crashes into a group of them on his sled. A kind captain tells Peter that he will move his soldiers so as not to disturb the children’s sledding. The children later laugh about this incident, for the captain had no way of knowing that the children were part of a resistance movement. They reach the Snake fiord and bury the gold, building snowmen on top of each pile, and Uncle Victor and Rolls successfully move the gold onto the Cleng Peerson that night. Meanwhile, Lars Lundstrom and many other men from Riswyk leave to fight invading Nazi soldiers in the south of Norway.

The children—Peter, Lovisa, Michael, and Helga—each become team leaders of a group of nine or 10 children. The children work in shifts to move the gold on their sleds. Although the Nazi soldiers continue to believe that the children are merely playing, the intimidating Commandant orders the children to stop wasting time and return to school. To help the resistance movement and convince the Commandant that the school cannot be kept open, the town doctor fabricates a contagious case of measles, using a red antiseptic to cover children with fake boils.

The citizens of Riswyk fear the worst when rain begins to fall, threatening to melt the snow. Fortunately, the rain turns into a snow blizzard that rages for days, and the citizens finally reemerge to find a winter wonderland. The scheme can continue. Meanwhile, the German occupiers, who are camped in barracks by the main fiord, angrily repair damage to their camp and curse the extremity of the Norwegian weather. The gold-moving scheme continues successfully until there are only a few gold bars left. Helga admits to Peter that she feels like she is being watched. Peter sees a German soldier skiing quickly on a track that leads away from the Snake fiord beach, where the children just buried their latest load of gold bars. Peter fears the worst and tells Herr Holm, an adult and fellow resistance member whose home the children often stay in on their return journey from the Snake fiord. Herr Holm tells Peter that a German soldier has been poking around his barn.

On one of the last trips to the fiord, Peter looks up to see a German soldier –the same one he noticed before—watching him. Victor and Rolls spring out from the nearby bushes and apprehend the soldier, taking him aboard the disguised Cleng Peerson. Peter accompanies them. The man, whose name is Jan Lasek, explains that he is Polish, not German. He is working with the Germans as a reluctant translator, but he feels no loyalty to them and is lonely. He explains that German invaders in Poland killed many of his family members and destroyed his home and much of his city of Cracow. Jan begs to go to America with them, but Victor and Rolls are unsure what to do, so they lock Jan in the hold.

Meanwhile, German soldiers are looking for Jan throughout Riswyk. On the children’s last trip with the gold, the Commandant, an intimidating and angry German soldier, comes into the children’s midst as they hurriedly finish building their snowmen at the Snake fiord beach. He demands to know whether they have seen a missing German soldier. Incensed at the children’s silence, he starts to destroy the snowman that Lovisa has built. Concerned that the Commandant will find the gold if he continues stamping on the destroyed snowman Peter throws a snowball at the Commandant and runs away into the woods. The furious Commandant orders the soldiers to follow Peter, and a chase ensues.

Peter is eventually caught and imprisoned in a cell at the German barracks. He feels terrified but does not regret his actions, knowing that his distraction kept both his sister and the hidden gold safe. Peter is shocked to see Jans appear at his cell door. Jan opens the cell and helps Peter to escape. They creep through a door and arrive outside the barracks, and then swim into the fiord. Peter and Jan are pulled into the Cleng Peerson’s lifeboat. In the end, they set sail for America; Peter’s mother has given permission for Peter to travel to America to live in a free country. Jan also accompanies them, for he struck a bargain with Victor to free Peter from the German barracks in exchange for passage to America. At the end of the novel, Peter plans to eventually attend university in Pittsburg with Jan.