Undeterred by fires in tunnels in Austria or under Mont Blanc, two Norwegians with an offbeat sense of romance got married in the middle of the world's longest road tunnel days before it opens next week.
With high-tech lighting, turning bays blasted out of the rock and fire extinguishers every 125 metres, many Norwegians welcome the 24.5-kilometre Laerdal tunnel as a safe shortcut under a snow-capped mountain range.
King Harald of Norway will open the tunnel on Monday, eclipsing the 16.9-kilometre St. Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland as the world's longest road tunnel.
The tunnel is named after the village of Laerdal at the mouth of a salmon river.
"It was a special atmosphere. Romantic and not scary at all," said Ronny Rinde, 27, who married 24-year-old Vibeke Skjerping in the tunnel when it opened for a preview visit for locals last Sunday.
The bride and groom wed in a blue-lit 30-metre-wide cavern in the middle of the tunnel, one of three big halls designed to let trucks and cars turn if fire blocks one end. The caverns are meant to help dispel any claustrophobia.
"Tunnel of Love," one newspaper said of the marriage. Rice from the wedding is still scattered on the road.
Designers have installed unprecedented safety systems. Anyone even moving a fire extinguisher will trigger an alarm that makes lights flash in the tunnel and triggers signs saying "Turn and drive out."
"We're worried about people speeding or falling asleep at the wheel, but the big problem is fire," project manager Jon Kvaale said. Fire can fill a tunnel will lethal smoke.
Thirty-nine people died in an inferno after a truck caught fire in the 11.6-kilometre Mont Blanc tunnel linking France and Italy in March, 1999. Earlier this month in Austria, 156 people died in a cable car carrying skiers up a tunnel in the resort of Kaprun.
"Fire could happen here, too. But unlike the Mont Blanc tunnel, there's much less traffic. And people can more easily turn to drive out," Mr. Kvaale said.
Traffic through the toll-free tunnel is expected to be only 1,000 cars and trucks a day, meaning typical gaps of hundreds of metres between vehicles. Security relies on extinguishers and telephones. There is no video surveillance, nor are there smoke alarms.
The Laerdal tunnel, costing more than $160-million, will create a ferry-free route and avoid high mountain passes between Oslo and Norway's second-largest city, the western port of Bergen.
Norway can afford such tunnels thanks to oil wealth. The country is the world's top oil exporter outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel, producing about 3.2 million barrels a day.
Norwegians hope the tunnel will boost tourism to a region of spectacular fiords. Certificates proclaiming "I have travelled through the world's longest road tunnel" are already available. Tunnel T-shirts and mugs will follow.
In one innovation, blue lights illuminate the roofs of three caverns, six kilometres apart, with a flush of yellow light at the bottom to give the illusion of daylight.
"We thought of projecting a picture of trees or a landscape or a green light onto the walls of the caverns," Gunnar Lotsberg, who headed planning, said. "We think this lighting gives the idea of a sunrise and breaks up the tunnel."
The tunnel also has giant fans sucking fresh air in from both ends and blowing it out a tunnel cut into a side valley, the only available hole in a mountain range whose peaks are as high as 1,400 metres above the tunnel.
In an effort to stop drivers from falling asleep, the tunnel gently curves and car tires buzz loudly on bumps when crossing the central line or the edge of the tunnel.
The two exits are marked with an international green-and-white symbol of a person running for a door.
In the middle, where the wedding took place, one escape arrow is marked 12.3 kilometres west, the other 12.2 kilometres east.
"That has to be a marathon runner," Mr. Lotsberg said. In Laerdal, officials will track a computer screen round the clock watching for alarms.
Several people quizzed in Laerdal thought it was probably safer to drive in the tunnel than along the region's twisting mountain roads. A giant rockslide damaged a birch forest in mid-November near the village. No one was hurt.
Many locals favour the tunnel.
"Now we'll be able to take a day trip to Bergen," Gry Merete Groendalen, a 21-year-old florist in Laerdal, said. Bergen is 200 kilometres away by road and the trip includes a three-hour ferry trip.
Mr. Rinde, the groom, said his mother-in-law attended his tunnel wedding but had been among the few skeptics.
"She's scared of two things: dogs and tunnels. We've recently bought two Alsatians and now we've got married in a tunnel," he said.