Character Analysis
Knut Haukelid was an awe-inspiring Norwegian skier/hiker/radio-operator/saboteur/Jason Bourne. He and his friends took Hitler's invasion of their country personally. They started off committing small acts of rebellion, like throwing Nazis off ferries whenever the opportunity arose, and then they joined one of the secret resistance groups that were forming all over Norway to commit more organized and effective insurrections.
When one of their plans went south, Haukelid was forced to flee for his life, ending up in Great Britain. This was fortuitous, though, because there he was recruited by the British to attend a training course that was a division of the S.O.E (Special Operations Executive), tasked with carrying out acts of sabotage behind enemy lines. In the program, they learned all the awesome stuff that spies learn how to do in movies: pick locks, set booby traps, use poison, and kill someone with their hands and feet. Then they were sent to parachute school in Scotland, where they learned how to jump at night (which is incredibly dangerous).
When the first plan to destroy the Vemork power plant suffered a glider disaster, Haukelid was the one they asked to fly in and help lead Operation Gunnerside. The team of Norwegians then proceeded to ski for miles, climb a sheer rock face out of a frozen gorge, dodge Nazi guards, and blow up a power plant without getting caught. That is some grade-A James Bond stuff right there, and it all happened in real life.