British woman was ‘scared, sad and bewildered’ after being wrongly deported from Norway

A British woman wrongly deported by the Norwegian authorities has been speaking about her ordeal after police at Oslo airport mistakenly decided to refuse her entry.

The traveller, who is from Glasgow, does not wish to be identified. She holds a senior administrative role in a higher education institution.

During the incident, she was:

On 22 February 2025 she flew from Edinburgh to Oslo on Norwegian flight DY1641 along with her partner and a group of friends, for a one-week cross-country ski holiday.

The visitor had a British passport valid for travel to Norway up to 25 March 2025 for a stay until 23 June 2025.

But police at Oslo airport claimed, incorrectly, that the holidaymaker had insufficient validity on their passport.

“The passport control person looked closely at my passport, made a call, and then told me that he could not allow me entry,” she said.

“At this point I felt sick. Really sick and scared. An officer told me that I was refused entry to Norway and they would be putting me on a plane back to the UK.

“I was offered a lawyer at that point and told that I could phone my partner – still waiting for me in the baggage hall – and let her know what had happened. I started to cry at this point. I was scared, sad, and bewildered.”

She did not accept the offer of an appeal through a lawyer, fearing that if she lost the appeal she could be barred from Norway in future.

“They asked me to hand over my coat, my phone and my luggage. I was frisked, then left in a locked holding area for three hours.”

Eventually an officer said she was to be deported the following day on a Norwegian flight from Oslo to Edinburgh. He added that colleagues would “consider appropriate accommodation which potentially included a stay at a detention centre”.

She said: “Another officer attended and I was walked, with one officer in front of me, one behind me as if I were a threat to them or myself. Their job was to guard me, not reassure me.

“We went behind a series of locked doors into a holding area. They asked me to hand over my coat, my phone and my luggage. These items were locked in a room and I was asked to enter a room so that I could be searched. I was frisked. Then I was left in the holding area.

“There is a one-way mirror that you are watched through. I was held there for three hours with nothing to occupy myself with.” She was unable to check the EU rules online, which would have confirmed her passport was valid.

Eventually she was introduced to an airport police officer who was responsible for organising the deportation.

“She told me that they felt I did not need to be held at a detention centre and should get a room in a hotel at the airport for a night. I was handed a document which explained that I was released to get my accommodation – but that I had to be back at the police area by 8pm to check in with the police to make sure I had not absconded.

“My biggest fear was the detention centre – that would have been an awful night.”

When the traveller-turned-deportee duly returned to the police station, she was photographed and fingerprinted by police.

“This felt like I was a criminal. Given that the day had started with me laughing and joking with good friends, to end the day this way just left me feeling anxious and shocked. Then I went back to the hotel. So, I spent the first day of what was supposed to be a holiday, scared, bewildered, and crying.”

The following day she went back to the police station and was placed in a car with two policemen.

“The car had a cage screen between me and the officers. It just felt like I had done something terribly wrong. I was delivered to the aeroplane by two guys. Then third guy arrived to take me up the stairs to the plane to make sure my passport was held by the pilot.

In addition, the captain was given a document saying the passenger was being “Deported from Norway according to the Chicago Treaty”. The deportation notice stated: “The police consider this person to be stable and that she poses no threat to herself.”

Despite Norwegian having flown her to a country she was entitled to enter, and carrying her on the deportation flight, the airline did not offer any assistance despite the traveller’s ordeal.

“The thing that made me really sad was the flight back. At no point did anyone come to check if I was alright.

“Everything else was ‘a thing that happened'. There was no care of me whatsoever on that flight back. But I wasn’t a criminal.”

After touchdown at Edinburgh airport, she was not allowed to leave with the other passengers. Instead, she had to wait while the captain decided that she could be released with her passport to UK Border Force.

“This terrified me more than anything else. I had already had 24 hours being detained and I had no idea how long I might be held by UK Border Force. Fortunately, my passport was returned and I regained entry to the UK.

“This has probably been one of the most frightening and bewildering episodes of my life.”

All Schengen area nations – including almost all EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland – are required to apply the same conditions for entry to the frontier-free zone.

The claim from Norwegian police that British passports “expire after 10 years” regardless of the actual expiry date is fiction.

The passenger says: “The police who dealt with me at Oslo were never anything other than respectful and professional. I at no point held them to blame. Borders regulation is something they deploy, not that they write, and if they made a mistake it was up to a lawyer – not the police – to correct it. I consider myself lucky not to have encountered another less friendly border force.”

But she is concerned that police consulted a lawyer who then ignored the clear instructions in the Schengen Borders Code and declared: “Your passport is issued 26 March 2015 and is therefore considered valid only until the 26 March 2025.”

The traveller says: “Whoever looked at my case at that point made an error and they hold a particular responsibility.”

In addition, she wants her photograph and fingerprints deleted from the Norwegian police database. “It is personal data being held on record that the Norwegian State have no reason or, as I now know, right to have.”

The traveller and her partner have been visiting Norway for the past decade for cross-country skiing. Besides losing a much-needed holiday, the incident has cost her £1,200. The airline, Norwegian, refused compensation and referred her to her travel insurer.

“I have a residual fear of something like this happening again and finding myself in far less fair circumstances,” she says.

The Independent has repeatedly asked the European Commission in Brussels to intervene to ensure no future passengers are wrongly treated in this way.

In addition The Independent has raised the case with the Norwegian Embassy in London, the British Embassy in Oslo and the UK Foreign Office.