Snow Treasure

Snow Treasure is a children's novel by the American writer Marie McSwigan, published in 1942 and set in Norway during the Second World War. It has remained in print since and was made into a film in 1968.

The story begins in the bleak winter of 1940, when German troops arrive in the neighbourhood of Peter Lindstrom's village and the adults are watched closely enough that they can do very little. The country's gold reserves are in the district and have to be got out before the occupying force finds them, so the plan that Peter's uncle Victor proposes is to use the children: they go sledding every day, as children do, and each run down the hill carries a little of the bullion past the guards to a hiding place. The gold is eventually loaded onto a ship called the Cleng Peerson, and the whole scheme depends on the Germans believing that the children are only playing. McSwigan wrote the book during the war from accounts of the Norwegian resistance, and the routine of snow, school and small betrayals is what makes the danger plain.

The novel is written for young readers and keeps the children at the centre of the operation, with the adults arranging things from behind them.