Bredo Morstøl’s body was frozen and shipped to the US In 1993
The corpse of a Norwegian man, Bredo Morstøl, has been frozen and preserved for over 30 years.
Born in Norway in 1900, Morstøl lived a long life in his home country up until he died at the age of 89.
Without permission prior to his death, his grandson, Trygve Bauge, decided to cryogenically preserve and transport his body to the US in 1990.
Bredo Morstøl’s body was frozen and shipped to the US In 1993 (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Morstøl’s remains were stored in liquid nitrogen at the Trans Time cryonics facility in San Leandro, California, for three years.
Cryonics is the process of freezing and preserving human bodies after death in the hope that future technology might bring them back to life.
Then, in 1993, Bauge and his grandfather’s body moved to Nederland, a small town in Colorado.
The grandson thought it would be best to store the frozen body in a shed behind his house, packed with dry ice.
However, when Bauge’s visa expired, he was deported from America and was forced to leave behind his frozen grandfather.
The corpse of Bredo Morstøl has been frozen and preserved for over 30 years (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
After local authorities came across the frozen body, they initially planned to have the body removed due to laws against ‘the whole or any part of the person, body, or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive upon any property’.
Following lengthy efforts to keep his cryonics dream alive, Bauge fought the case from Norway, while Nederland locals also helped him on his mission.
In the end, it was determined that his body could stay preserved, as was the case before the laws came in.
By 2002, Morstøl, who is now referred to as Grandpa Bredo, is a big part of Nederland’s tourism scene, which provoked the birth of the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival.
The festival celebrates Morstøl’s frozen state and includes events such as coffin races, polar plunges, and frozen T-shirt contests.
Grandpa Bredo’s frozen body has been moved (Alcor)
However, the town has been struggling to keep the festival going because it’s too expensive to run, according to Popular Mechanics.
That’s when the owner of the Stanley Hotel in nearby Estes Park, Colorado, bought the festival and moved Morstøl’s body to the actual hotel.
The preservation involved a more conventional cryonics procedure of a bath of liquid nitrogen.
Now, James Arrowood, is the president and CEO of Alcor, a non profit cryonics lab in Scottsdale, Arizona, which has taken in over 230 bodies since 1972.
Last year, he sent a team of former Navy seals to move the body without damaging it.
At around 4am, they successfully moved the unpacked Grandpa from his box and into the van.
He was quickly repacked and was driven to through the mountains to the hotel.
Featured Image Credit: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
