More than 300 wild reindeer were killed in a rare mass death after being struck by lightning at a Norwegian national park, according to officials.
On Sunday (Aug. 28), the Norwegian Environment Agency released shocking images of the corpses of 323 reindeer, including 70 young calves, scattered over the Hardangervidda, a mountain plateau in southern Norway.
The Hardangervidda National Park spans across 8,000 square kilometres (3,088 square miles) and has one of the largest populations of wild reindeer in Europe.
"We've never seen anything like this on this scale," said Norwegian Environment Agency official Kjartan Knutsen. "There were very strong storms in the area on Friday. The animals stay close together in bad weather and these ones were hit by lightning."
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Knutsen noted that there have been instances where individual animals have been killed by a lightning strike before and there have also been incidents where herds of 10 or 20 sheep have died after being struck by lightning but this particular event was something they had witnessed for the first time.
He also pointed out that reindeer usually huddle together as a group in order to weather a thunderstorm but in this case their survival strategy might have led them to their death. "The corpses are all lying in one big group, piled together," he said.
A gamekeeper came across the eerie sight on Friday (Aug. 26). Out of the 323 reindeers, five of them had to be euthanized due to serious injuries sustained from the lightning strike, officials told Agence France-Presse.
Norwegian authorities said they were not sure what to do with the corpses. The gamekeeper told local Norwegian publication NTB that samples would be collected from the animal carcasses and sent to a state veterinary institute in order to determine the exact cause of death.
More details about the strange incident in the video below: