There was never any real intent for Havørn, also known as the Ocean Eagles, to sign players from Manchester United and Arsenal. The shocking thing about a nonsense letter, intended as a joke by Morten B. Eldholm for a book he was writing, got serious responses from the two English clubs.
The story takes us back to 1985, when Arsenal & Manchester United both receive a letter from an unknown football club in Norway, telling the story of how a recently deceased fan left a large sum of money to the club, enabling them to sign players from the British teams.
Eldholm goes on and mentions that he would prefer receiving Bryan Robson or Gordon Strachan for the sum of 120,000 Krone which was £10,876 in 1985, which would be the equivalent to £27,936 today. Eldholm doesn’t stop there, and also offers and exchange deal, using the name of a made up player called Arne Bjarne Fjøsmælås, scorer of 42 goals in the previous season, including 11 in one match, to smoothen the deal. However, he mentions that if Fjøsmælås is included, Havørn won’t be able to pay the full sum.
The shocking thing? United and Arsenal replied with plenty of courtesy to the odd request, refusing to sell Robson or Strachan (United), or anyone else on their first team (Arsenal), even if it means dealing for Fjøsmælås, who doesn’t interest them one bit.
Morten Eldholm wrote that letter for a book he and Petter Wallace was writing, and the book is called Brevbomber, which means the “Letter Bomber.”