But people wanted to return home! They longed to see their nearest and dearest, and to rebuild their homes. Maybe they would also be able to find things that had been buried or hidden before their homes were burnt. However, because of danger from mines and a housing shortage, the authorities refused permission for the 50,000 people who had been forcibly evacuated to return to the burnt-out and razed region. The ban was announced in May 1945. Everyone who went home would be returned and held accountable for their action. Around 40% of all the evacuees defied the authorities and still returned home in the summer of 1945.
The procurement of materials, transport, tradespeople and money for the reconstruction was challenging. The first to arrive had to live in tents or build shacks from whatever they could lay their hands on from the ruins, as a temporary solution. The authorities were slowly forced to accept the temporary reconstruction, and gradually helped people by organising the transport of temporary barracks.
In order to improve the economic base, the authorities felt it was important to limit the very dispersed settlements which had previously been the norm. However, their plans for centralisation were met with strong resistance from the population and were abandoned. People wanted to go back to where they had lived before, and that is more or less what happened. As a result, reconstruction was based on the pre-war population pattern and economic structure. At the end of 1946, as much as 90% of the population of Finnmark and northern Troms had returned home. There is no overview of all the blueprints which were produced, however it is thought that more than 100 different drawings were used. The Reconstruction Act of 1946 stated that all blueprints were to be authorised by the authorities before anything could be built.