Norway have what you will call a island-dotted coastal waters. It's a bit like the old pt boats Norway had in the 70-80's, equipped with torpedoes and missiles, could in a group of 3-6 boats create huge problems for large surface vessels, but can go where the big ships can not go.
And take and read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_defence_ship
Did you know:
- since Navy upgraded its fleet of PT from Hauk and Storm class Skjold class masst Navy over 50% of all the places they could Hide and where they could run through. When the skjold class is over twice the width of an old PT boats.
- When the Navy took on new frigates, the number of places they can run reduced since on several of places are bridges too low, the bridges were built at a height suitable for the Oslo class.
- When the Tirpitz was sunk, so did the British know how she was going to run, because she was so big, and where she lay was in a small fjord (inlet). which did not give her much room to move on.
So a small powefull ship that alone can take a cruiser, ore in a grupe of 4 can give a BB a 5 min headache.
try to take the Yamato in the narrow Norwegian fjords. where you have small battleships (coastal defense ships) that can go places Yamato can not go and thus can avoid the enemy fire, but show up when she is ready to shoot. Hit and run!
If you want to now about Vikings under WW2 read about this ship (I can reveal that she was almost 350m from her, just in the blind spot. and those of her crew lost that day, well they died by that weather conditions was so bad that the boat was more submarine a boat, but still ..!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNoMS_Stord