Snow Treasure
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40 free Snow Treasure trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Snow Treasure has been handed from one generation of young readers to the next since 1942. It is a wartime adventure with no battles in it: just children, sleds, a mountain and a secret that every one of them has to keep under the eyes of enemy soldiers. This quiz follows the book from the first night-time meeting to the final escape. It covers Peter, his friends and the grown-ups behind the plan, the close calls on the sled run, the author and how she came to write the story, the 1968 film, and what historians say really happened to Norway's gold in 1940. It works as a book quiz for a class or reading group that has just finished the novel, as a printable check on who read to the end, or as a challenge for anyone who loved the story as a child.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Snow Treasure, what do the children build over each spot where they bury gold bricks after a sled run?
Snowmen
Snowmen marked the buried bricks so that Uncle Victor and his mate could find them after dark and carry them to the hidden boat.
Q 02In Snow Treasure, what does Peter throw at the German Commandant to draw him away from the hidden gold?
A snowball
A snowball hit the Commandant before he could uncover the gold, and the furious officer had Peter locked in a cell at the German barracks.
Q 03In Snow Treasure, what keeps the village school shut so the children can go on sledding the gold?
A fake epidemic
A fake epidemic did it: the doctor painted red dots on the smallest children, then told the German commander that lessons could not possibly restart.
Q 04In Snow Treasure, the soldier in German uniform who spies on the sledding children is really from which country?
Poland
Poland was his home until the invaders captured him and pressed him into their ranks; he begs Uncle Victor for passage to America.
Q 05Which American author wrote Snow Treasure, the 1942 children's novel about sleds loaded with smuggled gold?
Marie McSwigan
Marie McSwigan wrote ten children's books and two adult biographies, and said that resourcefulness was the theme running through all of them.
Q 06In Snow Treasure, roughly how much is the gold worth that the children smuggle past the German sentries?
$9 million
$9 million is the value the author's foreword gives for a real cargo of bullion that a small freighter landed in America in June 1940.
Q 07A 1997 Scholastic edition of Snow Treasure added a note admitting what about the famous gold-sledding story?
No proof it happened
No proof it happened, the note said, after decades in which readers took the tale as fact; an expert on wartime Norwegian shipping has flatly called it untrue.
Q 08What is the name of Uncle Victor's camouflaged boat that waits in a hidden fiord in Snow Treasure?
Cleng Peerson
Cleng Peerson is also the name of a real pioneer who led the first group of Norwegians to emigrate to the United States.
Q 09In Snow Treasure, which of the four friends who ride the first loaded sleds is Peter's ten-year-old sister?
Lovisa
Lovisa is the youngest of the first four to ride a gold-laden sled, alongside her brother and their friends Helga and Michael.
Q 10What is the name of the small Norwegian village where Peter and his friends live in Snow Treasure?
Riswyk
Riswyk falls to the Germans without a fight, and its children then spend about six weeks sledding the gold past the occupiers.
Q 11What is the family name of Peter, the boy who leads the gold-sledding children in Snow Treasure?
Lundstrom
Lundstrom is also the name of his father Lars and of Uncle Victor, whose plan puts Peter in charge of the sledding teams.
Q 12In Snow Treasure, who slips into the German barracks to free Peter from his cell before the boat sails?
Jan Lasek
Jan Lasek, the soldier Uncle Victor had been holding prisoner, walks in dressed as a guard collecting the supper dishes and leads Peter out.
Q 13Which sailor, Uncle Victor's mate, helps him seize the soldier caught watching Peter bury gold in Snow Treasure?
Rolls
Rolls and Uncle Victor bind and gag the stranger so that he cannot frighten the children or report what they are doing.
Q 21Where do the Snow Treasure children spend the night after sledding their gold down the mountain?
The Holms' farm
The Holms' farm sat at the foot of a run of nearly twelve miles, so the children slept there and walked the rest of the way home the next day.
Q 22As time runs short in Snow Treasure, who starts hauling gold bricks down the mountain alongside the children?
Their mothers
Their mothers joined in once the captured soldier was sure to be missed, since a search party could have ended the whole operation.
Q 23How do the village men in Snow Treasure hide the lone sled tracks the children leave near the gold?
By skiing across them
Q 14Before the sledding begins in Snow Treasure, where have the village men hidden the nation's gold bricks?
A cave of ice
A cave of ice and packed snow, built in the woods by the men themselves, held the bricks stacked from floor to ceiling.
Q 15When the first gold-laden sleds meet German soldiers in Snow Treasure, what does the captain order his men to do?
Step aside
Step aside was the order, and the captain even told Peter as he passed that he used to enjoy sledding when he was a boy.
Q 16In Snow Treasure, what do the children swear never to do if a German soldier addresses them?
Speak to him
Speak to him and the oath was broken: the first four swore it with their hands on an old family sword, and every later recruit took the same vow.
Q 17In Snow Treasure, what does Uncle Victor tell the schoolchildren he is forming, with Peter as its president?
A defense club
A defense club was the announcement, and 38 children signed up; in truth its members would be sledding gold past enemy sentries.
Q 18With half the gold moved in Snow Treasure, what halts the sledding and keeps everyone indoors for three days?
A blizzard
A blizzard buried the valley, and when the runs resumed Peter saw that the German camp had fared far worse in it than the villagers.
Q 19In Snow Treasure, what is the profession of Peter's father Lars, who helps plan the gold's escape?
A banker
A banker by trade, Lars strikes Peter as far less adventurous than seafaring Uncle Victor, yet it is Lars who wakes Peter one night to show him the secret hoard.
Q 20In Snow Treasure, which man who works for Peter's family insists the weather will hold for sledding?
Per Garson
Per Garson trusted his trick knee over the threatening sky when rain looked certain to ruin the sled track, and he turned out to be right.
By skiing across them, the men bury the lone trails under a tangle of ordinary tracks; Peter marvels that the adults have thought of everything.
Q 24How do the Snow Treasure children keep the gold bricks out of sight while they ride their sleds downhill?
Lying on top of them
Lying on top of them, belly-down, each child covers a load of bricks, and only two to four sleds go down together so nobody grows suspicious.
Q 25What do the people of Peter's village hurry to build the day before the Germans invade in Snow Treasure?
Bomb shelters
Bomb shelters went up around the village, and Uncle Victor visited the classroom to drill the children in filing into them in good order.
Q 26What does Peter's father leave the village to do as the invasion begins in Snow Treasure?
Join the army
Join the army is what many of the village men did, and before leaving Lars asks Peter to be the man of the family.
Q 27Which real Norwegian freighter, whose secret gold cargo reached America in June 1940, inspired Snow Treasure?
Bomma
Bomma carried the bullion in barrels on deck, each lashed to several empty barrels so that the gold would stay afloat if the ship were sunk.
Q 28At which American port did a Norwegian freighter land the mystery gold cargo that inspired Snow Treasure?
Baltimore
Baltimore saw armoured trucks haul the cases off the pier at midnight, escorted through deserted streets by police on motorcycles.
Q 29The 1940 gold cargo behind Snow Treasure ended its journey in a Federal Reserve vault in which city?
New York
New York received the bullion by rail in the small hours, and the freighter that carried it over the Atlantic was the first of fourteen such treasure ships.
Q 30The author of Snow Treasure worked on newspapers in which Pennsylvania city before writing children's books?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh gave her a start on the Press after she interviewed the visiting head of the Vatican Library and the paper printed her account unchanged.