The hunt for fragments of an "unusually large meteor" that illuminated the skies over Norway has begun.

Film shows powerful flashes of light followed by what stunned locals of capital city Oslo described as loud bangs Sunday.

The Norwegian Meteor Network said sightings of meteors were not uncommon over Norway.

The meteor "lit up the sky for a brief time as if broad daylight," just after 1 a.m., Steinar Midtskogen, a representative for NMN, told CNN.

NMN has a number of cameras continuously tracking the sky.

A meteor is a space rock that burns brightly after entering Earth's atmosphere at high speed.

The rock is known as a meteorite if it survives its passage to the ground.

The rumbling of the meteor startled residents and led to a flurry of calls to Norway's emergency services, but there were no reports of injuries or damage, authorities said.

Some locals, who were close to the meteor's path, felt a shock wave. "Doors and hatches were blown open and there were strong gusts of wind," Midtskogen said.

The meteor probably fell around 15 miles outside Oslo, experts said.

The meteor was traveling up to 43,200 miles per hour and lit up the sky for five to six seconds, Live Science said, citing NMN.

Vegard Rekaa, a Norwegian astronomer, told BBC his wife was awake at the time.

"She could hear shaking in the air before an explosion she assumed was something heavy falling near the house," Rekaa said.

The Norwegian Seismic Array confirmed the area and "recorded the air blast hitting the ground as a seismic event," Midtskogen said, according to CNN.

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