On the 29th of September, 1950, immediately after 8 o'clock in the morning, a very large landslide occurred in the valley of the Göta River in the southwest of Sweden. The site of the slide is located on the east bank of the river in a village named Surte, about 15 km from the mouth of the river in Kattegat, near Göteborg (Gothenburg). Geologically this province can briefly be characterized by archaean rock hills with Quaternary clay between them. The area which slipped has a width of about 400 m (parallel to the river) and a length of about 600 m, and the volume of the slide can be estimated at 4 million m3. The bank of the river had practically no height, and within a distance of about 200 m from the river the terrain was practically horizontal. Beyond that the terrain had a slope varying from 1:30 to 1:6. The slope was steepest in the northeast part of the slide area. An extensive field investigation was made in the area of the slide and in the adjacent regions. This investigation consisted in taking samples mainly by means of the soil sampler with metal foils and the piston sampler, soundings, vane tests, and measurements of the pore water pressure.