His neighbor, Jostein Jorgensen, said he was roused at around 5 a.m. by the sound of a ship heading at full speed toward land and immediately ran to Helberg's house. The massive vessel reportedly caused damage to a heating pipe in Helberg's cabin, TV2 reported, but the homeowner said he considered himself lucky.

The helmsman of a huge container ship that ran aground in Norway just a stone's throw away from a cabin as its owner slept was probably asleep as well at the time of the accident, Norwegian media reported Friday.

A 440-foot-long cargo ship ran aground beside a house in Byneset, Norway, on Thursday morning, local time. "If the ship had hit the rocky cliff right next to it, it would have lifted up and hit the house hard. It wasn't many meters off," Johan Helberg, the owner of the house, told local newspaper Nidaros.