The explosion took place at 7:07 p.m. local time. One soldier was killed, the other was seriously injured.
The two servicemen were in the front seats of a Toyota Landcruiser when the attack occurred, with two colleagues in the same type of vehicle directly behind them.
"The rear vehicle was still roadworthy after the attack, so the soldiers in that car took the injured soldier in the forward car back to base," said Major General Roar Sundseth, second in command at the Joint Defense Headquarters in Jåtta, said at a press conference on Thursday night.
The injured soldier was reportedly in serious but stable condition after received surgical attention from a team of German and Norwegian medical personnel.
Sundseth said that the incident would not influence operations currently underway in Afghanistan, and admitted that the situation in the area where Norwegian forces are in action have become more hazardous.
"We must be prepared for losses. We will now take the necessary security measures to keep our forces safe," Sundseth said.
There is a great deal of international traffic on the road where the attack took place, and Sundseth said that an investigation would take place to determine whether the Norwegians had been specifically targeted by the bombers.
The cars were en route to a firing range about 7-8 kilometers north of the Norwegian base in Meymaneh when the bomb went off.
The men attacked are part of the Norwegian stabilization force in Meymaneh and Sundseth confirmed that this force has been involved in the recent heavy fighting in northern Afghanistan.
Norway's military effort in Afghanistan has been under public scrutiny in recent days as the government pledged to increase its military presence with the NATO International Security Assistance Force.
After Thursday's bomb attack many critics urged the Socialist Left Party, part of the majority left-center government coalition, to either admit the nation was at war or to show its commitment to traditional party peace policy and withdraw from the alliance.
The incident brought the level of Norwegian fatalities in Afghanistan to three.
