A special waterways geography

1. Photo: Rune Aakvik/Oslo Museum.
1. Photo: Rune Aakvik/Oslo Museum.
2. Tyssefaldene. Photo: A/S Norwegian Museum of Hydro Power and Industry.
2. Tyssefaldene. Photo: A/S Norwegian Museum of Hydro Power and Industry.

For the transport of timber the country’s geography and climatic conditions were also important in another way: the significant precipitation on a physical landscape as varied as the Norwegian coastline with great massifs covered by glaciers and winter snow in the background provided a network of waterways, rivers and waterfalls with suitable drops that hardly any other European country could come near. The Alps had both many suitable waterfalls and adequate precipitation, but they are a long way from the sea.

In Western Norway water was the motive power for countless vertical frame saws located near the sea. In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this saw revolutionized the Norwegian timber export business. Coastal access to forests and waterfalls that could drive sawmills was also important in other parts of the country.

In Southern and Western Norway and in Trøndelag (Mid-Norway), waterways provided practical and cheap transport whereby logs could be floated from the inland districts down to the sawmills and, later on, to other types of wood-processing plants nearer the sea. Waterways supplied the mechanical energy for much of the new factory-based industry established after 1850. Water power directly drove the machinery in flour mills, in textile factories, and in wood pulp and cellulose factories.

Waterfalls became Norway’s "white coal". From the turn of the 20th century the energy supply was increasingly generated by transforming mechanical water power into electricity. This development led in turn to truly big industry in which the main resource was enormous quantities of electric power. The choice of product was partly dictated by the minerals most easily available, but mostly by demand from the world market. In one extreme case, the output product changed in the course of two decades from carbides to nitrogen, then to ferrosilicon, and finally to aluminium at one and the same plant.

Since technology enabling the transmission of electricity without significant loss of power was not available before 1910–20, many of these large plants were established either where waterfalls flowed into a fjord or close by a fjord that was deep enough to function as a transport artery for seagoing ships. In turn the companies built up towns that were dominated by water power-dependent big industry, such as Rjukan/Notodden, Eydehavn, Jørpeland, Sauda, Odda/Tyssedal, Ålvik, Høyanger, Årdal, Svelgen, Sunndalsøra, Glomfjord, and others.

Picture 1: “Kristiania seen from Ekeberg”, a painting by Peder Andersen Balke from 1829. Stacks of timber dominate the picture. Wharfside warehouses for the storage of imported goods were also found in the towns of Eastern Norway. Timber was the most important export item both here and in the towns of Southern Norway. It was stored outdoors on large level lots.

Picture 2: High-voltage power masts at Tveit near Tyssedal, 1915. The factories in Odda and Tyssedal got their electric power from the Ringedal water system, which drained a number of large and small lakes in the south-western area of the Hardanger Plateau. From the shoreline power station, A/S Tyssefaldene (in the background), the 12,000 volt current was transported over 6-7 kilometre-long cables, which were laid out in 1906–08 and 1909. They were in use until 1995.

 
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