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Prospect of Alvøen, Bergen

Alvøen

12.06.2018 - 19:13

Alvøen is one of the oldest industrial places in Norway. As early as the 1620s a gunpowder mill was built here. The place itself was well situated for industrial activity, lying only 100 m from the waterfall, which provided power for the mill, and a good harbour wherefrom the products were shipped. The success of the gun-powder mill varied in the 1600s and 1700s, but what made Alvøen best known was its paper production.

On the trail toward Kyrkjedøri, a half hour walk from Finse station, we find these small ridges

Trail toward Kyrkjedøri

04.12.2018 - 15:04

Roughly 550 million years ago, what is now Finse lay at the bottom of the sea - the remains of mud and clay that were deposited in this sea have ended up on the roofs of Norway. Also the thrust sheet from the continental collision has found its way to Finse, after a several hundred kilometre-long, trek through the mountains, that took several tens of millions of years to complete.

Fantasy drawing of the animal life that reigned when the Bjorøy layer was deposited during the younger part of the Jurassic Period.

Vatlestraumen

12.06.2018 - 20:06

There are coal bits hidden in the sand under Vatlestraumen. These remains from a geological layer from the Jurassic Period were discovered when the undersea Bjorøy Tunnel was built in 1994. Oil- and gas reservoirs in the Troll Field in the sea west of Hordaland are from the same time. It is, nonetheless, quite surprising to find bedrock from dinosaur time inside of the outer islands of western Norway. On the Scandinavian mainland north of Denmark, there are only a very few places where one f inds rock from this time in earth history.

Holmengrå

Holmengrå

07.12.2018 - 12:45

Holmengrå is the only place in Hordaland where we find traces of the abrasion that is supposed to have transformed Western Norway from a Himalaya-like high mountain landscape during the earth's Paleozoic Era, to a flat lowlands terrain during the Mezosoic Era. Just 400 million years ago, large and small stones plummeted down from the high mountains. Some of these stones became incorporated into the conglomerate bedrock on Holmengrå.

The geology along Oster Fjord and further eastward, in cross-section and on the surface. (Haakon Fossen)

Stall

11.12.2018 - 14:43

The Bergen Arcs have an unusually sharp boundary to the bedrock in the east. Geologists think that this was caused by movements in the earth's crust during the Devonian Period. Then, the Bergen Arcs on the Lindås peninsula sank a whole 10 kilometres in relation to the Precambrian basement gneisses on the east side of Fens Fjord and Aust Fjord.

“The Karla Tannery”, Valestrand

Valestrandsfossen- tanning industry

18.06.2018 - 20:04

Valestrand became a centre for the tanning industry in Osterøy; one of the old crafts that has developed into a local industry with many places of work. From the 1870s ever more ventures were started. Many of the large sea houses we see today around the bay have been places for tanning and leather enterprises.

Model of the mining area at Litlabø, Stord

Litlabø

19.06.2018 - 16:35

The first finds of pyrite at Litlabø in Stord came to light in 1864. Forty years later sulphuric ore was mined from an open mine. From 1874 to 1880 it was used for dynamite production. That came to a sudden end when the factory exploded and three people died.

Tyssedal power station

Tyssedal

27.05.2018 - 15:12

Today Tyssedal appears like a classical industrial community, a picture of modern Norway from the turn of the former century until today. A/S Tyssefaldene was established in 1906, and on 1 May 1908 Tyssedal power station was put into operation. The work on the first stage of the facility was completed in a short time, with a work force of 500 men. They built water tunnels, regulation reservoirs, power station, penstocks, harbour, cableways, office buildings, houses and 6 km of power lines in the wild mountains above Odda to provide the new melting plant with power.

Geologist William Helland-Hansen examining a quartz conglomerate in the Ulven Syncline on one of the hills by the north west end of Lake Ulvenvatnet.

Ulven

03.01.2019 - 15:16

In the region of Ulven phyllite occurs with Hordaland's youngest fossils, and a beautiful quartz conglomerate. The phyllite and conglomerate got squeezed into the bottom of an ancient oceanic crust, made of gabbro and greenstone, in the heart of the Caledonide mountain chain.

From the mountainous rocks just below Sandvikshytte cabin on Sandviksfjellet.

Sandviksfjellet

06.03.2019 - 15:22

On Sandviksfjellet there are old boulders that have been made into mountains. The stones have been stretched out or squeezed together between huge slabs of rock, during slow, but powerfulprocesses of transport. This conglomerate shows, in quite a special way, the enormous powers that were active during the collision between Norway and Greenland over 400 million years ago.

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