NORWAY'S NEW SPIRIT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19156, 23 October 1925, Page 11

NORWAY'S NEW SPIRIT.

GREAT BID FOR PROGRESS. ELECTRICITY FROM WATERFALL. CREATION OF TWO NEW TOWNS. Norway, with its 200 salmon rivers, its beautiful sinuous fiords, its snow-ribbed mountains, its great lakes, and its hospitable chain of hotels, is known to the Englishman as an uncommonly desirable country for a holiday, says a writer in the London Daily Chronicle. What, perhaps, however, ho does not realise so well is the fruitful field the country can offer him for industrial and economic object lessons. Norway to-day is supplying its people with an inexhaustible new power, the power of electricity. At least 75 per cent, of Norwegians to-day can command cheap electricity for lighting, cooking, or driving an engine. There is a deep valley called tho Rjukan, about 60 miles west of Oslo, which, a few years ago, offered no subsistence to human beings other than a stray mountain farmer. To-day there is a thriving, prosperous population of 10,000 souls in that valley and another 8000 at Notodden, nearer the sea, brought into existence by the utilisation of water power for the extraction of fertilisers from the air. The miracle has been achieved by damming up two lakes and harnessing a waterfall. Among the difficulties to .be overcome was the necessity of carrying the water in a tunnel for four miles under a mountain. It was also necessary to construct a railway 60 miles in length and a steam ferry across the 20 miles of the Tinn Lake in order to carry the nitrate products to the sea at the port of Menstad. Sam from a 'Waterfall. It will be seen that this, which is only one, if the biggest, of Norway's "white coal" enterprises, was no ordinary undertaking, like the construction of a boot factory. It needed the brains of inventors, surveyors and engineers. Their efforts have been spread over 13 years, with the result that in Rjukan town there is perhaps the most wonderful manifestation of the human spirit triumphing over natural obstacles' that cau be found in the world.

The spectacle of the gaily painted, substantial city of wooden houses nestling under the shadow of the precipices of the Rjukan, with the river rushing swiftly on toward the lake, is one in its scenic beauty unforgettable. But there is a more wonderful appeal. When one realises that this town, with its places of worship, its places of entertainment, its police officers and its well-stocked shops, is the creation of the giant Rjukan waterfall, the mere scenic beauty is forgotten in the miracle of man's achievement.

One of the most impressive of sights is to enter one of these gigantic powerhouses, built like a castle, with their roaring turbines coupled to electro-genera-tors, forging the lightning that in the neighbouring furnace houses transmutes the air into the 'food of plants. Norway is only at the beginning of the development of her hydro-electrical resources, yet how varied these already are one can see at Hoyanger, with its aluminium furnaces, reproducing in the establishment of a miniature city the wonders of Rjukan. Spirit of Art. No one can travel through Norway without being conscious of a human spirit awa'ke to the many-sided appeals of life. One sees it in 'Oslo, with its heroic and successful efforts to solve the housing problem, and its " adoption " of a great sculptor, Gustav Vigeland —a blending of utilitarianism and romance that no other city, so far, seems to have achieved. It' is visible in the preservation of Norway's ancient houses, brought together by pions hands, and spaciously housed in a forest near Lillehammer. How one would like to see in one's own country such a Sandvig collection, linking the oldest times with the present! The same high spirit is shown in the reverence with which relics of the Viking age are restored and guarded—it took 13 years' patient toil to replace the shattered timbers of the long-buried Oseberg ship—and in the management of museums and picture galleries. It is not hyperbole, but a literal statement, to say that the most striking and magnificent building in a. Norwegian town is its national school; and it is no doubt because of that dominance that Norway is at, this moment full of an eager, hopeful, adventurous spirit in commerce and industry, as well as in art and letters.