Industry behind the barbed wire

Place: notodden · Approximate position

From Tinfos in the north, with a paper mill and a power station at the waterfall, the industrial belt stretches down along Tinnelva to Hydroparken and the railway at Heddalsvannet. What was made at the southern end – and why the heavy water there never went into production – is a story of its own, told in "Heavy water and foot-dragging in Hydroparken". This is about something else: about the guarding.

The occupying power answered the value of the plants with control. The area around Norsk Hydro was partly closed off with barbed wire and in places mines, and the German guard was stepped up. At the same time a civil guard of unarmed civilians was organised, who had to patrol around exposed targets and report saboteurs. It is one of the occupation's most uncomfortable arrangements: ordinary working people set to guard their own workplace against their own.

And the guarding only worked at ground level. At Tinfos, Magnus Tomte sat in the loft above the sailmaker's workshop with his London radio while German guards were based in the room directly below him, writing out an illegal daily paper that went on to Carbiden, Jernverket and Hydro. The belt was a double landscape: German control on the ground, Norwegian resistance in lofts, workshops and offices.

This is an area story, not one building. The marker is placed at the Tinfos I power station at the northern end of the industrial belt; the story covers the whole stretch down to Hydroparken and the railway. The drawings on the map are a READING of the sources, not a mapped installation: the source says that the area around Norsk Hydro was "delvis sperret med piggtråd og miner" – partly closed off with barbed wire and mines – but no available source shows where the fences, the minefields or the guard rounds actually ran. The closed-off area and the guard post at Hydro are therefore marked "approximate" and show roughly where, not exactly what. The line shows the extent of the industrial belt between two located points. The German guard at Tinfos is the only thing that is located: German guards were based in the room below the listening post at the paper mill.

Sources