During WWII, Rjukan became the target of commando raids by joint British and Norwegian Resistance forces to sabotage the Norsky Hydro plant nearby, which was producing heavy water for the Nazi nuclear bomb programme.
This was proper, hardcore, bad-ass, hero stuff. Guys parachuted into occupied enemy territory, knowing that they faced execution by the Gestapo if they were caught, trekked cross-country for weeks, hid out in the wilderness for months and snuck into a heavily-guarded facility to plant demolition charges. Later they sank a ferry carrying supplies of heavy water being transported back to Germany.
I think the real story here is the European sense of community. Let's face it, this project is not really a necessity (and it provides light to a very small section of the square) but the town decided to pool their money together and do it anyway.
I have to nitpick here and say that I don't believe this is at all a common thing in Europe.
It is true that smaller towns tend to have this feeling of community to them, but I find it hard to find it anywhere with more than a couple thousand residents.
It certainly has an interesting history, having started as a company town, important war history (sabotage of production of materials for the production of nuclear weapons), and certainly interesting geography.
I’d like to see this sort of thing in urban areas too. Tall buildings mean dark valleys. I’m writing this from downtown Manhattan, where the narrow streets are especially shadowed.
But even in more residential areas of the city, more light at street level would be a lovely thing. Some of my neighbors have mirrored windows and you’d be surprised how much light that sends into my apartment.
It is so hard to capture a 'light level' with photography. I wish they would have shown a photo without the reflected light, so as to give some contrast to the difference.
I wonder why they begin to settle there in the first place. After the first few houses were up, they were probably aware of the lack of sunlight. So why would they suddenly need it? Probably because it looks cool, which I agree with.
The nearby 104 metre waterfall had something to do with it. They used the waterfall to make electricity and then they used the electricity to make fertiliser, hence the location.
I really wonder how this will fare during the winter. Granted, there is little sun during a snowstorm, but this will require a lot of maintenance with constant de-icing and such.
The sun doesn't mind the northerly location. It's only 0.01% extra distance from its point of view ;)
Seriously, you can get a terrible sunburn if you don't take care of your face. A couple of days of direct sun plus reflections via the snow surface, and boom.
Well, here in North Dakota you get sunny weather quite a lot in the winter and in Manitoba it is about the same. In fact, the local sunglass stores do more business in winter than in summer. It looks like their weather would be fine for this.
So they brought sunlight to a parking lot. A. Parking. Lot. I was hoping for a decent cafe, restaurant, playground, meeting place, mosque or such to emerge. Let's see if that's going to happen.
I was curious, why not direct the light towards a tower mirrors arranged such that the dispersion is better? I can see advantages through out the year.
It would defeat the purpose, which is to provide a place where residents can bathe in sunlight (see cable car mention, where residents can/could take trips to the hilltop for some spot sunbathing) during winter months.
The point is not to light up the village (electricity can do that[0]), it's to provide a sunbeam when the sun does not reach high enough above surrounding hills and mountains to directly light up the valley bottom in winter (actually from september to march).
[0] with ~98% of Norway's electricity being hydro, and norway being a net exporter of electricity, feeding electrical appliances is not a huge issue
I was hoping that support for worship of non-existing supernatural beings wouldn't appear in the comments. And in case any worshiping object should appear there, I vote for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
This was proper, hardcore, bad-ass, hero stuff. Guys parachuted into occupied enemy territory, knowing that they faced execution by the Gestapo if they were caught, trekked cross-country for weeks, hid out in the wilderness for months and snuck into a heavily-guarded facility to plant demolition charges. Later they sank a ferry carrying supplies of heavy water being transported back to Germany.
More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage