Rjukan, in Telemark, Norway, is a city that owes its existence to an engineer. Sam Eyde completed his engineering degree at Berlin in 1891, and went into business planning new railways first in Germany and then back in his native Norway, building up one of the largest civil engineering companies in Scandinavia.
This business took him to the area of Rjukan in 1902. At the time, this wild area in the south of the country was only sparsely inhabited, and where the town would one day spring up was just a deep valley – so deep that for six months of the year sunlight does not even reach the bottom.
What Rjukan did have was what Eyde was discovering to be one of Norway’s greatest assets – waterfalls – in particular, the eponymous 100-metre-tall Rjukan waterfall. Eyde realised that the power of this reliable and massive waterfall could be harnessed to produced hydro-electric energy, which in turn could be used in industrial processes. So, the Vemork power plant...