Ødegården Verk

Historie

Ødegården Verk, alternate names Ødegården Apatittgruver and Bamble Apatittgruver, was a series of primarily apatite shaft mines and quarries located in the Bamble municipality of Norway. At its peak, Ødegården Verk was one of the largest apatite mines in the country, mining up to 10,000 metric tons of the mineral per year, and some sources estimate its peak operating workforce at over 800 men.The site of Ødegården Verk is about 1 km south of the E18, turning off on the road Feset between Kragerø and Brevik. Apatite and other minerals were originally transported by horse and cart by local farmers from the site to one of three local ports for shipment: Åby to the east in Åbyfjorden, Brevikstranda on Brevikstrandfjorden to the southeast, or a port to the south in Isnes, just west of the modern port town Valle. Later, a funicular was built between the mines and the docks at Isnes, bringing passengers as well as rocks and supplies up and down the mountain.The dominant rock type at the deposit is a rutile-bearing scapolite-hornblende rock that was described by Norwegian geologist Waldemar Christofer Brøgger in 1934 as ødegårdite. The main rock exported from Ødegårdens Verk was a special carbonate-rich hydroxylapatite . Brøgger named this mineral dahllite after Tellef Dahll and his brother Johan who ran mining operations there at the time.