The Rjukan Sun

“Everything is achievable through technology, better living, robust health and for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace.” Howard Stark said that in the movie Ironman- II. Although we haven’t achieved the world peace yet, we have achieved many remarkable things with the help of technology. But why I am saying this? It is because I have encountered something which is truly remarkable. It is the story of a small town in Norway called Rjukan which literally deflected the Sun.

A few days ago, one of my friends sent me a video clip depicting the story of the Rjukan Mirrors. The Solspeil, or Sun mirror is a spectacular project where an array of mirrors is used to reflect the sunlight towards the market square. Deep in the narrow Vestfjord valley in Telemark, surrounded by steep mountains, at the foot of the mighty Gaustatoppen mountain, lies the industrial town of Rjukan. Rjukan is home to almost 3,300 people which manages without the sun for almost six months of the year. The town lies at the bottom of a valley that is oriented east to west, with Gaustatoppen (at 1883 metres over sea level) and the other surrounding mountains immediately south of the town rendering the city sun-free from September to March.

Rjukan was built between 1905 and 1916, after a noted Norwegian engineer and industrialist Sam Eyde constructed a hydroelectric plant on the Rjukanfossen waterfall (commonly known as the smoking waterfall). At that time, it was the world’s biggest power plant. Factories producing artificial fertilizers followed. To house the factory workers Eyde built Rjukan. But he worried that the residents of the town were not getting enough sunlight. So, he launched the idea of Solspeil in 1913 but it remained on paper due to lack of technology. As a temporary solution, his successor constructed a gondola (cable car) called Krossobanen in 1928. It is still operational after almost 90 years and is an important connection between the town and the mountains, where the sun’s rays are limited to in the winter months. Krossobanen transports thousands of people to the mountains every year where they can enjoy the sunlight and drink a cup of coffee at a café located on the mountain top.

Things changed when an artist named Martin Anderson moved to the village in 2002. The first inkling of an artwork Andersen dubbed the Solspeil, or sun mirror, came to him as the month of September began to fade: “Every day, we would take our young child for a walk in the buggy,” he says, “and every day I realised we were having to go a little further down the valley to find the sun.” By 28 September, Andersen realised, the sun completely disappears from Rjukan’s market square. The occasion of its annual reappearance, lighting up the bridge across the river by the old fire station, is a date indelibly engraved in the minds of all Rjukan residents: 12 March.

Andersen unearthed a partially covered sports stadium in Arizona that was successfully using small mirrors to keep its grass growing. He learned that in the Middle East and other sun-baked regions of the world, vast banks of hi-tech tracking mirrors called heliostats concentrate sufficient reflected sunlight to heat steam turbines and drive whole power plants. He persuaded the town hall to come up with the cash to allow him to develop his project further. He contacted an expert in the field, Jonny Nersveen, who did the maths and told him it could probably work. He visited Viganella, an Italian village that installed a similar sun mirror in 2006.

And 12 years after he first dreamed of his Solspeil, a German company specialising in so-called CSP – concentrated solar power – helicoptered in the three 17 sqm glass mirrors that now stand 400 m high above the market square in Rjukan. “It took,” he says, “a bit longer than we’d imagined.” First, the municipality wasn’t used to dealing with this kind of project: “There’s no rubber stamp for a sun mirror.” But Andersen also wanted to be sure it was right – that Rjukan’s sun mirror would do what it was intended to do.

Viganella’s single polished steel mirror, he says, lights a much larger area, but with a far weaker, more diffuse light. “I wanted a smaller, concentrated patch of sunlight: a special sunlit spot in the middle of town where people could come for a quick five minutes in the sun.” The result, you would have to say, is pretty much exactly that: bordered on one side by the library and town hall, and on the other by the tourist office, the 600 sq ms of Rjukan’s market square, to be comprehensively remodelled next year in celebration, now bathes in a focused beam of bright sunlight fully 80-90% as intense as the original.

Their efforts monitored by webcams up on the mountain and down in the square, their movement dictated by the computer in a Bavarian town outside Munich, the heliostats generate the solar power they need to gradually tilt and rotate, following the sun on its brief winter dash across the sky.

Rjukan is a place “where the impossible has become possible” said Mr Bergsland and that is why what Howard Stark said was true (partially). “Everything is achievable through technology, better living, robust health and for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace.”

Thank you!