Telemark » The Museum at Vemork

History of industry and working class culture Welcome to The museum at Vemork in the old hydroelectric power station. Surrounded by magnificent scenery, the beautiful building serves as a monument to the history of Norwegian industry. The power station was completed in 1911, and was then thought to be the world’s biggest of it’s kind. It supplied power to the Rjukan saltpeter works and, after 1929, to the Vemork hydrogen factory.

Hydropower, Norwegian technology and engineering made Rjukan famous as an industrial centre. We will tell you about this pioneering age, about the rapid transition from agricultural to industrial society, and how social, cultural and political conflicts expressed themselves.

Second World War
During the Second World War, Vemork became an Allied Target. It was essential to block German research into atomic fission by halting the production of heavy water at Vemork. The Allies knew that the heavy water was an important part of the German nuclear project, and were afraid that the Germans were ahead of them. The project had to be stopped at all costs. The exhibition The Nuclear Race places the heavy-water missions in an international context, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

We show scenes from the tragic glider attack code-named “Freshman”, the famous sabotage operation “Gunnerside”, the American bombing raid and the sinking of the train ferry carrying heavy water across Tinnsjøen lake.