Kongsberg

Kongsberg stands on the Numedalslågen River, below wooded hills rich in silver. Its fortunes were bound to the mines in the hard rock west of the town, where shafts, smelters and water-powered machinery made an extensive industrial landscape. The settlement owes its name to a king: Christian IV founded the mining town in 1624, after silver had been found in the district the previous year.

The crown brought experienced miners from Saxony and the Harz, and German and Norwegian were both heard in church services for generations. Mining demanded great quantities of fuel and power. From 1644 workers built dams and channels to bring water to the wheels that drained the mines, while farms supplied wood for charcoal. The silver works expanded greatly in the eighteenth century: by 1770 it employed about four thousand workers, and Kongsberg had become one of Norway's largest towns. The mines supplied precious metal to the Danish-Norwegian monarchy, but their wealth was costly to extract. Operations stopped in 1805 and resumed a decade later. In 1814 a weapons factory was established at Kongsberg, giving the town another source of work as the silver enterprise struggled.