This Friday I went to Kristiansand and Sørlandets Geologiforening (Sørlandet Geology society) to speak, and being on those parts of the country was of course used to do some collecting the day after, on Saturday 15.

I stayed over at Harald Breivik’s home, and was treated with great hospitality, and together we went out on Saturday. From other members of the society we had the information that it was recently blasted in the Litjern pegmatite, which made it a natural goal for our collecting. This was my third visit to Litjern, and like the second this turned out to be great day finding lots of exciting micro material to work with.

First time I went to Litjern was in the autumn 2006, with Alf Olav Larsen, Ingulv Burvald and Knut Edvard Larsen. On that trip I only brought home a bucket full of muscovite mica to use in school collections. But Ingulv made some very interesting discoveries, and so did Knut Edvard. Both brought home some cleavelandite material with something odd in some cavities. It was first thought to be tantalite with microlite, but analyses showed it to be fersmite and a microlite with an almost equal part pyrochlore. Both minerals occurring as good crystals in the cleavelandite cavities. Knut Edvard did also find some nice milarite crystals in the same material. In the main quarry in the pegmatite, Knut Edvard also found some strange looking micas, looking different from the muscovite which is very common in the pegmatite. Alf Olav demonstrated his excellent knowledge in chemistry, and with a lighter he proved that it was lithium in the mica. This mica is described in an article by Alf Olav and Muriel Erambert: Larsen, A.O. & Erambert, Muriel (2007): Lepidolite from the Litjern pegmatite, Iveland. Bergverksmuseets Skrift nr 35, 21-24.

My second trip to Litjern was also in the autumn, but last year. This time I didn’t collect muscovite, but brought home a lot of the cleavelandite material, and it was rich in both fersmite and microlite. It was also rich in nice spessartine crystals, epidote and zircon. In the same part of the pegmatite I also found one sample with milarite crystals up to 1,5 cm long, a beryl that was completely altered to bavenite, the first finding of this mineral in Litjern I think. The milarite and the largest part of the bavenite sample are now in the reference collection of the Mineralogical museum in Oslo.

Back to this years trip. We used most of our time in the cleavelandite zone of the pegmatite this time as well, and it was just as rich as last time. Not so much of the fersmite/microlite material, but found at least one good sample. It was the beryllium minerals that where easiest to find this time, and several samples with milarite have been brought back home. Non like the one I found last time, but I’m sure there are some good micros coming out of it. A new “type” of bavenite is occurring in this material as well, not as pseudomorphs after beryl, but as felt-like masses of tiny crystals. The ID hasn’t been confirmed on this one, but it looks pretty much like bavenite I’ve seen from other localities.

We also had a look at the main quarry, but didn’t find any really good samples there. Some fragments of partly gemmy beryl, masses of spessartine, etc… Beryl with aquamarine colour has been found in good crystals in this pegmatite, also good large crystals of garnet. Harald found some violet mica which we brought with us. He also found a beryl altered into a blackish mass of chlorite and something else, bertrandite perhaps. After several hours of searching and collecting our bags where filled to the rims and getting heavy, we decided that we where happy with the result and went back to the car, where we had lunch. After eating and a warming cup of coffee we went down to a smaller pegmatite quarry, not far from Litjern. Harald and some friends had found gahnite and beryl here on an earlier trip, but this time we didn’t find anything, so we returned pretty fast to the car and started on our way back to home.

Right now are several of the samples collected yesterday drying on newspapers out on my bathroom floor, I think some are ready to be studied now, so here I’ll end this blogg.

In order to leave comments to this blog post, you must be registered