This is a “short” overview of my year 2008, concerning collecting. With collecting I’m kind of hung up on field collecting, but I try to get in a word or two about shows and other related stuff.

The ending of 2007 was extremely promising with finding, in AS Granite, Tvedalen nice samples of rhodochrosite and epididymite among other minerals (see article on AS Granite), this promising trip was followed up with “disasters” first with a heavy snowfall just after the mineral find, then me having an examination in mathematics the weekend after, so I didn’t get the chance to continue the search of this nice part of the pegmatite. Fortunately I sent messages to a couple of other Norwegian collectors, so some material from this pegmatite was saved, before all was removed and ended buried on the dumps. I went back a couple of times after New Years Eve 2007, and did find some interesting stuff, like some nice zircons and samples of eudialyte-group minerals, probably kentbrooksite-ferrokentbrooksite.

Then it was the Mule Varde – micromount symposium. This is kind of “my event”, arranging most of it, so it’s always exciting to se how it goes – and this year it also went well, I think, like last year. People say so, and now they are asking about the 2009 meeting. The “symposium” isn’t anything what most of you probably think of as a symposium. Here only a handful of collectors are gathered, 19 in total this year, but I think it’s an important place to meet and exchange, not only minerals, but also knowledge and news. And it’s actually the sad fact that there aren’t that many more collectors of systematic- and/or micro-minerals in Norway.



For a long time with little of interest to report in the end of the winter and most of the spring. But a day in May out with Knut Edvard Larsen ended that, read it on my Mindat blog (A day in paradise), as well as what my time was spent on for the most of May, and the beginning of June, and it wasn’t minerals…

Well one last highlight where to be experienced in May, Saturday 24th to be precise, and it was the Kongsberg mineral symposium, held in the famous “Bergverksmuseet”. As usual with a great variety of talks, Jochen Schlüter (conservator at the Mineralogical museum in Hamburg) as the special invited guest with two talks, one about meteorite hunting in Sahara and Antarctica, and then about mineral-hunting in Chile. Then there was a lot of interesting Norwegian mineralogy talks, with perhaps a highlight with Tomas Husdals talk about new minerals from the Tysfjord area in northern Norway. Besides getting a lot of new knowledge, there are usually a couple of dealers with their minerals there as well, and the highlight this year was brought by the museum, a nice collection of calcites from Dalen-Kjørholt mine.



And if you have looked at my blog there is a long gap from beginning of June and until August, of course a lot of things happened during this period, so many in combination with good warm sunny weather made blogging less interesting…

First thing of interest was a trip to the Kopparberg show, in Sweden, in the middle of June, together with Knut Edvard Larsen. Before we reached Kopparberg Friday evening, we wanted to have a stop at Harstigen, and so we did. But we spent only a very short time, because every time we sat down on the ground we where attacked by zillions of blood sucking critters, midge… We found something, I think… but where did I put that box?

Kopparberg are usually a nice show with a lot of nice systematic stuff to be found, and for me nothing different this year, both to swap and to buy. There are always a good variety of Långban and other Swedish minerals to be found for a systematic collector. Maybe not that much for the collectors of spectacular samples, but for me it’s a treasure hall. This year I got several new samples for my Långban suite, like blixite, bromellite, clinohumite, magnussonite, orthopinakiolite, pectolite, pyroaurite and wickmanite to mention some. I swapped and bought a lot of other minerals as well, but will not bore you with mentioning them all. The botrygen showed here was bought, and I guess the showiest of the samples I bought.



On the Sunday after the show Knut Edvard and I went to Långban to collect. It was my third time and finally I felt like starting to understand some of the complex paragenesises of this locality. We started to collect at the Trädgårds dump, and where able to find rich samples of magnesioferrite in dolomite matrix, several with litharge, a few with traces of lead and mascagnite. Samples of svabite and tilasite where found too, among with piles of what we weren’t able to identify our self.
We also looked on one of the other dumps (the Hematite dump I think it was called) as well, with fewer minerals to be found, but also here some stuff we weren’t able to identify our self.

After Kopparberg I had a long break in collecting, only with a trip to the Fen area, but looking for igneous rocks more than minerals, guided by Sverre Aksnes and Jon Tore Årtveit I was shown round the unique Fen-complex, among the places Melteig farm and Vipeto. For those who know the more obscure igneous petrography these places gave name to the rocks melteigite and vipetoite.

But the main activity in July was the work with putting the last hands on preparations for the Eidsfoss show here in Norway the second last weekend in July. My responsibilities for this show was mainly booking and organizing the tables. With about 45 dealers it’s not a big show, but some work had to be done…

The show came, and it went all good, I think. People where happy, and there where some nice stuff to be bought and swapped here as well. The BIG thing this year was of course the amethysts from Stange. Several dealers had them, rather expensive for me, but suddenly there where two younger men that put up a table and a crowd where fast gathering around them. I was one of the luck early ones, and got two nice miniature sceptres for a descent price. Tables less than 1 meter are free to be put up at the Eidsfoss show, as long as there is space for it, which it always is. Also several of the new “rocket-quartz” from Tinn where to be found, and I got a miniature of this as well.



Only a couple of days after the Eidsfoss show, I went on a trip to upper parts of Telemark to look for new discovered rare minerals, besides visiting some other old and well known localities, together with the Dutch collector André Robbemond. We started out at Klauvreid, where there are several localities, bit the most exciting ones are a couple of quarries, called the Klauvreidnut pegmatite quarries where there have been mined for muscovite mica in large pegmatite bodies. We started at the top of the pegmatite where Alf Olav Larsen had discovered cannonite as an alteration product after bismuthinite. We found rich micro material of this mineral, so already we got an indication how heavy the return would be… Further down in the pegmatite we went to look at a huge beryl crystal totally altered to a greyish mass of bertrandite, muscovite and quartz, and then we started to dig. We found several small crystals that I thought where nice small columbite-(Mn) crystals, unfortunately it turned out to be garnets most of them, probably a very dark spesartite or almandine. But I found several fragments with columbite-(Mn), and the most exciting about these fragments are the possibility to find yellowish massive fracture coatings of the much more uncommon mineral liandratite, and at least a couple of the samples I found contained this rare mineral. Searching the dumps further we found several beryl crystals and fragments of crystals, the largest I carried back was a 25 cm long and ca 10 cm in diameter fragment. Not gemmy exactly, rather ugly in fact… Other minerals we found where uraninite partly altered to a mixture of the minerals fourmarierite, curite and wölsendorfite. Very successful trip to make a short conclusion!

After Klauvreid we went to the small copper mine near Åmdals verk, named Næsmark mine. Interesting locality since the main ore from this mine was djurleite, a mineral now easily found as grains in quartz, found on the small dumps outside the mine.

Next day we vent to look for molybdenite at the Bandaksli Molybdenum mines. We found a lot of molybdenite but only a few good crystals. I brought with me some material containing secondary molybdenum minerals as well, but haven’t got any of them identified yet…



The main reason why I never got to work any more with the material collected at Klauvreid and elsewhere on that trip was what happened the next couple of weeks. First I went on a holyday trip with my mother to Røros and surrounding areas, with a lot of mine and geological interesting places to see, but not that much collecting. But then the most intense and exciting collecting period this year for sure started!

You can read about it in my blogs about “quartzomania” and “buckets of chiavennite”. I’m still washing quartz crystals, now I only got thre buckets left to clean… And the chiavennite are at the moment stored in four boxes in my shed… Actualy the rest of the autumn is pretty well documented in my blogs, with the good hambergites and aegirine also found in the Tvedalen quarry, AS Granite. Also the nice trip to Litjern in Iveland with the rich finds of bavenite and other beryllium minerals have been written about.

One thing happening in September, and not mentioned in my blog, was the Moss mineral show. The greatest event at this show are always brought by Egil Jensen, the owner of the mineral & rock store in Moss; “Steinhaugen”, pulling things out of his enormous storage and putting out on tables as a “flea market”. I’ve done several small treasure finds in his piles every year, and this it wasn’t a disappointment this year either. One of the samples I bought was a calcite with the largest crystal edge being 23 cm long, from Kjørholt. Not really a micro, but… One other “treasure” I stumbled across on this show was a nice almandine crystal, ca 4 cm in diameter, on matrix from Bardu in far north of Norway, which I bought from Magnes Svendsli.


There I’ll end the collecting and show part of this annual record for 2008. But how about the home work, the collection?!?

2008 started out great with a lot of swapping, I got mounted bunches of stuff and had plenty to work with. Then came May and my life turned upside-down, somehow…

I got elected to lead NAGS (Norwegian Amateur Geologists Society), worked with the Eidsfoss show, and found the greatest girl still not married (which is a wonder, she should have been the first to disappear…), and suddenly my time to dig into my cave of micromounts and piles of rocks (to become micromounts) got reduced enormously. After the summer holyday days, work got a lot heavier as well, so here the piles are piling up, and boxes upon boxes of material to mount and label properly are continuously growing… Last two months before Christmas holyday I was so tired getting home from work that all energy I got left where spent with my girlfriend. So very little have happened with my collection the last half year – there are still micros swapped at Eidsfoss that haven’t been registered in my collection, yet.

I really hope this stressful situation will come to an end in 2009, so I can get something done with the piles piling up, so I can get shipped out some parcels with rocks I’ve promised to send for a long time now, so I can get my records up to date (it count 1926 different minerals right now, 178 more than last year at same time, but still I haven’t registered a lot of minerals I got in 2008 in the piles, like cannonite from Klauvreid).

Anyway it has been a tremendously great mineral year for me, with some of the nicest mineral finds I’ve done. I’ve met a lot of nice rockhounds, and love the world’s best hobby even more than last year!

How is it possible that 2009 can be better?
I hope it will, and not only for me but for all of you!

Happy New Year!



PS: Went out on my first trip yesterday to check out some of the quarries in Tvedalen. I went up to AS Granite of course, but nothing new was to be found, so I had a quick look at the pegmatite where we found nice hambergite last year, and also this time there where some nice samples to be found. On the way down from AS Granite, I checked out Tuften qry., without finding anything. Then I continued to Østskogen qry. and Norwegian Pearl qry. Not finding anything, except that Norwegian Pearl has been closed down… But I was happy with the hambergites, so not a wasted trip, and a good start on the new year.

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