Last week have been really busy, but what a week!
To teas you with some keywords: Eidsfoss mineral show, trip to several localities and exciting news on an analysed mineral.
Eidsfoss show first: I was responsible for booking dealers and find a table for them at this years show, just like last year, but this will be the last for a while. I arrived early Thursday to help putting up tables, party-tents and what ever have to be done for preparations. The show started at Friday, and even before it opened I had picked up a couple of minerals. Most of the time at the show went to working or standing behind my own table – I managed to find my swap boxes, mostly the larger stuff, some micros, but really nothing new. It was only a couple of boxes with quartz from the
Svanstulen road that I discovered last August that could be said to be new material. Then I didn’t sell that much either. The most I got rid of was by swapping or giving away.
There where very little news to see at all, plenty of newly collected material, but only stuff already known on the market, like the
Stange amethyst. I ended up with a Stange amethyst on the traditional auction on Saturday, but an old sample collected long time ago. I also bought several nice miniatures of old and classic material, both norwegian and international minerals, and got a couple of new minerals for the systematic collection, so I don’t complain, but it would have been nice to show some photos of new stuff. Perhaps the best sample I got was a cabinet sized sample of
apophyllite-(KOH) from
Mofjellet mine, Nordland. Old material collected long time ago.
The large attraction for the general public on this show was a huge copy of the largest sea-reptile they discovered at Svalbard couple two years ago, a 15 meter long monster named “Predator X”. Beside it the supporter organisation for the Palaeontology museum in Oslo a tent where a replica of the new discovered fossil “Ida” was shown together with close up pictures of details on the original fossil that show it’s relations to more modern apes like humans.
Predator X in the background
Ida the link
Most important with the Eidsfoss show was as usual the social part, meeting friends and having a good time with them.
After the Eidsfoss show, I had a day to relax and prepare for a couple of days in the field. While relaxing I got some very good news from Alf Olav Larsen. He had got a sample of galena with an unknown red mineral on it together with other lead secondary minerals that I collected in AS Granite quarry the Saturday before Eidsfoss. He had analysed the sample and the red mineral turned out to be litharge. It’s the first discovery of litharge in Norway, so that’s fun! The other minerals on it turned out to be a mixture of cerussite and hydrocerussite.
Tuseday morning I went early away to Sandefjord where I met Knut Edvard Larsen and André Robbemond, and together we went to the
Rundemyr prospect in Øvre Eiker, Buskerud. This is the co type locality for
aegirine, from this locality described as “acmite”. Aegirine was easy to find, and back home I could happily conclude that I got four samples of microcrystals of helvite/genthelvite too.
Next locality we went to was not far from Eidsfoss, at the shore of the same lake, Eikeren we stopped at
Hakavika. We looked for minerals in miarolitic cavities in ekerite, and found aegirine, microcline, quartz and zircon. Not the most exciting minerals but some good aesthetic micro material. Not far from Hakavika we had a stop at the contact zone between the ekerite and the cambro-silurian sediments, close to the
Gunhilrud farm. Here we found a couple of samples with vesuvianite.
Last stop for the day was
Batteriet, near Nedre Eiker church. Here we found plenty of anatase micros together with titanite, stilbite and muscovite-1M, probably other minerals as well, also in miarolitic cavities in ekerite/normarkite.
Knut Edvard Larsen at Rundemyr
The Batteriet quarry behind some buildings
Wednesday, André Robbemond and I met each other at
Sagåsen quarry, where we found some leucophanite and bertrandite, not staying for a very long time. It was mostly me pointing, and André working.
Main goal was
AS Granite of course, to look for more behoite. It took me about ten minutes to find a behoite, so not as much material as last time I went… Unfortunately we didn’t get to spend as long time as we had wished for in the pegmatite, because after a couple of hours it started to rain, and after an hour in the rain we got too wet, to cold and it was impossible to use a loupe to check the material. But in that time I found a couple more behoites, the same did André. We found more litharge, and also some leucophanite. In an other part of the same pegmatite, I found some samples with heavy altered rhodochrosite. The most exciting sample I found really made my heart jump. A cavity in microcline feldspar, not in “spreustein”, with spheres of epididymite, a good crystal aggregate of behoite, and some more acicular crystals that can be either calcite or berborite. Back home I also found some unidentified dodecahedral, colourless crystals in the same cavity. Truly an exciting sample!
This visit to the pegmatite added more than ten new behoite samples, added with the ca 50 samples I had collected before and knowing that there had been several collectors visiting the locality too, also finding Behoite, I think this spot in the pegmatite have produced more than 100 samples of behoite. This must be the richest find of this mineral ever! At least I haven’t heard of anything like it.
Mineral and Locality Search
Roy and I visited the locality Saturday afternoon, after some fine hours in Eidsfoss. We both found behoite, but a terrible rain made it difficult for us and it was impossible to search the water-filled cavities for micro minerals.
Yesterday I and a friend, Dagfinn Karlsen, visited the pegmatitten again. Better weather and better time. While he looked for the big samples, I looked for the micro-minerals. A good match! There we also met an another collector from Fredrikstad. Obviously a popular place :-)
Summary: fine samples of behoite. Have checked 3 samples that I could visually see were potential good pieces - and Yes - fine behoite crystals - 5 crystals in one of them. Then I have found at least 5 samples of behoite. Fantastic! Still some material to be checked. Other minerals collected : I found galenite – also one very esthetic piece, leucophanite, cancrinite, tritomite (?), astrophyllite, sphalerite (?), epididymitt - a big ball of about 8 mm in a cavity, arsenopyrite. In spreusten cavities there has to be more minerals? Diaspore, böhmite and others seems to appear together with natrolite / thomsonite. Now I`m going to look for litharge in the galenitt samples I collected. Coatings or crystals? Dagfinn also found a very nice whølerite crystal in matrix and a soperb piece of astrophyllite.
Almost forgot to mention a small sample with a secondary mineral which I think is hydrozinkite (?), but is unsure. White coating, with a slightly bluish tones.
Save me a rodochrosite sample;-)
Atle
Atle Michalsen
24th Jul 2009 7:46am