The autumn just has been too busy! It’s a busy time at school, it’s a busy time collecting in the forest, and this autumn it has also been busy visiting AS Granit every weekend, and a couple of weekday afternoons as well. Culminating last week with a week of for autumn holyday, being out in the field five days making great finds.

I continue where I ended my last blog entry, in AS Granit. It’s been a couple of great months in the quarry. Just after 8 of august they started to pull down blocks cutting through the pegmatite. The first blocks that came down was lying around for four weeks before being removed, making it possible to rescue a lot of material. Large sampels of thorite were frequent, good sampels of behoite were found, more litharge, wulfenite, ancylite, leucophanite, etc were collected. I met more collectors than usual during these good days as well, some after appointments like Wilfried Steffens, who found an absolutely gorgeous behoite. Also more nice Chiavennite were found at level 1, some of it having a dark orange colour.




















The second block came down last week and I had a short look at the fresh blocks on Wednesday the 14., but already the Saturday after a major part of the material was removed to the dumps. I’ll be back later with the trip to AS Granit this Saturday.

I couldn’t completely forget about the other parts of the AS Granit quarry, because of the pegmatite between level 1 and 2. , and looking at the other levels during this months brought some surprises. At level 3 they brought down a couple of blocks with some interesting stuff. What caught my interest were nice crystals of aegirine, but back home I discovered the brightest orange sample of wulfenite that I’ve seen from the area. Very nice, but only one micromount was found. The other surprise in this small pegmatite was nice crystals of nepheline, up to 5 mm. Crystals of nepheline are rather rare in the Larvikite area. I went back the weekend after hoping to find more, but then it all was removed…


























When my autumn holyday started last week, I went to Valle in Setesdalen with my wife and her brother with family. On Monday we all went to a small, old copper mine the Bø Mine, nearby the cottage we stayed. It turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had expected. I really hope to go back to do more research on the dumps some day. The mine was water filled, but at some parts the cave roof gave protection for sulphates, most probably chalcantite and gypsum. On the dumps it was easy to find chalcopyrite and malachite. Looking closer several other minerals appeared; nice micro crystals of azurite, fluorite, molybdenite and epidote. When looking at the material back home I also discovered what probably is pumpellyite and a secondary Mo-mineral.





































After Valle, my wife and I went home via Iveland, with a stop at the interesting Litjern pegmatite. I found the usual altered beryls, some milarites, a nice monazite, and hopeful a lot more in the huge chunk of cleavelandite I brought back with me.


The 12th September my club had an arrangement as part of “The day of Geology” here in Norway, with mineral identification, “crush a calcite” and gold panning. Alf Olav Larsen told me about a couple from Larvik, that I frequently meet in AS Granit searching for minerals. They had discovered an old block at the dumps of Almenningen Quarry, where they had found excellent reticular aggregates of behoite, a lot nicer than the ones from AS Granit. Next time I met Mr and Mrs Larsen, the couple from Larvik, I congratulated of this great find, and they were generous and told me where to find the material on the dumps. So Wednesday last week, I went to Almenningen to look, and with their accurate description it wasn’t hard to find the block. I stayed for several hours collecting a lot of material, but only spotted two behoites out in the field. Working through the material back home, around 30 samples with behoite was found. Two of them with 11 reticulated aggregates of multiple twined behoites, extremely fine micros!

After Almenningen I had to take a look at AS Granite, and there I discovered that new block where pulled down. I found rhodochrosite, litharge and behoite while searching the blocks. The last behoite I saw with the sun going down was about 4 mm and well visible with bare eyes, so I filled my bag up with material of same kind. Back home a lot more behoites were found, 14 in all.

Hadn’t planed to go out before Saturday, but the great finds in Almenningen was just irresistible, so on Friday I went one more time to collect more. It had to be a shorter trip, but I filled up several bags with promising material. Now that I have had time to look through most of the material, the number of behoite samples I’ve found from this block have passed 100…


Last Saturday, I went back to AS Granit again. As already said a major part of the blocks were removed to the dumps, but still there were a lot too look through. I staied for several hours, some of the time in company with Knut Eldjarn, and I found enough to make the trip back to the car hard, with a backpack filled to the bursting point with rocks. Several good samples with behoites, some nice litharges, a big surprise was a sample of a thin crust with malachite, an other one was a heavily altered galena chunck partly replaced by tiny cerussite crystals (some of them reticulated multiple twinns!) and also some nice fresh samples with the abundant eudialyte group mineral, looking very much like ferrokentbrooksite from Sagåsen quarry.

Just a short summary, ; during the last couple of months I’ve hauled several 100 kg of rocks back home. With at least 100 behoite samples from AS Granit and 100 from Almenningen. Others have found a lot of behoite as well, so is it that rare anymore? At least not in my basement… This weekend I'll stay home to prepare our garden for the coming winter. Can't go out collect more now, I'll just end up as "the behoite guy"... ;-)

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