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LocalitiesTvedalen, Larvik, Vestfold, Norway

14th May 2010 15:46 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Hi all enthusiast for the Tvedalen area!

I hope this topic can evolve to a "what is going on" in the Tvedalen quarries. I have usualy provided information on own trips to the area in my blog, but often I dont write anything after trips where I've not found anything. This topic can be used to do the short reports like last wisit I had to Hauane, etc; just to write "Wisited this quarry today (day, month) found nothing, or found something... I guess this could save some of us from going to same quarry same weekend just to get tired legs...

Another option is to make a "I'm going the coming weekend - will someone join me?" adds, feel fre to try it!

I'm going to AS Granite the coming Sunday I hope, if not I'll try to joun a good friend for a trip next Friday.

Regards

Peter

16th May 2010 17:57 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

I visited the area today, but found nothing in any of the folowing quarries visited:

Sagåsen: looks like they are working now and then on the levels abowe the big pegmatite. The lowest level are completly filled with water, and the water is almost up on the floor with the big pegmatite.

AS Granit: lot of sawing going on, so perhaps something will happen during summer, but right now its pretty boring... There is of course some pegmatite material laying around, but the interesting stuff is getting scarse.

Østskogen: No working.

Norwegian Pearl: No working.

24th May 2010 20:33 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Went to the New E18 road-constructing site today, and searched the area from East of the tunnel East of Pauler farm untill the bridge crossing over the road to Kjose.. I found minerals at three spots, and had a good day in field. I will try to go back on next Sunday to get GPS positions for the varios spots.

First plase I stoped was the top of the roadcuts just east of where the tunnel entrance and the road crossing the road to Malerød/Vardås. Earlier I've found some ok "moonstone" feldspar here, but today I found some more exciting stuff. Spreustein with cavities. Back home I've looked at some of the material and mostly the cavitie are filled with natrolite and gibsite. The gibsite are of quite good quality, nice twinned crystal agregates to 5mm. The highlight was to discover one small twinned behoite of the same type that was found last year in AS Granit. It will sure be exciting to follow the work on this pegmatite, it's in the midle of the comming road, so it will eventualy be blown away and end up as roadfill.

Second place was at the Eastern opening of the "Pauler-tunnel". This was the dumps from the tunnel, and on one part of the dumps there where a lot of pegmatite material, very coars grained some of it, with nepheline "grains" up to 20-30cm. Some of the pegmatite had natrolite vugs in them, so I stopped to look closer. In one block I found small ( > 5mm) epididymite agregates, some of them covered with gonnardite.

I had a peak inside the tunnels as well, but they cover the walls with concrete almost directly after the dust have setled after a blast...

Third spot was on the Western opening, and near the south wall of the "Pauler-tunell". In a big boulder I found two small pockets, with the wals coated with small microcrystals of something, often coated with Mn-oxides/hydroxides. Back home it was easy to identify as small, but nice crystals of heulandite.

13th Jun 2010 21:34 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

I went to the Pauler area again today, see the localities I've added to Mindat.

I only went to the place where I found the behoites. The other constructing roads where closed... I found at least two more behoites, but have just started to look through the topp of one of the four bags with spreustein material I brought back home today. Might sound like I've gone crasy bringing back so much material, but they have started to drill in the area, so it might be gone in a week or two. I hope many more than me well be there next Sunday to save what can be saved! Remember whan it's blasted it will be removed and quicly burried as roadfill.

The behoites found today was different from those I found 24. May, they where both reticulated twinn agregates, with colourless/white crystals on natrolite, more similar to those found in Almenningen quarry.

Peter

19th Jun 2010 17:23 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Went to AS Granit, Rønningen and Arent quarries today. Was almost nothing to find, except for a couple of small pegmatite veins at level 3 in Rønningen (Tuften), found something that looks like prehnite, but will check it with some HCl to exclude calcite.

AS Granit was boring, and they aren't working Arent at the moment.

19th Jun 2010 19:03 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Thanks for your reports - you are so lucky to live in an area so interesting from a mineralogical point of view.

19th Jun 2010 20:03 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

We who live here sure are! You are always welcome to come here to collect again, and get a free stay at my home anytime :)

I've checked todays "harvest" from Tvedalen, but nothing exciting, the yellow mineral looking like prehnite was calcite...

20th Jun 2010 02:34 UTCDean Allum Expert

Hi Peter,

Can you enter the coordinates for the AS Granit quarry so the rest of us can get an idea of where it is located. That way we will not just guess that it is north of E18 near your Roadcut 1.

Thanks,

Dean Allum

14th Jul 2010 21:50 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Went to AS Granit today, nothing new...

But was lucky and found a block from last autumns pegmatite, with behoite, epididymite, eudidymite and lead secondaries.

I forgot to bring my GPS, but I can tell you that Tvedalen is South of E18, and the AS Granit quarry have a nice view, looking at the outer part of Langesundsfjorden :)

Peter

19th Jul 2010 12:02 UTCWilfried Steffens

Dean,

I tried to make a jpg of a google maps map. You can see E18, and south of that the road to and through the tvedalen area. The X shows the location of AS Granit.

Speaking of AS Granit: this is the 4th name for the same quarry now for me and as I know also for some Norwegian friends.

It started out for me with the Wilke book in 1976 as "Tvedalen main quarries". Then, according to sign at the main entrance back then (now just the main collector entrance, it was "Svensken". Obviously that was the name of the company owning the operation. And they kep starting new quarry operation - a Norwegian friend of mine and me ended up with "Svensken 1", "Svensken 2", "Svensken 3" and "Svensken 4". No, we finally ended up with even a "Svensken 1.5", a new quarry between 1 and 2. Most of them have merged together - I couldn't tell e.g. where Svensken 4 would be now.

All the time Alf-Olav Larsen kept calling the quarry operation(s) "Tuften", which actually is the correct geographical name of the hill, on which they are all located.

Now we have arrived at "AS Granit", again the name of a company - Granit joint-stock company. I am sure this is a temporary name again.

I would suggest to switch to geographical names consistently - so Bjoerndalen, Oestskogen, Sagaasen (sorry, no Norwegian letters) and obviously Tuften should be kept, while company quarry names like Saga Pearl, Blue Pearl, Norwegian Pearl and AS Granit should rather not be used, or only in conjunction with the geographical name, if there is a perceived need to indicate a rough time for the find of a specimen (like the old Mt.St.Hilaire quarry names like Uni-Mix and Poudrette).

19th Jul 2010 15:40 UTCPeter Lyckberg Expert

Indeed the original "Svensken" or "Svenske bruddet" is one of the most prolific and famous of the quarries and it was called as such as long as I can remember (first visit in the 70s).

It is very peculiar that the quarry name does not appear in the book on Langesundsfjor. It could have something to do with its meaning "the Swede" in Norwegian although one would hope not. No Sweden would ever change change the name of "Norwegian Quarry", "Finnish Quarry" in Sweden to something else.

But as Sweden was always the more industrialized and developed part of N Europe (and Finland was one of 4 regions of Sweden for 1000 years) thus there may still be a complex even 100/200 years after. In contrary to Germany, or Denmark Sweden never invaded Norway although we also had fight on the boarder hundreds of years ago.

We see the same now in Baltic countries which became states in 1917 and part of the Soviet Union and now blame Russia for everything and even discriminate russian speaking citizens and do not give them passports. Same happened since 1809 in Finland since Russia took almost half of Sweden, the part called Finland which became independent state also at the Russian revolution.

In the Orangerie Museum in Paris one Swedish-Finnish masterpaintings artists name has been translated from his beautiful Swedish name (well visible on the painting) to a Finnish name . His name was never Finnish! How about changing Albert Einstein to Albert Onestone??? or Allberrtt Yksikivi???

29th Aug 2010 22:55 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Some updates, and coments on the two last posts:

I've been to Mellomfyllet (Malerød), Bjørndalen, AS Monzonite, Østskogen, Sagåsen, Rønningen and AS Granit the last three weeks. Also some parts of the E18 road works, including the work at the Lillegårds heiane. And found very little new...

There have been workings at Mellomfyllet, and I talked with an other norwegian collector at Eidsfoss show that had found some nice Hilairite/Gaidonnaite material in the early summer, so they are working there again, I think. I'll go back there next weekend for a confirmation.

Then about the Svensken quarry. This wasn't an official name as I understand it, it was called so because the owners was Swedes. Just to add some more confusion on this matter, look at this picture I took earlier this year, showing the border between AS Granit and Rønningen: http://www.mindat.org/photo-330681.html.

Alf Olav use Tuften quite often - that is the name of the hill, so that is a geographical name and not a name of any quarry that have ever been on Tuften. I was not born when they started to quarry at Tuften, and from they started until today, the scenery have changed exctremly, like the Heia quarry are now looking like a road cut, on the road between the operating quarries and Svartebukt harbour. "Svensken" have disapeared into air, somewhere between Larvik Granite quarry and AS Granite quarry, and the Swedish owners sold their rights to a company from Poland, which gave the quarry the name AS Granite, the name you will find on signs even now, after Lundhs Labrador bought AS Granit. I must admit I don't know all the names used officialy before 2005, when I returned to the area, but what I've used sice that is what's given on the signs in the area, with one exception, I didn't know that Rønningen was going that far west as shown in the picture attached...

And for all of you hwo think there is granite in the area, there isn't, it's all the monzonitic rock Larvikite, without quartz.

8th Oct 2010 19:31 UTCWilfried Steffens

Hi all silent Tvedalen enthusiasts!

I thought I might use this way to try and have some UKs for me identified after I bought one of these funny USB-microscopes/-lenses.

Here goes: this a white mineral on aegirin-xx, width of field ca 10mm, from Tuften. An elder find, ca. 2005. What about gonnardite?

Cheers

Wilfried Steffens

8th Oct 2010 20:59 UTCKnut Edvard Larsen 🌟 Manager

Hi

Judging from the picture alone, it looks more like aggregates of a platy mineral, (f.ex calcite, maybe epididymite( ??) ) not gonnardite. Gonnardite most commonly occurs as clusters of well developed crystals dominated by a tetragonal prism, like these from another quarry in the same area : http://www.mindat.org/photo-195231.html.

Can you please describe the mineral in more detail ? Habitus, lustre etc

9th Oct 2010 07:53 UTCWilfried Steffens

Good morning and thanks Knut Edvard

Well, I'll try. It sure is not calcite, that's what I always try first. The white stuff reminds me most of gypsum, not the mineral, but the gypsum you use to e.g. fill holes in walls.

Under 40x it looks still fine grained, very dull, no luster at all except for possible very few still extremely small bladed reflections. As some aegirine xx stick through, it looks as having been put upon the aegirine. As I said - as if I dropped a very minute amount of construction gypsum on it. It is not all shiny or reflecting as in the foto. Room for improvement with those USB-lenses....

Oh, yes, the 10% HCl, which I tried again with a toothpick under 20x, is completely absorbed by the material, like by a sponge, the colour turns slightly yellowish white when wet and white again when dry.

The gonnardite foto is great - much nicer than what I know e.g. as covering on natrolite xx. Maybe I should use the stereo microscope more often on the Tvedalen specimens ;-)

Another try with a closer foto, fov now down to 4mm.

Ha det bra

Wilfried

9th Oct 2010 07:54 UTCWilfried Steffens

Sorry, this is the foto after Photoshop elements.

Wilfried

19th Dec 2010 13:42 UTCKnut Edvard Larsen 🌟 Manager

Sorry for not following this up before now.

It is not quite easy to judge from the photo alone, but my best quess after looking at the last pictures together with your description is that this a mass of a finegrained clay mineral, probably montmorillonite that sometimes occurs in cavities.

23rd Jan 2011 00:23 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

First field trip 2011 went to Midtfjellet quarry, then the new E18 road cuts and finaly to AS Granit quarry. Didn't find anything...

Midtfjellet are still in operation, now on two levels, so I expect there will be great collectin posibilities there this spring!

At AS Granite they are ready to take down blocks at a couple of interesting places, so it's worth wisiting this quarry regularly too.

Peter

20th Mar 2011 23:12 UTCOivind Thoresen Expert

Hi Peter

I'll think i have to take a fieldtrip to Tvedalen as soon as the snow is gone :-)

/Øivind

21st Mar 2011 17:17 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Why wait for the snow to go - I go all the time, just not this weekend... Hope to visit AS Granit the coming Sunday. Check my blog and you'll see I've had some luck at Midtfjellet. Last surprice from the trip 4 weeks ago is gaidonnayite crystals as fracture fillings - 100 if not 1000 xls covering very thin fractures in the pegmatite, looks nice under SW-UV. :)

21st Mar 2011 18:13 UTCWilfried Steffens

Hi Knut Edvard,

so sorry, it took me even longer to find this talk page again. I have to figure out, how to find it, if it's not in the topics list...

Yes, I would have gone for e.g. montmorillonite, if it hadn't been such a bright, though not shiny, white. The way it's sitting on the aegirin it indeed looks like having formed late.

Thank you very much and again sorry for overlooking your reply for so long!

Wilfried

26th Mar 2011 18:20 UTCPeter Andresen Expert

Hi Wilfried,

To get back to this talk page again, simply go to the Tvedalen locality page and click on the discussion/Talk page button.

News from Tvedalen today; I went to AS Granit, Saga Pearl, Almenningen, Haugane (Walter Rimstad), Bjørndalen, AS Monzonitt (Vevja 2/Nye Vevja), and found nothing...

There is some work going on in Saga Pearl and Monzonitt, Bjørndalen and AS Granit are busy as usual, in Almenningen there is still no work and Haugane have been closed this winter too.

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