Løvøya is an island in Ormefjorden in

Porsgrunn is a city and municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Grenland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Porsgrunn. The municipality of Porsgrunn w ...

municipality,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. On the island

Morten Thrane Esmark Hans Morten Thrane Esmark (21 August 1801 – 24 April 1882) was a Norwegian priest and mineralogist. He is most noted for first locating the mineral thorite. Biography Morten Thrane Esmark was born at Kongsberg in Buskerud, Norway as a son of P ...

found a black mineral which was sent to Swedish chemist

Jöns Jakob Berzelius Jöns is a Swedish given name and a surname. Notable people with the given name include: * Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848), Swedish chemist * Jöns Budde (1435–1495), Franciscan friar from the Brigittine monastery in NaantaliVallis Gratiae ...

for examination in 1828 for further analysis. Berzelius determined that it contained a new element, which he named

thorium Thorium is a weakly radioactive metallic chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is silvery and tarnishes black when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft and malleable and has a high me ...

after

Thor Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred groves ...

, the

Norse god In Germanic paganism, the indigenous religion of the ancient Germanic peoples who inhabited Germanic Europe, there were a number of different gods and goddesses. Germanic deities are attested from numerous sources, including works of literature, ...

of thunder.

References

Islands of Vestfold og Telemark {{VestfoldTelemark-geo-stub