The Neptune Herring Oil Factory ( no, Neptun sildeoljefabrikk) is a former industry in the town of

Melbu Melbu is a village in Hadsel Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The village is located on the island of Hadseløya on the northern shore of the Hadselfjorden. Melbu is one of two population centres on the island of Hadseløya, and it is ca ...

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 ...

Vesterålen Vesterålen is a district and archipelago in Nordland county, Norway. It is located just north of Lofoten and west of Harstad. It is the northernmost part of Nordland county. Sortland is the largest town, situated near the center of the archipel ...

district. It has been given cultural heritage status. The factory was set up in 1910. For a long time, production was based on

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

. When herring was no longer available as raw material, the factory switched to using

capelin The capelin or caplin (''Mallotus villosus'') is a small forage fish of the smelt family found in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic oceans. In summer, it grazes on dense swarms of plankton at the edge of the ice shelf. Larger capelin ...

. In the 1980s, the supply of this fish as raw material also failed, and the factory shut down in 1987. All of its equipment was sold to Morocco. During the 1900s there were many factories of this type in the Norwegian fisheries, and few of them are preserved today. Many of them, like the Neptune factory, were established at the beginning of the century and were shut down in the 1980s. The Neptune Herring Oil Factory was added to the list of priority technical and industrial cultural heritage by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. This list comprises several facilities of different types, and it is based on extensive registration work. The conservation of the factory in Melbu focuses on preserving herring oil factories. Starting in 1991, the buildings were managed as part of the

Norwegian Fishing Industry Museum The Norwegian Fishing Industry Museum ( no, Norsk fiskeindustrimuseum) is a national museum in Melbu in Vesterålen, Norway. The museum was established in the spring of 1991 and is housed in the building of the former Neptune Herring Oil Factory ...

, which was established in the spring of 1991. The Norwegian Fishing Industry Museum offers nationwide coverage of its field and has a national function.

References

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External links

Neptune Herring Oil Factory
at kulturminnesok.no
Neptune Herring Oil Factory
at the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage website
Neptune Herring Oil Factory
at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology website Hadsel Cultural heritage of Norway Defunct companies of Norway Norwegian companies established in 1910 Companies disestablished in 1987 Food and drink companies established in 1910 Food and drink companies of Norway 1987 disestablishments in Norway

References

Further reading

External links