Tyssedal is a village in

Ullensvang Ullensvang is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Hardanger. The administrative centre is the town of Odda. Some of the notable villages in the municipality include Lofthus, Utne, Vikebygd ...

municipality in

Vestland Vestland is a county in Norway established on 1 January 2020. The county is located in Western Norway and it is centred around the city of Bergen, Norway's second largest city. The administrative centre of the county is the city of Bergen, where t ...

county,

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 ...

. The village is located on the shore of the Sørfjorden about north of the town of

Odda Odda () is a former municipality in the old Hordaland county, Norway. The municipality existed from 1913 until its dissolution in 2020 when it was merged into Ullensvang Municipality in Vestland county. It was located in southeastern Hordaland c ...

. Tyssedal is located in an environment in a valley between the

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

to the west and the mountains leading up to the

Hardangervidda Hardangervidda ( en, Hardanger Plateau) is a mountain plateau (Norwegian: ''vidde'') in central southern Norway, covering parts of Vestland, Vestfold og Telemark, and Viken counties. It is the largest plateau of its kind in Europe, with a cold ye ...

mountain plateau to the east.

Tyssedal Church Tyssedal Church ( no, Tyssedal kyrkje) is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Ullensvang Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the village of Tyssedal. It is the church for the Tyssedal parish which is part of the Hardan ...

is located in this village. The lake

Ringedalsvatnet Ringedalsvatnet is a lake in Ullensvang Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The lake sits just east of the village of Skjeggedal and about east (up the valley) from the village of Tyssedal, which sits on the shore of the Sørfjorden. Th ...

and the

Trolltunga Trolltunga ("Troll tongue") is a rock formation situated about above sea level in Ullensvang Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The cliff juts horizontally out from the mountain, about above the north side of the lake Ringedalsvatnet. Po ...

cliff are located just to the east, higher up in the valley. The village has a population (2019) of 601 and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopul ...

of .

History

Tyssedal is a typical

monotown A monotown (a calque from Russian моногород, ''monogorod''; ''gorod'' meaning "town") is a city/town whose economy is dominated by a single industry or company. This means that most employments (except for service to residents like sch ...

, depending upon the energy received from the

hydropower station Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

. The

ilmenite Ilmenite is a titanium-iron oxide mineral with the idealized formula . It is a weakly magnetic black or steel-gray solid. Ilmenite is the most important ore of titanium and the main source of titanium dioxide, which is used in paints, printing ...

smelter "Tinfos Titan and Iron" (TTI) (owned by

Tinfos Tinfos is a private Norwegian holding company. Its roots dates back to 1875, and has today the head office in Oslo, Norway. The firm is one of the oldest companies in its field of activity in Europe. Its main products are silicomanganese, High ...

) is located here and is the largest employer in the village. The smelter was converted from making

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

in the late 1980s. The first hydropower station in Tyssedal, Tysso I is today part of the

Norwegian Museum of Hydropower and Industry The Norwegian Museum of Hydropower and Industry ( no, Norsk Vasskraft- og Industristadmuseum) is a cultural history museum at Odda in Vestland county, Norway. The museum is located in the village of Tyssedal. The museum is dedicated to the indus ...

. Tyssedal grew up around this smelter in the early-twentieth century.

Language

Tyssedal drew migrants from different parts of Norway, all of whom spoke Norwegian with a different dialect. As a result, there developed a new dialect in Tyssedal, a mixture of that spoken in the home regions of the migrants; a phenomenon termed by linguists "a

Koiné language In linguistics, a koiné language, koiné dialect, or simply koiné (Ancient Greek κοινή, "common anguage) is a standard or common language or dialect that has arisen as a result of the contact, mixing, and often simplification of two or ...

". Tyssedal and the nearby town of

—which arose in the same time and socio-economic circumstances —provided valuable insights to linguists studying this phenomenon. Professor

Paul Kerswill Paul Kerswill, FBA, is a sociolinguist. Since 2012, he has been Professor in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York. After completing his undergraduate degree and doctorate at Gonville and Caius College, Camb ...

conducted an intensive study of the Norwegian spoken in the two communities, relating them to very different geographical origins: The workers in Odda came predominantly (86%) from western Norway. In Tyssedal only about one third came from western Norway; one third came from eastern Norway; and the rest from other parts of the country. The dialects that evolved in these two communities were radically different from each other, though spoken at a short

geographical distance Geographical distance or geodetic distance is the distance measured along the surface of the earth. The formulae in this article calculate distances between points which are defined by geographical coordinates in terms of latitude and longitude. ...

from each other.

History

Language

See also

References

Related reading