Storgata-fra-Råenbakken-Vestfossen-d8863

Vestfossen is a village in the municipality of

Øvre Eiker Øvre Eiker is a municipality in the traditional and electoral district Buskerud in Viken county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Eiker. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Hokksund. The old municipal ...

in the county of

Buskerud Buskerud () is a former county and a current electoral district in Norway, bordering Akershus, Oslo, Oppland, Sogn og Fjordane, Hordaland, Telemark and Vestfold. The region extends from the Oslofjord and Drammensfjorden in the southeast to Har ...

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 ...

. Vestfossen is a former industrial city with traditions dating back to the 16th century. As of 2008 Vestfossen had a population of 2,867 according to

Statistics Norway Statistics Norway ( no, Statistisk sentralbyrå, abbreviated to ''SSB'') is the Norwegian statistics bureau. It was established in 1876. Relying on a staff of about 1,000, Statistics Norway publish about 1,000 new statistical releases every ye ...

History

The development of Vestfossen and its industrial tradition started during the 1500s. At that time, the

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals with ...

known as Fossesholm (''Fossesholm Herregård'') became the center of a land collecting effort for the purpose of creating a large-scale sawmill industry. Later, other types of industry emerged. The most influential among them were the Fredfos Wool Factory ('' Fredfos Uldvarefabrik'') and the Vestfos Cellulose Factory (''Vestfos Cellulosefabrik''), a former paper company founded in 1886 as a pulp mill, which operated until declaring bankruptcy in 1967. An industrial crisis which occurred around 1970 led to the fall of these factories, and large parts of the local industrial infrastructure was unused for a long time. After the year 2000, a

cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor ...

effort led to the establishment of several cultural institutions here, most notably the contemporary art gallery of the Vestfossen Art Laboratory (''Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium'') founded by artist Morten Viskum. Exhibitions have featured works by

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. H ...

Claes Oldenburg Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan h ...

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

Bjarne Melgaard Bjarne Melgaard (born 9 September 1967) is a Norwegian artist based in New York City. He has been described as "one of Norway's most important artists" and, following the 2014 publicity about his sculpture ''Chair'', "the most famous Norwegian art ...

Henrik Sørensen Henrik Sørensen (12 February 1882 – 24 February 1962) was a Norwegian painter. Personal life Sørensen was born in Fryksände in Sweden as a son of Severin Sørensen and Helene Høibraaten. He was married to Gudrun Klewe, and is father of ...

and

Harald Sohlberg Harald Oskar Sohlberg (29 November 1869 – 19 June 1935) was a Norwegian Neo-romantic painter. Biography Sohlberg attended the Royal School of Art and Design of Christiania. He later trained under the graphic artist and painter Johan Nordhage ...

. Vestfossen now calls itself "the capital of culture".

Geography

Vestfosselva River runs through Vestfossen, flowing out from the two contiguous lakes Fiskumvannet and Eikeren. Vestfosselva is the largest tributary of the

Drammenselva Drammenselva ( en, Drammen River) is a river in Buskerud county, southeastern Norway. Location Drammenselva is one of the largest rivers in Norway, with a drainage basin of about and a discharge of per second. Drammen River's total length is ma ...

. Vestfossen waterfall is dammed and has a power station, ''Vestfossen kraftverk''. On the lower side of the waterfall, the river continued to Hokksund, where it splits into two rivers, Nøstelva and Loeselva, both of which flow into the Drammenselva.

Fosseholm Manor House

Between 1541-1548, Peder Hanssøn Litle (c. 1500 – 1551), who served as captain as the

Akershus Fortress Akershus Fortress ( no, Akershus Festning, ) or Akershus Castle ( no, Akershus slott ) is a medieval castle in the Norwegian capital Oslo that was built to protect and provide a royal residence for the city. Since the Middle Ages the fortress ha ...

, gained control of properties located on the lower part of the Drammen waterway. The water falls were bought with a view toward operating saw mills and establishing a lumber trade on a large scale. The estate remained within the Litle family until 1616 when Gunde Lange (1570–1645) acquired it and changed the name of the farm to Fossesholm Herregård around 1630. In 1763, Jørgen von Cappelen (1715–1785) acquired Fossesholm. He expanded the estate and developed a magnificent set of buildings in rococo style inspired by great European manor houses. The Swedish painter Eric Gustav Tunmarck (1729–1789) decorated many of the interior walls with scenes from the farm environment. The good times for the Norwegian lumber trade came to an abrupt halt when Norway entered into

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

(1807–1814) which affected the prime lumber market of

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. In 1822 Fossesholm Manor was submitted for auction.

Amund Pedersen Fossesholm Amund ( non, Agmundr), is a Norse masculine given name. It derives from the Old Norse ''Agmundr,'' meaning respectful protector. People named Amund Amund is a given name. Notable people with the name include: *Amund B. Larsen (1849–1928), No ...

(1830–1930), who was the owner of the manor until his death, started a number of local business, including a brewery, sawmill and mill and Vestfossen Træmasse factory (''Vestfossen Træmassefabrik''). Fossesholm Manor including 22 acres of land was acquired in 1973 by ''Stiftelsen Fossesholm Herregård''.''History of Fosseholm'' (Fossesholm Herregård)
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Notable residents

Trond Berg Eriksen Trond Berg Eriksen (born 3 October 1945) is a Norwegian historian of ideas, non-fiction writer and magazine editor. He was born in Øvre Eiker in Buskerud. His thesis, from 1975, was on the ethics of Aristoteles. He was appointed professor at the ...

- Professor and historian * Kjell Hovda - Former Norwegian biathlete * Per Olaf Lundteigen - Politician for the Centre Party *

Arne Nævra Arne Nævra (born 7 December 1953) is a Norwegian photographer and politician. Biography Nævra was born in Øvre Eiker. He was elected representative to the Storting from Buskerud for the period 2017–2021 for the Socialist Left Party. ...

- Nature photographer *

Kjellaug Nordsjö Astrid Kjellaug Nordsjö (November 14, 1926 – March 31, 2021) was a Swedish-Norwegian artist. Nordsjö is considered one of the Nordic countries' foremost icon painters. She is represented in the Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, in churches ...

- Icon painter * Olaf Olsen - Drummer * Tove Paule - Norwegian sports official *

Sigurd Simensen Sigurd Simensen (19 February 1888 – 27 April 1969) was a Norwegian newspaper editor and politician for the Labour and Communist parties. He was born in Vestfossen. He started his career as an iron and metalworker, working at Thunes Mekaniske Ve ...

- Mayor * Dagfinn Stenseth - Ambassador and author

Gallery

File:Vestfossen-Kapell-d9770rm.jpg, Vestfossen chapel File:Vestfosselva-Vestfossen-d9788.jpg, Vestfosselva River File:Storgata-Vestfossen-d3368.jpg, View of Storgata File:Fossesholm borggården.jpg, Borggården File:Vestfossen Storgata.jpg, Storgata File:Vestfossen stasjon TRS 061106 009.jpg, Vestfossen Train Station File:ØvreEiker landskap b.JPG, Lake Fiskumvannet

References

Other sources

*Bent Ek (2005) ''Elektrisiteten på Øvre Eiker'' (Øvre Eiker Energi) *Øystein Kock Johansen; Bjarnar Moseng (1994) ''Eikers historie'' (Øvre Eiker kommune) *Øystein Rian (1995) ''Aschehougs Norgeshistorie, Bd. 5'' (Oslo: Aschehoug) *Tom Schandy (2016) ''Øvre Eiker'' (Forlaget Tom & Tom)

External links

VisitVestfossen.no

Fredfoss Kulturpark

Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium

Scrapbook for Vestfossen
{{authority control Populated places in Buskerud Culture in Buskerud Villages in Buskerud Øvre Eiker