Key facts about Rjukan

Rjukan town and Tinn municipality

Tinn municipality has for the past 100 years developed from being an outside rural district to a modern and traditional municipality of industry, with the town of Rjukan as administration centre.

This is mainly because of generation of power and the work done by Norsk Hydro. Early on Norsk Hydro provided everything here: Housing, shops, a hospital, the local fire brigade and even a dairy so that the town's inhabitants could get fresh milk.

Thanks to Rjukan's founder, the great industrialist Samuel Eyde, the town's buildings were constructed to a high architectural standard. Because of this Rjukan is now on the tentative world heritage list of UNESCO.

Industry

Fertiliser was in great demand all over the world because of the booming, global population. This was a vital factor for the construction of a large-scale hydro-electric power station and one of the world's most sophisticated electrochemical processing plants of the era.
 
Rjukan was home to the first heavy industrial plant in Norway. You will still find a concentrated form of Norway's industrial community here, amid the rural countryside steeped in ancient culture and surrounded by a vast, seemingly endless mountain wilderness.

Inhabitants

Today Tinn has 6,500 inhabitants and is the gateway to the mountain plateau of Hardangervidda, with its rich opportunities for hunting and fishing activities, summer as well as winter.

In the town of Rjukan there are approximately 3,000 inhabitants. Rjukan is surrounded by high mountains. Gaustatoppen is the highest mountain with its 1,883 metres above sea level.