The Hammer That Wandered

From Barbu to Båseland, Næs Ironworks, and a Swedish Family of Hammer Smiths

It begins with a river.

The Barbu River is not a large one. It runs the short distance from Lake Langsævannet down towards the sea at Arendal. Today, it is difficult to imagine that this small watercourse once formed part of the beginnings of the Norwegian iron industry. But the river had a considerable fall. And where there was running water, waterwheels could be built. Waterwheels could drive bellows. They could raise great hammers.

And beneath the hammer, iron could be shaped.

In 1574, the feudal lord Erik Munk received royal permission to establish an ironworks in Nedenes. He owned land in the area around Barbu, Langsæ and Torbjørnsbu, where extensive mining later took place. Traditionally, 1574 has therefore been regarded as the year in which the Barbu Ironworks was founded.

More recent research is more cautious. We know that the privilege was granted, but we do not know for certain whether the ironworks was actually built at that time. The securely documented Barbo Ironworks did not appear until the 1630s.

So the story begins with uncertainty.

That seems appropriate.

History seldom leaves behind an unbroken sequence of certain events. It leaves documents, remnants of walls, slag heaps, names in parish registers and account books – and stories carried forward by people.

What we do know is that an ironworks existed at Barbu in the seventeenth century. Around 1640, the works acquired a blast furnace. Ore could be brought from the mines around Arendal, while the forests supplied the charcoal demanded by the technology. The Barbu River supplied the power.

But the small river also had its limitations.

In summer, there might be too little water. In winter, it could freeze. More serious still was the demand for charcoal. A blast furnace was almost insatiable. The surrounding forests had to be transformed into charcoal, and mining itself also required large quantities of timber.

The Barbo Ironworks struggled with difficult and irregular production. By the end of the 1650s, most blast-furnace operations had ceased.

But the iron did not disappear.

It moved inland.

From Barbu to Båseland

Older histories often say that the Barbu Ironworks was moved to Båseland in Holt in 1665. It is an appealingly simple story: the old works were dismantled and rebuilt somewhere else.

The history was probably more complicated.

In December 1665, a royal privilege was granted for the establishment of Båseland Ironworks. In the privilege itself, the enterprise was described as a new ironworks. Båseland was therefore not simply the Barbo works transplanted to another place.

And yet there was continuity.

The knowledge of iron production did not disappear when the fires at Barbu went out. Tools could be moved. Mines could continue to be used. Working methods could be passed on. The new works were able to make use of resources from the old.

And the same basic technology continued:

The water.

The bellows.

The fire.

The hammer.

At Båseland, the blast furnace was situated by the smaller river, while the hammer works were established beside the Storelva, where the flow of water was more reliable. In 1738, production was concentrated at Næs, and Båseland Ironworks gradually became known as Næs Ironworks.

The hammers still stand there.

There is also an old tradition that one of the oldest hammers at Næs originally came from the Barbu Ironworks. Whether it is really the same hammer is difficult to prove.

But perhaps that is not the most important thing.

For something certainly did travel from Barbu to Båseland and onwards to Næs:

the art of making iron.

And with that art, people travelled too.

The Swedes Arrive

The ironworks needed people who knew their craft.

To be a hammer smith was not the same as being a village blacksmith. Beneath the great water-powered hammers, iron had to be worked into malleable bar iron. The hammer could weigh hundreds of kilograms. The work demanded experience, rhythm and precision. A smith had to be able to read the glowing iron – to know when it could be shaped and when it had to be returned to the fire.

Such knowledge existed in the great Swedish mining and ironworking districts.

And so, around the beginning of the eighteenth century, Swedish hammer smiths begin to appear at Båseland.

Among them was Erich Lucassen.

The personal report I have compiled gives his birth as around 1680 in Sweden. His exact place of birth is uncertain. He was the son of Lucas Petersson Rell, who is associated with Fellingsbro in the Örebro region, and the family had connections with places such as Kåfalla Bruk and Kärrbro Hammare. Even the names of these places tell us that this was a world in which ironworking occupied a central place.

Somewhere on the road between Sweden and Agder, Erich enters my own family history.

Not as an official.

Not as the owner of an ironworks.

Not as one of those whose names were recorded in the great history books.

He was a hammer smith.

A Child Is Born at Båseland

In 1710, his son Anders was born. In the personal report, his birthplace is given as Baaseland Ironworks. Six years later came Henrich. In 1718, Lucas was born, also at Båseland.

At that point the story is no longer merely industrial history.

An ironworks was also a home.

Men and women lived there. Children were born while the blast furnace burned and the hammer struck. Some grew up and began working at the ironworks themselves. Others moved on to another works. Marriages connected ironworking families. Skills could pass from father to son, from brother to brother, and from one ironworks to another.

Erich was not the only Lucassen involved in this world. Several of his brothers are associated with Norwegian and Swedish ironworks. A picture begins to emerge of a family belonging to a wider Nordic labour market of skilled ironworkers.

They followed the work.

And the work followed the water, the forests and the ore.

From Båseland to Fossum

At some point, Erich and his family left Båseland.

In 1726, their daughter Annichen was born at Fossum Ironworks in Gjerpen.

Once again, the family had moved to a hammer.

It is easy to read such information as a single line in a genealogy program:

1726 – Fossum Ironworks.

But behind that line lies a journey.

A family had to uproot itself. Possessions had to be packed. Children had to come along. The journey from Holt to Gjerpen was not a modern car trip. Perhaps they walked part of the way. Perhaps some of their belongings were transported by horse. Perhaps they travelled partly by sea.

We do not know.

This is one of those places where history falls silent.

But we know where they appeared again.

At another ironworks.

Back to Næs

Erich died in 1746. In the personal report, the place of death is given as Næs Ironworks. He was about sixty-six years old.

It therefore appears that he returned to the environment in which the Norwegian part of his story had begun.

By then, Båseland itself had changed.

From 1738 onwards, production was concentrated beside the Storelva at Næs. The name Næs Ironworks gradually became established. An industrial community grew around the blast furnace, the hammers, the workers' dwellings and the forests that supplied the works with charcoal.

Erich came from Sweden as a hammer smith.

He died at Næs Ironworks.

But the family's story continued.

Roa

One of his sons was Henrich Erichsen, born in 1716.

Through him the family line continues to Erich Henrichsen, born in 1746, and then to Erik Eriksen Roa, born in 1771. After him came Erich Erichsen, born in 1800, and Erik Eriksen, born in 1825.

The name Roa is not accidental.

Roa lies close to Næs Ironworks. In this landscape lived generations of people whose working lives were connected with the works. Not far away lies Flaten.

The family history thus gradually moves from the travelling Swedish hammer smiths to people who put down roots in the landscape surrounding the ironworks.

But iron continues to follow them.

Among the children of Erik Eriksen we find Petter Eriksen, born in 1864.

With him, the family story reaches a decisive historical transition.

When the Blast Furnace Went Out

Petter Eriksen lived through the final period of the old ironworks era.

In 1909, the blast furnace at Næs Ironworks was extinguished for the last time. Næs continued operating, but the old form of production had reached the end of its road. The old relationship between ore, forests, charcoal, blast furnace and hammer was disappearing.

It must have been a strange transition for people whose families had lived with the ironworks for generations.

For Petter, it was not merely an historical transition.

It was practical.

According to family tradition, when the works were reorganised he was offered the possibility of continuing in the new industrial world. He could choose between work at Eydehavn and work at Pusnes Mechanical Works on Tromøya.

He chose Pusnes.

Around 1920, the family moved to Tromøya.

A single family's relocation thus contains something of the larger history of Norwegian industrialisation.

Petter's ancestors had worked in a world where energy came from the forests and from running water. Now he moved into an industry belonging to another age. Ships were built and mechanical equipment produced at Pusnes. On the other side of Tromøysund, Eydehavn was growing around electricity and modern process industry.

The old ironworks era was giving way to modern industry.

From Waterwheel to Electricity

Petter's son Ole Martin Pettersen, born in 1899, was my grandfather. The personal report records him as Petter Eriksen's son. It also shows the next generation, including Torgny Olav Pettersen, born in 1926.

Ole Martin became an electrical machinery operator at the Rygene hydroelectric power station.

Here another remarkable shift takes place in the family story.

Erich Lucassen had worked with the power of water through waterwheels that raised the great hammer. Two hundred years later, his descendant worked with the power of water in an entirely different form.

Now the water no longer drove the hammer directly.

It drove the turbine.

And the turbine produced electricity.

The water was the same.

The technology was new.

Ole Martin's son, Torgny Olav Pettersen, became a welder.

He was my father.

And so a family line can be traced from the Swedish hammer smith Erich Lucassen around 1710, through Næs Ironworks and Roa, to Petter Eriksen at the end of the blast-furnace era, onwards to Ole Martin at the Rygene power station, and finally to Torgny Olav, who worked with steel as a welder.

Hammer smith.

Ironworker.

Electrical machinery operator.

Welder.

The names of the occupations changed.

The technology changed.

But iron, water and work followed the family through the centuries.

The Rhythm of the Hammer

When I look at the personal report on Erich Lucassen, I see hundreds of names.

Dates.

Places.

Lines connecting parents and children.

That is what a personal report should do. It should document.

But the story lies somewhere else.

It lies between the lines.

There is a Swedish hammer smith who once left his homeland and came to an ironworks in Holt. There is Ellen Andersdatter. There are their children: Anders, Henrich, Lucas, Petter and Annichen. There are Båseland, Fossum, Næs and Roa.

Later comes Petter Eriksen.

Pusnes.

Ole Martin.

Rygene.

Torgny Olav.

And further back still lies Barbu.

We cannot say that Erich Lucassen had any personal connection with the Barbu Ironworks. Barbo was gone before he came to Norway. Nor can we know whether the hammer that later struck at Næs really was the same hammer that had once struck beside the Barbu River.

But there is another kind of continuity.

At Barbu began an early chapter in the history of iron production in Agder. When that enterprise disappeared, Båseland arose. Swedish skilled workers entered the story there. One of them was Erich Lucassen.

His children and grandchildren remained in the ironworking landscape.

Some lived at Roa.

The generations continued.

Then, more than two hundred years later, the blast furnace went out.

But the family did not cease to work with metal and energy.

Petter went on to Pusnes.

Ole Martin to the power station.

Torgny Olav became a welder.

In this way, the family also follows the history of technology.

From charcoal to electricity.

From waterwheel to turbine.

From hammer to welding torch.