The Northern Lights, page 16
Once the few arrangements for the wedding had been made, Ida traveled to Raade to tell her parents. They were shocked that their forty-two-year-old daughter was to marry a man they had not met and who not only was four years her junior and irreligious but also had invented a cannon, of which they thoroughly disapproved. Ida asked her family to attend the wedding and her father to give her a blessing at the ceremony, but her mother and five sisters declined the invitation, and on the morning of her wedding she received a telegram with her father’s response:
UNABLE TO DO THE CEREMONY. GOD’S MERCY FOR YOUR DEEDS IS WISHED BY EVERYONE HERE. GOD BLESS YOU.
Ten minutes after Birkeland and Helland took their seats, Ida and her witness, Solveig, arrived. Ida was wearing a long white skirt, pulled in tight around her small waist by a belt with an ornate silver buckle. Her white blouse had puffed sleeves that came to the elbow and were trimmed with lace that fell onto her forearms. The neck was high and a silver brooch, matching the buckle and studded with tiny marcasites, glittered at her throat while a wide panel of lace descended from her shoulders to the buckle of her belt. Ida and Solveig walked down the aisle together as Birkeland and Helland stood, Solveig taking her solitary place on the bride’s side of the church and Helland on the groom’s. The ceremony lasted less than twenty minutes, and once they had signed the church book, Kristian and Ida were husband and wife. Emerging into the sunshine of the May morning, the small group climbed into the waiting carriage and went to lunch at the Grand. Helland livened up the occasion by walking with his hands in his pockets, kicking the door to the Grand open with his foot and letting it swing back on the unfortunate Solveig behind. Birkeland knew of several occasions when Helland’s guests had come to serious grief on the return of this door, including him. This time Helland repaired his lack of decorum by spending the meal lightly flirting with Solveig and trying to find out where she lived so that he could send her some potatoes.
After lunch, Birkeland took his new wife to a smart pension on Parkveien, just behind the palace, where they spent the first night of their married lives. A large pile of telegrams was waiting for them there, from Knudsen, Eyde, Ida’s cousins, Birkeland’s mother, brother, and sister-in-law, Sigrid, and the Norwegian Parliament, wishing them a happy life together.
There was no time for a honeymoon after the wedding, so Birkeland took Ida to Notodden with him. They traveled by train to Porsgrund where Ida met Tønnes and Sigrid, Birkeland’s mother Ingeborg, and the nine children—five girls and four boys and another baby expected. From there, a short train journey took them to Skien, where they boarded a narrow steamer for the trip up the Løveid canal, through four locks, until they reached Norsjø Lake, the length of which the boat traveled to reach a canal connecting with Heddalsvann Lake and Notodden. It was a long journey but it passed through some of the most beautiful landscapes in Norway. As the boat emerged from the narrow canals to the broad, upland lakes, the grandeur of the scene on this beautiful summer’s day was breathtaking. In the distance the mountains of Telemark, made famous by the first downhill skiers in the 1880s, soared into the bright blue sky. The snow on the best-known peak, Gausta, ran in streaks down its steep sides and gave the view a Japanese air.
Telemark was a romantic place, the heartland of national pride and culture that differentiated Norway from her Scandinavian neighbors. From here came the fiddlers who toured European capitals to great acclaim and the finest “rose-painters,” whose characteristic flower painting decorated furniture, pottery, cornices, and church interiors, including those of the Norwegian stave churches, the finest examples of which were in this region. The farmers were wealthy and famously spoke to all as equals, including the king. Here, Sondre Nordheim had pioneered downhill skiing, starting the skiing craze that spread across Norway and then, through the popular articles and adventures of the explorer Fridtjof Nansen, throughout Europe. There was no better place for the country’s first major industrial enterprise. Beyond its symbolic resonance, Telemark also contained the Møsvann mountain reservoir, a natural lake at high altitude from which many of Europe’s most powerful waterfalls issued. It was a sparsely populated region and there were few to object when Eyde bought the Rjukan and Svælg waterfalls to power hydroelectric plants, despite their beauty and fame as tourist destinations for European travelers. Those who did object—including the Norwegian Tourist Association, whose first hut for walkers was situated beside the Rjukan Falls—were simply told by Eyde:
You are misinformed. We have not put an end to the Rjukan Falls, but have only lifted it one hundred metres up the mountain and led it into steel pipes that it can do useful work for us.
When Birkeland and Ida arrived in Notodden, they checked into the hotel Viktoria on the lakeside. The following morning Birkeland went to the factory, leaving Ida to wander the hills and fir forests or stroll through the few streets of the town. At the nitrogen plant, the engineers were frantic; the output of the three furnaces, measured by how much fertilizer was produced for every kilowatt of energy used over a year (a kilowatt-year), was only 450 kilos. At that level of production, one furnace running for a whole year would produce enough fertilizer for only a few hundred small Norwegian farms. Eyde had made extravagant promises to the directors of Paribas that they could produce 600 kilos of saltpeter per kilowatt-year, rising eventually to 900 kilos, double the present capacity. An international committee of experts was expected in only six weeks to scrutinize productivity and report back to the bank.
During the first few evenings, Birkeland made light of his work and his worries, trying to amuse Ida with stories of disasters they had encountered during the day, but he soon abandoned his attempts to put on a brave face and sat silently, sipping whisky. Ida was not much interested in the furnace and was appalled when Birkeland returned in the evenings, grimy and smelling like a stoker, but she tried to understand his situation. She did not complain about the long, solitary hours spent walking or reading, or about the way the furnace had completely overshadowed their enjoyment of being newly married. Birkeland was aware of how little time he spent with Ida and arranged a dinner at the hotel for her to meet his colleagues and their wives, hoping that the women would take pity on Ida’s situation and invite her to spend time with them.
The work was hard and frustrating and the tensions between Birkeland and Eivind Næss re-emerged. Næss seemed more punctilious than before, trying one solution after another to increase productivity in a systematic manner that was poisonous to Birkeland. The two men chafed and sweated under their mutual dislike while the other engineers, sensing the discord, sided with Næss due to his connection with Eyde, who paid their wages. To make matters worse, news was filtering into the factory of the crisis looming with Sweden. The engineers became distracted, worried that war would break their links with the continent, from which they received equipment and technical support. The Swedish engineers were nervous of how their hosts would react if war was declared, and everyone was aware that war between such close neighbors was the worst sort of conflict. The Norwegian government had submitted a resolution to set up a Norwegian Consular Service, a compromise until Sweden granted them a foreign office, a minister, and ambassadors. The debate between the two countries grew fierce following this apparently reasonable proposal, and became a focus for the grievances that had built up over the ninety years of the Union. In Notodden, the engineers’ wives worried for their husbands, sons, and brothers who might soon be called up to fight. Norway’s army was small and ill-equipped despite efforts to rearm over the previous five years, but any war between the two countries would undoubtedly be drawn out and cost many lives.
After a fortnight, Ida decided to return to Birkeland’s apartment at the Villa Granstua in Lysaker, which was now her home. She had had little time to arrange her possessions before leaving for Notodden and thought she could be more usefully employed there than at the Viktoria. At Notodden Birkeland was kept busy round the clock, trying to finish work on the furnaces before war erupted. Eyde and Wallenberg were frequently on the phone from Christiania and Stockholm, making contingency plans and organizing alternative methods of communication should war be declared. At the beginning of June, against the advice of his cabinet, King Oscar of Sweden vetoed Norway’s resolution to form its own consular service, and the Norwegian government declared this an unconstitutional act because the king could only veto a proposition in agreement with his cabinet. On 7 June Norway unilaterally ruptured the Union and waited anxiously to see if Sweden would declare war.
Birkeland and his engineers were pushed ever harder in Notodden while Norway sent envoys to foreign governments to elicit support for independence and to demonstrate to Sweden the futility of trying to impose the Union by force. Norway had no ambassadors as Sweden had restricted membership in that class to her own aristocracy, but her explorer-heroes and shipowners were sent out instead. Just as the Swedish engineers at the factory were preparing to return home, Sweden was persuaded to postpone war in favor of burdensome stipulations such as the dismantling of Norway’s newly erected frontier defenses, before independence could be considered. A referendum was demanded to prove that a majority of people, not only the Parliament, wanted an end to the Union. Everyone, from board members to apprentices, involved in the fertilizer furnace rejoiced at the country’s temporary deliverance from war, and returned to work.
Birkeland’s health was again suffering from the long hours spent in a chemical-laden atmosphere; he lacked fresh air, sunlight, sleep, and appetite. He worried too that Ida was already unhappy with married life. He was relieved when, on 20 July, a steamer pulled up to the jetty in Notodden with the committee of experts. He wanted their approval not for professional pride but so that Paribas would invest and he could earn enough money to return to his wife and the university, to continue his auroral research.
Although Birkeland had spent much of the past few months in Notodden since construction started the previous autumn, it was Eyde who behaved as if the place was his home away from home, settling the expert committee into the Viktoria Hotel as if it were his own house. The group consisted of Marcus Wallenberg, the director of the foreign loans department of Paribas, and three outstanding scientists, one each from Britain, France, and Germany. The British scientist, Professor Silvanus Thompson, chaired the committee and already knew Birkeland since they worked in related fields. He had once said to Birkeland, “Make an invention to earn you a million, and then you can think of science.” Birkeland hoped he would decide the furnace possessed such earning capacity. The German expert was Otto Witt, already a confidant, and from France, Alphonse Théophile Schloesing. Eyde talked to them all like old friends, despite his difficulty with languages. The Swedes could understand his Norwegian; his German was good, but his English was poor and the French expert had difficulty containing his mirth as Eyde mangled the language. Eyde was oblivious to his shortcomings, particularly here in Telemark, where he had bought the rights to the waterfalls that would propel Norway into the modern era and him into wealth and power.
The following day, Birkeland explained the principal characteristics of his furnace and demonstrated it in action. Electric arcs were created by two electrodes, less than a centimeter apart, cooled with water to prevent their fusing together. These arcs were swept into a fifteen-centimeter disc by strong electromagnets around the electrodes. The hot gas created by passing air over the disc was fed into a series of four granite towers, where it was absorbed into water to create nitric acid. Limestone was then dissolved into the acid in a fifth tower to make saltpeter. The process demanded a huge amount of power, however, with 520-kilowatt furnaces, electromagnets, pumps, and other equipment using expensive electricity provided by the privately owned hydroelectric plant nearby. It was important to convince the experts that sufficient saltpeter could be produced to offset the large cost of electricity. At the end of the demonstration Birkeland showed the committee six wooden planters containing irises, each labeled with the amount of fertilizer it had been given, if any. The two plants with no fertilizer grew short, thin stems with few and small blooms. The two fed with a small amount of saltpeter were taller with better blooms, but the two well-fertilized planters displayed a profusion of tall, luxurious stems and glorious flowers. The experts were amused by the directness of the demonstration but were sensitive to the point being made: fertilizer would feed the world.
Although the committee would not give an opinion immediately, both Birkeland and Eyde felt its members were impressed by what they saw. Production was still 100 kilos short of the promised target but Eyde was able to tell the committee that the trial factory could already make a profit if they sold the saltpeter they made. After the experts left, Birkeland remained in Notodden for another few weeks, during which the referendum for independence was held. It was a day of great excitement and Birkeland encouraged all the engineers at the test plant to vote, making them aware that he himself was choosing independence. Only men could vote officially, having been granted suffrage only seven years before. The result was 368,208 votes to end the Union and 184 to retain it. A women’s private poll, in which Ida enthusiastically enlisted her friends, added another quarter of a million votes to the “Yes, End the Union” vote. So insistent was Birkeland’s enthusiasm for independence that Kloumann, one engineer working with him, wrote a letter to the professor to dispel rumors that he had been among the 184 voting against it.
Dear Professor Birkeland,
Whoever told you that I voted “No” in yesterday’s referendum is not telling the truth. I did not vote “No,” of course. Yours sincerely, Eng. Kloumann
After the nearly unanimous vote, the country waited for the Great Powers to recognize their independence and force Sweden to do the same, but they reacted instead with disapproval or indifference. Britain, France, and Germany all had subject states clamoring for independence and so were not keen to express approval for Norway’s rejection of Sweden’s hegemony. A second referendum was held by the Norwegian Parliament to decide whether the country should become a republic or a monarchy in order to reassure their nervous neighbors that anarchy would not follow a declaration of independence. Monarchism was heavily promoted in the hope that adopting a crowned head would provide links to other European royal families, giving Norway’s bid for independence respectability and resolving the crisis more quickly.
Birkeland wanted the country to become a republic but he, along with many other prominent citizens, saw the benefits that a monarchy might confer. He went as far as to put his name to a declaration made by members of the political party Venstre in the newspaper Dagbladet on 2 November 1905, signed also by friends and colleagues, including Alfred Bryn at the patent office; Johan Bredal, Birkeland’s lawyer; and three professors at the university, the most influential being Waldemar Brøgger.
The undersigned members of Venstre urge all followers of Venstre to support the resolution made by Parliament on 31 October by voting “Yes” to the Kingdom on the referendum of the 12 and 13 November. Under the present circumstances, we believe this is in the best interests of the country.
In the absence of trained ambassadors, Fridtjof Nansen was sent to invite a Danish prince, Carl, to become king. Carl was married to Princess Maud, the daughter of King Edward VII of England, a connection welcomed by those seeking the most acceptable monarch available. Prince Carl agreed to become king of Norway after the positive referendum results were known; he adopted the Norse royal name of Haakon and rechristened his son with the name Olav. In the autumn the Swedish king acknowledged that proceedings had gone too far to salvage the Union and an agreement was drawn up between the two countries granting Norway independence. Birkeland’s dream of living in an independent state was at last a reality. Now he hoped his scientific dreams would also come to fruition. The furnace was sapping his energy and occupying all his time and he was becoming desperate to return to the Northern Lights.
AFTER NEARLY three years of intense work, mostly carried out in secret, Birkeland and Eyde could reveal to the world what they had achieved. Friday, 5 December 1905, was decided upon to launch the company publicly and announcements were put in the newspapers. The expert committee report had been generous in its praise for the science behind the invention of the furnace and agreed that 500 kilos of saltpeter per kilowatt-year was a reasonable expectation. Paribas backed the venture and work began on a new hydroelectric power station at the Svælg waterfall. By December most of the international patents on Birkeland’s process had been secured; the name of the company, Norsk Hydro, was finalized; and even the logo for the barrels of saltpeter was ready. Paribas owned nearly half the shares in the new company and the Swedish Independent Bank the other half. Norwegians owned only 8 percent, a fact that sparked off an intense debate in the Norwegian Parliament about the selling of the country’s natural resources to foreign interests. Although controversial, Norsk Hydro was Norway’s first multinational company, with a value of 7.5 million crowns.
The argument between Eyde and Birkeland over the ownership of the furnace patents was resolved with a compromise before Norsk Hydro was officially constituted. Neither man was entirely happy but Birkeland came off better, owning twelve patents, including the main one for the furnace. Eyde leveled the score when the board was appointed and Birkeland was mentioned only as a “technical director.” Eyde was managing director with fellow board members Marcus and Knut Wallenberg, the director of Paribas, Admiral Børresen of Norway, Tillberg, and Persson. Birkeland was furious when he first heard about the appointments but after a while decided it was for the best. He did not want to be in such close cooperation with Eyde, and, most importantly, he could at last start work on the data from his second auroral expedition. He made fewer trips to Notodden and attempted to settle into married life with Ida. The apartment in Lysaker now contained her modest possessions as well as his. She had given up her job as a teacher as the post was open to single women only and took care of running the household instead. Birkeland did not slip naturally into the role of husband, resenting the limitations it placed on his time, but he tried to adjust.
