or is a

waterfall A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in seve ...

in the western part of the

Vestfjorddalen Vestfjorddalen is a valley in Tinn Municipality in Telemark county, Norway. The long valley stretches from the lake Tinnsjå westwards past Rjukan, Vemork, and Rjukan Falls to the lake Møsvatn in the west. The Måna River runs through the ...

valley in

Tinn Municipality Tinn is a municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is located in the traditional districts of Aust-Telemark and Upper Telemark. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Rjukan. Some of the villages in Tinn include Atr� ...

Telemark Telemark () is a Counties of Norway, county and a current electoral district in Norway. Telemark borders the counties of Vestfold, Buskerud, Vestland, Rogaland and Agder. In 2020, Telemark merged with the county of Vestfold to form the county o ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The tall waterfall is located on the river

Måna The Måna or Måne is a river in Tinn Municipality in Telemark county, Norway. The river flows from the lake Møsvatn through the Vestfjorddalen valley and the town of Rjukan to the large lake Tinnsjå near the village of Miland. It is part of t ...

, about to the west of the town of

Rjukan Rjukan () is a List of towns and cities in Norway, town in Tinn Municipality in Telemark county, Norway. The town is also the administrative centre of Tinn Municipality. The town is located in the Vestfjorddalen valley, between the lakes Møsvatn ...

. Historically, the waterfall was a major tourist attraction, being one of the first floodlighted waterfalls by electricity produced by the same waterfall. In 1905, the waterfall and surrounding river were harnessed by the

Vemork Vemork is a hydroelectric power plant outside the town of Rjukan in Tinn Municipality in Telemark county, Norway. The plant was built by Norsk Hydro and opened in 1911, its main purpose being to fix nitrogen for the production of fertilizer. ...

hydro-electrical power plant to produce power for the

saltpetre Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with a sharp, salty, bitter taste and the chemical formula . It is a potassium salt of nitric acid. This salt consists of potassium cations and nitrate anions , and is therefore an alkali metal nitrate ...

production at a nearby

Norsk Hydro Norsk Hydro ASA (often referred to as just ''Hydro'') is a Norway, Norwegian aluminium and renewable energy company, headquartered in Oslo. It is one of the largest aluminium companies worldwide. It has operations in some 50 countries around th ...

factory.

Name

The waterfall is named ''Rjukanfossen'' in Norwegian (). The first element is derived from the

present participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...

of the verb which means "to emit smoke" or "to emit vapor" (referring to all the

froth Foams are two-phase material systems where a gas is dispersed in a second, non-gaseous material, specifically, in which gas cells are enclosed by a distinct liquid or solid material. Note, this source focuses only on liquid foams. Note, thi ...

from the waterfall). The last element is a later addition to the name which comes from the Norwegian word which means "the

References

Tinn Norsk Hydro Landforms of Telemark Waterfalls of Norway {{Waterfall-stub

Name

See also

References