Thamshavn or Thamshamn is a small port village in the municipality of Orkland in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is the site of the port for the town of Orkanger and the ferrosilicon plant

Elkem Thamshavn Elkem Thamshavn is a smelting plant owned by Elkem located at Thamshavn just north of Orkanger in Orkland Municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. The plant produces silicon and microsilica and was started in 1931. History Copper and Sulfur have ...

. It is located right along

European route E39 European route E39 is the designation of a north–south road in Norway and Denmark from Klett, just south of Trondheim, to Aalborg via Bergen, Stavanger and Kristiansand. In total, there are nine ferries, more than any other single road in Eu ...

and is the

Thamshavn Station Thamshavn Station ( no, Thamshavn stasjon) is a former railway station on the Thamshavn Line, located at Thamshavn, a port area just northeast of the town of Orkanger in the municipality of Orkland in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is located along ...

was the terminus of the

Thamshavnbanen , logo = , logo_width = , logo_alt = , image_name = Bårdshaug stasjon.jpeg , image_width = , image_alt = , caption = Passenger train at Bårdshaug Station in 191 ...

railway.

History

Thamshavn came into being in 1867 when the local farmer

Wilhelm Thams Wilhelm August Thams (June 22, 1812 – July 4, 1884) was a Norwegian merchant, land owner and lumber mill owner. Biography Wilhelm Thams was the son of Jacob Thullin Thams (1770–1826), who was a bailiff in Ringerike. He was married to Ida Olava ...

established a sawmill on the area that was named after him. He and his son Christian Thams bought the Løkken Mine at Løkken Verk in 1904 and decided to build a railway from the mine to Thamshavn where they could ship out the pyrites to continental Europe. At the same time the steam ship D/S ''Orkla'' started operating between Thamshavn and Trondheim. In 1931,

Orkla Metall Elkem Thamshavn is a smelting plant owned by Elkem located at Thamshavn just north of Orkanger in Orkland Municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. The plant produces silicon and microsilica and was started in 1931. History Copper and Sulfur ha ...

(now Elkem Thamshavn) was established by the Orkla Mining Company to smelt the pyrites to

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

and copper. During World War II, Thamshavn was one of the targets for the

Thamshavnbanen sabotage The Thamshavn Line sabotage was a series of sabotages against the railway Thamshavn Line in Orkdal, Norway during World War II. There were four separate sabotages, all performed by Norwegian Independent Company 1, Company Linge in an attempt by the ...

. Today the mine is abandoned and the railway has been converted to a

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...

, but the smelter and port still live on.

Today

Thamshavn still has a working smelting plant that is owned by Elkem. The smelting plant employs about 130 people on a daily basis, producing some of the finest silicon there is in the world. Elkem Thamshavn is also famous for its energy renewal program—one of the first of its kind in the world to use this technology. Today, Elkem Thamshavn reuses 20-25% of all energy used.

References

{{authority control Villages in Trøndelag Orkland Orkla ASA