Successful social gathering in late summer -- Blaafarveværket visit

Our social gathering to visit Blaafarveværket was successfully held on Saturday 17th September 2011. More than 91 participants joined the gathering and celebrated the traditional Chinese Moon Festival together.

This gathering was a part of CPN’s project 'Kompetansesenter for Innvandrere', supported by IMDi (The Directorate of Integration and Diversity). The event was jointly organized by CPN, CPN Junior club and Kinaforeningen (Association for Norwegian families with adopted children from China).

Blaafarveværket is a beautiful place comprises museums, cobalt mines, glassworks, children’s farm with animals, and art exhibitions in the municipality of Modum. It was an excellent window to show visitor about Norwegian cobalt history and mining industry.

The highlight of the day was a guided tour of the old cobalt mines, which used to produce 80% world’s demand of cobalt during its top period in the 19th century. The Norwegian cobalt mining at Blaafarveværket was owned by a German company, who at that time was the world leader at mining technology. This benefited the mining workers. The mine did not have any death accidents during the time it was owned by the Germans.

At that time the price of cobalt was almost the same as the price of gold and was exported all over the world, even all the way to China. The reason for its popularity was the beautiful color that came out of the cobalt. The cobalt was crunched into blue powder that was used to color glass, porcelain etc... The cobalt mine was closed down toward the end of the 19th century because of a competing American company who could chemically produce a similar blue color for half the cost.

Another highlight was to taste home-made Moon cakes made by Yu Hongbing. In addition we enjoyed fresh fruit for lunch provided by CPN.

The visit to Blaafarveværket gave everyone a great opportunity for networking and sharing information.

After the guided trip in the mines we had a short gathering and took several group photos before we turned back home.

On Behalf of CPN thank you for participating our social gathering to Blaafarveværket!

Best regards,
Xinli and Qianru

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If you have taken some nice pictures for Blaafarveværket visit, it will be great if you can send over to us so that we can post them on the CPN Gallery.