Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Rjukan, an ‘unbuilt’ post-industrial town in Norway, seeks to ‘readjust’ (‘omstille’) itself towards a future that is inhabited by the past. I focus on hydrogen production as it reflects the possibilities and challenges that the town is facing – currently and historically.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how Rjukan, an ‘unbuilt’ post-industrial town in Norway, seeks to ‘readjust’ (‘omstille’) itself towards a future that is inhabited by the past. I focus on hydrogen production as it reflects the possibilities and challenges that the town is facing – currently and historically.

In the late-1920 the production of hydrogen in Rjukan played an important role in readjusting the production of synthetic fertilizer in order to make it more profitable and competitive. As testament to this and to the town's industrial heritage, a decommissioned hydrogen machine was reassembled in the Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum in 2021 using blueprints from the museum’s archive, and the expertise of a senior industrial worker. At the same time the company Aker Horizons planned to create a new hydrogen factory at Rjukan to feed the coming demand for ‘green’ energy. The plan is a response to what in Norwegian discourse is called ‘grønn omstilling’, which translates to ‘green transition’ – or more directly to ‘green readjustment’. The hydrogen factory, in general terms, will depend on the same electro chemical process as in the 1920s and use existing infrastructures as well as buildings from the town’s industrial heydays.

“Unbuilding the future” in this paper refers to how the green readjustments and future imaginaries conflate and make us of narratives and material structures of past industrialisation. Rather than constituting a definite and clear break with the past, the future of ‘green’ hydrogen production in Rjukan brings with it historicities of a great industrial past.