It’s been far too long since last blog entry from me, I know… I had a great plan early this week to start writing something about what have happened this summer, and also in spring, lots of things have missed my blog. But my plans where corrupted by minerals, to be more precise; quartz!

I was going to Flekkeren last Tuesday, been planning on the trip up there for a long time now, but on the road up, what did I see! New blasted road cut, just 400-500 m north of the roadcut with the fluorite veins, almost coloured violet at some parts by fluorite veins. Of course I had to stop to take a peek. Well the ground was violet by thin veins of fluorite everywhere, and in some parts badly developed quartz crystals and garnet crystals, nice colours, but nothing else. No good crystals… Some small pockets, very small, with fluorite cubes where found, same with garnets. I took some picks of the cut, just to document in case there where any interesting micros in the stuff I threw into the trunk of my car. There where several pockets in the wall, so I figured out I should probably take a closer look at those. Most where just filled with the poorly developed crystals as I’ve found already. Except for one, there the pile of dirt under the pocket was literally filled with hundreds of small quartz crystals, some which looked pretty good. So I started to dig a little in the mud, and quite fast I found a rather large crystal about 7 cm long, then the madness begun…




I continued searching through the pile, and found several good crystals. Finally I climbed the 5-6 meters up to the pocket, feeling rather uncomfortable. But up there I didn’t regret the climb, and filled up both my trouser-pockets with dirt filled with crystals. Then I climbed down again.

I managed to get a trip up to Flekkeren afterwards, and had a great look around where the lake usually is covering the ground. Flekkeren are really the name of the lake, and the interesting locality is a sedimentary xenolith that has dropped down into a larvikite magma-chamber. The xenolith mainly consists of limestone, and the mineralogy has similarities to localities like Etringer-Bellerberg. I haven’t looked very carefully through the samples I brought with me, but there are some Cr-garnets (Cr-rich grossular/uvarovite) and melilite. The love level of the lake also exposed some parts of the xenolith that shoved really nice karst morphology. I really hope that no collectors ever will be so ignorant and stupid that they will destroy such nice morphological structures that are so rarely seen here in Norway!




Back home I washed some of the quartz crystals (had filled a plastics bag half up with crystals and crystal parts). I then discovered two crystals with inclusions of fluorite crystals in them, what a thrill! Nothing to be compared against the Madagascar material at all, but who cares, I found these ones! Well that was Tuesday.

Wednesday I decided to go back exploring the pocket further, bringing tools, rope and a bucket. First climb I used to secure the way up, removing loose material and extending the steps to stand on. Then it was just to start working…which I ended after hoisting up and down the bucket about eight times. The pocket was part of a brecciated fracture zone, where a major part of the cement fillings where hematite. Many of the crystals where already broken, either by further fracturing or from the blast making the road cut. Hard to say, but some of the crystals had old breaks that where healed with recrystallisation. Filling plastics bags with mud and crystals, I ended up with at last 25 litres, filing six plastic bags.

Washing the stuff in the evening really triggered my desires, so today I went again…
But today it had been raining quite a lot, so trying to climb up to the pocket felt to unsafe. Having paid 50,- Norwegian kroner (ca 10 US$) for the road fee I didn’t feel ready to go home empty handed, so I continued working on the pile underneath the cavity – and it was in this pile I found the quartz with fluorite inclusions… After some time there wasn’t any skin left on my index finger and the others where also bleeding here and there, so I decided to have a break and look around a little…

Deciding to take a closer look at an area just in front of an excavator, where I’d seen some nice garnet at Tuesday, I got a nice pleasant surprise, another pocket. This one was also with hematite as part of the cement, but also some sticky clay. It was even richer in larger crystals than the one in the wall, a lot more double terminated crystals larger than 5 cm where found, but not more than 9 cm in length. These where also less damaged it have turned out after washing them tonight. They got a very sticky chlorite cover though…



Am I happy tonight? Yes! Are my fingers sore and hands looking like raisins? Yes!
Am I trying to write some more blogs about what have happened earlier this year? Cross your fingers and hope so, I’m going to a pocket in a wall tomorrow!

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