Faced with a need to free surface space for their expanding town, and a reliance on the local quarry for foundation material, the people the town of Drammen in Norway came up with a unique solution.

A spiral tunnel would provide all of the granite they needed, would allow them to close the quarry, and would even bring tourists from nearby Oslo to drive the 1.5km mountain corkscrew.

Now 60 years later, a project to upgrade the tunnel to modern standards has also added a few extras to the experience. 

In this episode we speak to a prominent Norwegian geoscientist who grew up in Drammen when the tunnel was originally being built. This is the story of the ITA Award runner up and CNN’s sixth most spectacular tunnel in the world, the Drammen Spiral, and also a story of the past and present of Norwegian tunnelling culture.

Photo credit: Peter Fiskerstrand

Guest

Eivind Grøv, Chief Scientist, SINTEF

Resources

The Norwegian Tunnelling Society releases annual statistics on the amount of tunnelling within its borders. For the latest report, click here

For a drive-through video of the Spiral, click here

For the CNN article on the world’s greatest tunnels, click here

Sponsor

Support for this month’s episode came from Tsurumi UK. Tsurumi UK provides a range of superior quality, highly durable single and 3-phase submersible pumps that can withstand the toughest of conditions in tunnelling and construction projects.