Country Norway County Hordaland Municipality Odda Area 62 ha | Region Western Norway District Hardanger Elevation 37 m (121 ft) | |
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Tyssedal is a village in Odda municipality in Hordaland county, Norway. The village is located on the shore of the Sørfjorden about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) north of the town of Odda. Tyssedal is located in a charming environment in a valley between the fjord to the west and the mountains leading up to the vast Hardangervidda mountain plateau to the east.
Contents
Map of 5770 Tyssedal, Norway
Tyssedal is a typical monotown, depending upon the energy received from the hydropower station. The ilmenite smelter "Tinfos Titan and Iron" (TTI) (owned by Tinfos) is located here and it is the largest employer in the village. The smelter was converted from making aluminium in the late 1980s. The first hydropower station in Tyssedal, Tysso I, is today part of the Norwegian Museum of Hydropower and Industry.
The 0.62-square-kilometre (150-acre) village has a population (2013) of 692, giving the village a population density of 1,116 inhabitants per square kilometre (2,890/sq mi). Tyssedal Church is located in this village. The lake Ringedalsvatnet and the Trolltunga cliff are located just to the east, higher up in the valley.
Language
Tyssedal grew up around this smelter in the early-twentieth century, drawing migrants from different parts of Norway, all of whom spoke Norwegian, but each area of Norway has its own dialect. As a result, there developed a new dialect in Tyssedal, a mixture of that spoken in the home regions of the migrants; a phenomenon termed by linguists "a Koiné language". Tyssedal and the nearby town of Odda—which arose in the same time and socio-economic circumstances as those of Tyssedal—provided valuable insights to linguists studying this phenomenon.
The researcher Paul Kerswill conducted an intensive study of the Norwegian spoken in the two communities, relating them to very different geographical origins: The workers in Odda came predominantly (86%) from western Norway. In Tyssedal only about one third came from western Norway; one third came from eastern Norway; and the rest from other parts of the country. The dialects that evolved in these two communities were radically different from each other, though spoken at a short geographical distance from each other.