Once upon a time, the very spirit of winter in Norway was for sale. When the quiet lakes of Eastern Norway froze into deep stillness, clear, cold freshwater ice was carved out, stowed aboard wooden sailing ships, and sent across the mist-shrouded North Sea to England—a trading adventure that conjured great fortunes, claimed many souls, and vanished as quietly as it had arrived.
Times were austere, and the demands from across the North Sea were unyielding. The English had no longing for murky fjord-ice; they yearned for crystalline perfection. It was said that for Norwegian ice to be worthy, one had to be able to read The Times through a twelve-inch block of frozen water. And so, in the twilight of the 19th century, the Norwegian winter became an enchanted export—one of the realm’s grandest, surpassed only by fish, timber, and wood pulp.
Seafood and Chilled Spirits
The whisper of this trade first drifted from the United States in the 1820s, where American ice barons already carried frozen slabs across vast horizons. But when the Industrial Revolution filled British cities with a new class yearning for fresh fish and clinking, ice-cold drinks, Norway became the nearest, frost-crowned haven for the markets around the North Sea.
The beginning, however, was fraught with shadow. In 1834, the brothers Jørgen and Elias M. Flood of Porsgrunn ventured forth; skipper Jørgen Linnaae steered the sailing ship “Georg” out of the Frierfjord laden with ice, bound for London. When Nicolai Wilhelm Coch (1820–1894) sent a shipment of saltwater ice from the Eidangerfjord around 1849, it was met with bitter dismay, and the entire load was cast back to him. Wiser from the ordeal, he turned to pure freshwater ice from Stokkevannet in Bamble, soon rising as one of the district’s true pioneers.
The inner reaches of Skagerrak became the beating heart of this frozen trade. It thrived in the coastal settlements between Risør and Larvik, with Kragerø and Brevik as magical crossroads, and deeper along the Oslofjord in Kristiania, Drøbak, and Drammen. Here lay everything one could desire—pure waters, biting winters, a swift voyage to London, and age-old traditions of seafaring lore.
The Ice Harvest
The toil would awaken in the depths of February and March, when the ice reached twelve to twenty inches in thickness. Hauled by horse and deep-toothed plows, it was sliced into long ribbons called “rebber,” then carved by hand with long-toothed saws into blocks measuring around 60 × 60 centimeters. Each block weighed between 100 and 200 kilos. They were hauled with iron hooks, carried upon sledges, or sent gliding down timber chutes to the water's edge, where they slept within double-walled ice houses insulated with sawdust.
Though the labor was grueling, it was a blessed gift, offering sustenance during the quiet months when farms lay slumbering and sailors were bound to the land. In Solum, Eidanger, and Bamble alone, nearly 1,300 souls were said to have labored on the ice in the winter of 1895/96. The work unfolded across some fifty ice ponds and well over a hundred ice houses, with women and children joining the flurry when the ships were to be laden.
Keeping Summer at Bay
The art of carving the ice into blocks was one thing, but keeping these frozen relics intact was another mystery entirely. They were harbored in great ice houses crafted from timber and rough planks, often resting at the water's edge for an easy passage to the ships. The walls were double-layered with a hollow space of up to fifty centimeters, filled with sawdust or wood shavings. This airy timber kept the summer heat at bay, and a thick veil of shavings could keep the blocks hard and crystalline well into the warm season—just as longing and prices peaked. The grandest ice houses were divided into vaulted chambers beneath pitched roofs, holding thousands of register tons. When left in open pens under the sky, the ice was draped in a forty-to-fifty-centimeter blanket of shavings to ward off the sun and thawing winds.
The same enchantments followed aboard. The cargo of ice was swaddled in sawdust, veiled with tarpaulins, and the hatches were battened down tight. Yet loss was inevitable. Across the restless North Sea, it was whispered that between five and fifteen percent would melt away into the deep. The topmost layer usually dissolved before the vessel reached England—the rest remained as pristine as the day it was drawn from the lake.
Wild Races and Daring Voyages
Then came the most perilous trial: the crossing itself. As the ice wept away, the price fell, and so it became a desperate race to reach the shores first. It turned into a reckless gamble, known as “wild driving.” If fortune favored them, the journey between Norway and England took ten to fourteen days; if ill luck struck, the ship drifted upon a mirror-calm sea for days, the frozen treasure shrinking away hour by hour.
The most legendary of these ships was the barque “Kappa” from Brevik, born in Glasgow in 1865 and claimed by the ice merchant Cornelius Røe in 1894. For years, she was guided by the legendary Captain John Pettersen from Farsund, a pioneer who was among the first to steer cargoes of ice out through the Langesundsfjord.
A tale that captures the mystical fervor of these voyages tells of the barque “Sogndalen” from Fredrikstad, sailing from the Baltic toward London laden with timber. Beset by a fierce northwesterly gale in the North Sea, she had to run under reefed sails. Through the storm, the crew glimpsed a spectral sight: a vessel bearing down on them with every sail spread wide, heeling so sharply in the howling wind that her keel was almost bared. She passed so close they could read her name: “Kappa fra Brevik.” When “Sogndalen” finally drifted into London, “Kappa” was already there, gently unloading her ice. In the time between, she had returned to Brevik, gathered a fresh harvest of ice, crossed the North Sea once more—and still won the race to London.
The ice was a heavy and capricious passenger. Young souls fell from the rigging, broken for the rest of their days. In the record year of 1898, eleven ice ships embarked upon their final, fateful voyage across the North Sea.
Frostbound Fortunes
Some conjured vast wealth from the cold. Cornelius Røe (1856–1910) reigned as the most powerful merchant in the region between 1890 and 1910; of Brevik’s total export of nearly 83,000 tons in 1901, his hands commanded around 27,000. The Albretsen lineage tended the Bua Isforretning in Mørjefjorden across three generations, from 1869 until 1958. And a daring few ventured further still: the barque “Nornen,” owned by Samuel Christian Larsen and captained by Severin Paus, carried ice all the way to New York in the 1890s—a crossing of 22 days upon the Atlantic. The peril was too great, and the voyage remained a solitary legend.
Yes, once upon a time…
And then the tide turned. Steamships cast their shadows across the waters, and artificial ice born of machines rendered the Norwegian winter obsolete. The First World War brought an end to the grand trade, though lingering embers endured on a modest scale, until the very last cargo of Grenland ice departed on August 30, 1962. The freighter “Havila” from Hönö carried 130 tons of ice from Stranddammen Isforretning in Bamble. With her departure, this quiet “ice age” sailed into myth forever.
An old ice worker captured the wistful memory in Breviksposten in 1947: he wished he were a painter, so he might weave it all upon canvas—the frozen pond, the workers, the horses, and the mirror of winter ice where the pale winter sun broke through in radiant hues. Then he might gaze upon the painting in quiet, solitary hours and whisper to himself: yes, those were the days.
If you wish to delve deeper into the forgotten lore of the ice trade, Brevik historielag’s richly illustrated “Is av stål og skuter av tre” and historian Per G. Norseng’s essay “Fersk fisk og kald pils i ‘den siste istid’” (Heimen, 2019) are warmly recommended.
Illustrations: AI-generated
