Badeanstalten Rjukan
- Location
- Rjukan, Telemark, Norway
- Water type
- thermal
- Temperature
- 38 °C
- pH
- 7.3
Water profile
Soothing — neither hot nor cold, perfect balance.
Rich in trace elements — gentle on the skin.
Soft water — natural, classic buoyancy.
Badeanstalten Rjukan in Rjukan, Telemark — a company town built from scratch by Norsk Hydro at the start of the 20th century to house workers at the world's first large-scale hydroelectric power complex — offers a remarkable combination of industrial heritage, dramatic natural landscape and therapeutic bathing in one of Norway's most historically significant small towns. The town sits at the bottom of the Vestfjorddalen gorge, so deeply shadowed by the surrounding mountains that the sun never reaches the valley floor in winter — a condition addressed by the famous Mirror System that reflects sunlight into the town square from the mountain above. The bicarbonate thermal bathing tradition here is intertwined with the town's remarkable history as the site of the World War II Norwegian heavy water sabotage operations, dramatised in the TV series The Heavy Water War, and the nearby Vemork industrial complex, now a UNESCO-listed museum of industrial and resistance history.