Aftenposten
- QUEEN OF THE TROPICS
- IMPERIAL “HØVDING” MOTOR OIL
- Ulefos Ironworks
This Aftenposten page of 13 November 1926 carried a signed column by Ludv. Saxe, “Queen of the Tropics”, praising the transformation of Rio de Janeiro. Saxe contrasted the city of a quarter-century earlier – unhealthy and ridden with yellow fever, a coast where Norwegian ship crews were left behind and their abandoned vessels chopped up for firewood – with the city the authorities had cleaned up by draining swamps, modernizing water and sewer works and cutting the broad Avenida Rio Branco through the densest quarter in two years. Two advertisements shared the page: Imperial “Høvding” motor oil, pitched as unsurpassed for winter driving, and Ulefos Jernværk, which promised low prices because it mined its own ore and smelted it with power from its own waterfalls.
Translation
QUEEN OF THE TROPICS
Rio today is something entirely different from the Rio of 25 years ago. Back then the city was an unhealthy hole, full of yellow fever and misery. The buildings were ramshackle, the streets narrow and the refuse collection primitive. How many Norwegian ship's crews were there not who, in the old days, were left lying here on the Brazilian coast, struck by the terrible plague of yellow fever? And the masterless vessels were chopped up for firewood. But then one day the authorities decided that now this place would be cleaned up. The swamps were drained, the waterworks and sewers were modernized, and straight through the most densely built-up quarter a long, wide opening was cut, and in the course of 2 years a splendid boulevard was conjured up – Avenida Rio Branco,
IMPERIAL “HØVDING” MOTOR OIL
Is unsurpassed for winter use in automobiles that use a light-flowing oil.
Ulefos Ironworks
Since Ulefos Jernværk has its own mines and smelts its ore with electric power from its own waterfalls, it holds a special position with regard to raw material and can therefore sell at low prices.
Context
Why Rio's old centre was cut open
Saxe's “25 years ago” points to about 1901, the eve of the great rebuilding of Rio. The engineer Francisco Pereira Passos, appointed mayor of the federal capital by President Rodrigues Alves in 1902, led the reforms. The colonial core of the early republic's capital was overcrowded and prone to yellow fever and smallpox, and the opening of the new avenue was part of a modernization programme modelled on European urban planning and public-health policy. Saxe's account therefore matches the broad logic of the reform: clearing the dense old quarter was presented as a sanitary measure as much as an aesthetic one. His specific details – drained swamps, new waterworks and sewers, and the many Norwegian sailors who died of fever and whose ships were broken up for fuel – rest on his own testimony and belong to the column's rhetoric of a city “conjured up” from an unhealthy hole.
How the “two-year” boulevard was built and named
Saxe says the boulevard was conjured up in two years. Construction began in March 1904 with the demolition of 641 homes, displacing nearly 3,900 people, and the avenue was opened after six months of work. President Rodrigues Alves inaugurated it on 7 September 1904, and it was handed over to traffic on 15 November 1905, so Saxe's two years fits the span from the first demolitions to full opening rather than the inauguration itself. His word “conjured” also passes over the thousands of residents removed to make way for it. The street did not open under the name Saxe used: it was built as Avenida Central and renamed Avenida Rio Branco on 21 February 1912 in honour of the Brazilian diplomat Rio Branco. By 1926 the name Saxe gave his readers was thus about fourteen years old.
Ulefos and its switch to electric smelting
The advertisement's boast of own mines and own waterfalls reflects a recent and unusual change at a very old works. Ulefos was founded in 1657 as an ironworks at the Ulefossen falls in Holla, where the Eidselva runs into Lake Norsjø, and already in the 17th century its manager Halvor Borse understood that ore from the Fen field was suited above all to cast goods. The blast furnace was blown out in 1875, ending production of the works' own pig iron. In 1910 management staked on refining its own ore from the Fen mines with electric power and contracted with Tinfos Jernverk to use its furnace type; Ulefos was the only one of the old Norwegian ironworks to manage this transition. Wood-burning stoves remained important products until the 1950s, which explains why a cast-iron works advertised in a daily paper. In 1926 the works belonged to Harald Severin Diderik Cappelen, owner from 1923 to 1965. The claim of low prices is the advertiser's own.
Norwegian ties to Brazil behind Saxe's sailors
Saxe's Norwegian crews on the Brazilian coast belong to a longer connection between the two countries. Norwegians began settling in Brazil in the 19th century, and in 1851 Norwegian migrants were among the founders of Joinville in Santa Catarina. When Norway left its union with Sweden in 1905, Brazil was one of the first countries to recognize its independence. Salt cod, long a major export of the North Atlantic region and produced in Norway as klippfisk, spread around the Atlantic and became a traditional ingredient of Brazilian cooking. These records sketch the links of migration, diplomacy and seaborne goods behind Saxe's column, but they give no trade figures for 1926 and do not show whether a commercial treaty then existed.
Original
TROPERNES DRONNING
Rio idag er noget helt andet end Rio for 25 aar siden. Dengang var byen et usundt hul, fyldt av gulfeber og elendighet. Bebyggelsen var skrøpelig, gatene trange og renovationen primitiv. Hvormange norske skibsmandskaper var det ikke, som i gamle dage blev liggende igjen her paa Brasilkysten, rammet av gulfeberenes forfærdelige pest? Og de herreløse fartøier blev hugget op til brændsel. Men saa besluttet myndighetene en dag, at nu skulde her renses. Sumpene blev drænert, vandverk og kloak blev modernisert og tvers gjennem den tætteste bebyggelse skar man en lang bred aapning og fremtryllet i løpet av 2 aar en praktfuld boulevard - Avenida Rio Branco,
IMPERIAL „HØVDING“ AUTOMOBILOLIE
Er uovertruffen til vinterbruk for automobiler der benytter en lettlytende olie.
Ulefos Jernværk
Da Ulefos Jernværk har egne gruber og smelter sin malm ved elektrisk kraft fra egne fosser, indtar det en særstilling med hensyn til raamateriale og kan derfor sælge til lave priser.