FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jan Erik]

The symposium was held on Saturday the 19th of May of cause in Kongsberg. It was the 12th mineral symposium held in the beautiful location of the Norwegian Mining Museum, lying almost on the surface of the pretty river Lågen.

It is alway nice to come to this symposium meeting old friends, talking about minerals and maybe to buy some literature and minerals. Some nice new finds for this year was brought to the museum as well.

This years "big shot" was Fredrico Pezzotta from the Naturalhistorical Museum in Milano and Jørgen Langhof from the Natualhistorical Museum in Stockholm. Mr. Pezzotta was talking about the Tourmaline-group minerals, Ta-Nb borates and other rare accessories of gemstone-bearing pegmatites of the Itremo Region, Madagascar. He was also talking about Mineralogy of alkaline pegmatites of the Zomba-Malosa massif in Malawi.

Mr. Langhof was talking about the mineral collection of the museum. A great list of different type of collections, donators, how to take care of the donated collections, types of display cases and so on.

Most of the speakers and most of the subjects was about Norwegian occurences, minerals found in Norway, prepering and treating minerals for display and of cause some research.

The Norwegian Mining Museum has a very good mineral collection of Norwegian minerals. And of cause the silver collection. Almost breathtaking! For those of you driving through Kongsberg, it is "a must" to stop by and have a look.

Always in May, always great weather, great people, speakers. So when the evening comes your head is so full of impressions that the only thing to do is to sit down with a glass of good red wine and a meal of your favorite food to let the impressions come down to a normal way