Evje and Hornnes museum usually market itself on local minerals as the Museum's mineral collection consists of the collections of several local collectors, such as Mr. Theodor Gautestad, Mr. Odd S. H. Hansen and Mr. Kristen Dale, etc.. The fact is however that the museum has minerals from all over the world just because the local collectors were interested in foreign material too. Five local collectors have all together collected minerals for about 140 years. One of them collected for more than 7 years, fulltime. Evje and Hornnes municipality has throughout the last 15 years bought those collections for the local museum. It is now time for presenting the collectors.

1. Mr. Theodor Gautestad was for ten years a miner in Flåt Nickel Mine until he for health reasons started his own firm and began to mine ab. 40 different pegmatites in Evje / Iveland for ab. 50 years, between 1938 and 1988. In 1964 he started Norway's first rock - shop in Evje and soon after he started a stone polishing workshop for cabochon polishing in the same place. He collected minerals for more than 50 years and at the end he sold his collection and his machinery to Evje and Hornnes museum. For the first time in history Norsk Kulturråd paid out money to buy a mineral collection. Several national and international TV - programs have been made on his life and work with minerals. Theodor Gautestad managed to mine 10 kg thortveitite that he sold for ab. 170.000 kr in the early fifties. One of his best specimen of thortveitite is at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

2. Mr. Kristen Dale is a farmer who started to collect minerals on his farm as a child during World War II. Then he found an ore of molybdenite under the farm house where he lived. After that event his father had to take him to new localities all over the area. The Dale farm had always been isolated west of the Byglandsfjord lake and for Kristian Dale it took several decades till the farm was connected to the Setesdal road east of the lake. Therefor as a youngster he rowed and cycled to Evje and Iveland to collect minerals in the pegmatites there. He took his bicycle on board his small rowing boat on the beach and cycled further from mine to mine up to 100 km where the miners often gave him good specimen. Kristen Dale's collection of ab. 1700 specimen is what could be caracterized a very scientific collection for a local museum.

3. Mr. Odd S. H. Hansen started his military career 16 years old as a guerilla solder against the German occupants in the Hadeland area where he was born. After World War II he became an officer in the Norwegian army, and from 1965 he has had his work at Evjemoen military camp. Here Theodor Gautestad inspired him to start collecting as a hobby. Both as an officer and as a mineral collector Hansen was very accurate and extremely systematic. He collected minerals for 19 years and 7 years fulltime. He started stone polishing courses for soldiers at Evjemoen military camp, and he was an excellent guide for mineral collectors for many years in Evje / Iveland area, especially in the famous Landsverk I mine which now is a part of Evje Mineral Path. Odd S. H. Hansen also donated to the museum a collection of stamps with motives from the mining industry, rocks and minerals.

4. Mr. Sigmund Monen is a school teacher who has built up the mineral section of Evje and Hornnes museum. He has worked as a volunteer at the museum since 1975. He has on behalf of the local community bought the other collections for the municipality at the same time as he established a polishing workshop for more than 20 pupils in a new built classroom at his school. This classroom can also be used to teach grown ups stone polishing. Monen has also interviewed 50 workers from Flåt Nickel Mine and its smelter (1899 - 1946).

5 The collection of rocks from Evje and Hornnes was created by the Danish geology student Mikael Pedersen at the University of Copenhagen on the classic scientific localities of his father Mr. Svend Pedersen. Svend Pedersen has been doing research work together with his students from Copenhagen for the last 30 years, just on rocs. This exhibition also shows the geology of Flåt Nickel Mine.