ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Managing Faroese Coal: Negotiating Epistemic Hierarchies in the Danish Bureau of Mines, c. 1770-1790

• In Event: Natural Extraction: Shifting Epistemic Hierarchies Within the Danish Atlantic Empire, 1770–1940

English Abstract

In the 18th century, the central administration of the Danish Empire, which included Norway and the Faroe Islands among its North Atlantic dominions, was concerned that fuel was becoming scarce in many parts of its territory. Acting on such fears, the Danish Bureau of Mines – based in Copenhagen and part of the Empire’s central administration – in 1776 tasked Ole Henckel, a young Norwegian student of mining science (Bergverksvidenskab), who was eager to make a career in the empire’s mining administration, with surveying coal seams in the Faroe Islands. He was aided by mine workers from Norway and Faroese locals, who both served as labourers and providers of knowledge. During the multi-year survey, heaps of paperwork and coal samples were sent to be assessed by the Bureau, which finally established a permanent coal mine in 1784. This paper analyses the practices through which mining scientists, mine workers, and locals negotiated the epistemic hierarchies of this state-directed coal survey in the Faroe Islands during the 1770s and 1780s. Drawing on archival material from the Bureau of Mines, the paper shows that a mining scientist like Henckel by no means commanded unquestioned authority when challenged by other knowledge actors such as skilled workers. However, by underscoring the complex dynamics of metropolitan paperwork, which rendered the epistemic work of some actors visible and erased others, the paper also highlights the inequalities which determined who counted as a knowledge actor within this complex of imperial bureaucracy and science. Historians of the earth sciences have in recent years turned to 18th-century mining, arguing that it offers insights into the relations between scientific, practical, and bureaucratic knowledges, as well as the social and epistemic hierarchies between different knowledge actors. This paper transposes these themes from a predominantly Central and Western European context to the Danish North Atlantic Empire.

Author

• Niels Josva Balling, Aarhus University