KLUBBEN
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ABOUT SAGDALEN
Sagdalen Rotary Club
Today, Sagdalen (which literally means "sawmill valley") is the name of a modern- day village skirting the busy trunk road between Strømmen and Lillestrøm to the north east of Norway’s capital city of Oslo. Hidden from the road, however, the small river, Sagelva, still jumps and jostles through the falls and rapids that way back in the 16th century provided the power to operate both flourmills and sawmills. With the invention of the early frame saw, a new trade had been born. The farmers in the neighbourhood, owned rights along the river. They hewed their own timber or floated it up from the nearby Lake Øyeren. The finished products were then driven by cart in to Oslo, or to Christiania as it was then called. Around 1850, the total timber sawn here was about 1 million boards.
Then the steam engine was invented, and when the railway made its appearance in 1854 and the timber yards were moved to nearby Lillestrøm, the future looked bleak for Sagdalen.
But other industry was flourishing here too: Strømmens Værksted - iron foundry and railway carriage builders, and Strømmen Trevarefabrikk, a woodworking factory and planing mill, grew to be the cornerstones of the community. Other trades grew up, benefiting from the cheap waterpower. The last water wheel went on turning until a few years after the last world war.
Take a walk along the river today, and you’ll still find traces of a bygone age.
Sagdalen is a name which conjures up many old trades. ROTARY is an organisation, which gathers all kinds of professions, old and new.
Our Rotary Club banner, with its sawmill and floating timber, symbolises Sagdalen’s industrial roots.
