Building Tvindkraft

Building Tvindkraft – 40 years history and more

The farm Tvind: Once there was a little old desolated farm, called Tvind, on sandy soil way out on the countryside near Ulfborg in western Jutland, Denmark. Today  the school center Tvind is a modern complex of buildings and institutions, home for hundreds of people having their living and education, a vibrant environment of life and energy, humanistic perspective and always on the move for something even better. A never ending story started almost 40 years ago, in 1972.

The pyramids were built by 100.000 workers. They were slaves. Peasants called out to serve the Pharaoes. It was the labour of the slaves that laid the foundation of the Kings’ fame. As so often both before and after.
Taj Mahal in northern India was built by slaves who were executed after having finished their work - not to reveal the secrets of the constructions to other princes.

Construction companies in the Denmark of today buy labour, which means people who live from the only thing they have, for building skyscrapers out of concrete and glass.

Underpaid Persian workers built the Eiffel Tower of Teheran in honour of the Shah. With oil money. At Tvind in Western Jutland a number of workers, teachers and students are building their own power station. With their own money.

They build it together, for the sake of natural energy, for the sake of a human society - and against slavery, against monopolisation and against nuclear power.
Difficulties have turned up in scores. From the very beginning we could count on them. Ever since the building was begun, where we were 400 people digging together, we have met problems. And the joy of solving them has all the time been greater than the day before. By now we are really wild about them. because we have discovered that it is through the solution of such difficulties we move forward.

This is a decisive and highly valuable experience. We were brought up in a society trying to teach us that harmony is happiness. And that harmony is achieved through absolute adaption to the prevailing conditions. Thus the ideal is the fully adapted person in full harmony.
 
Therefore we were sometimes scared in the beginning of our work building the power station. As when we first found out that we had made wrong calculations. Twice as much concrete as we had at first thought necessary was needed. So we could not afford to buy ready-mixed concrete from the nearest mixing plant.
We solved it together. At a meeting we found out that we could mix the concrete urselves. At half the price. But then it would also take twice the time. Unless we ourselves had a large concrete mixer. So we found one at a very cheap price. Because the economy of our society is in a crisis the means of production are for sale cheap.
We had run into difficulties, we were having problems. But we solved them together - and this gave us a strength which cannot be bought from others.
A strength which common people like us create when we organize together to build up our own world.
We had heard about experiences like these from a number of other countries all over the world, such as China, but now we learnt from our own experience that it was true.
People can do anything when we unite about our common future. No problem, no bstacles are too big for the united people.
You can see it in the pictures. Every day for half a year we twenty people have been running up and down with iron, concrete, with messages, with coffee and with visitors. We have become comrades in the fight with nature as well as the forces of society.

Nature is represented by the wind. The forces of society are planning nuclear power plants, motorways, military bases and a lot of other crap around us.
While we were binding the first iron the Industrial Board were discussing where to place Denmark’s first nuclear power plant. We entered the debate, in writing, in speech, and in continued iron binding.

While we were discussing how to reinforce the cone base over a cup of coffee in the summer heat, sweating after the iron binding in the sun, experts were planning the press campaign for ELSAM´s drive for nuclear power. It was in the papers the next day. Along with a picture of our work and a long article about our work. And about our opinions about energy.

While F.L. Schmidt’s concrete experts advised us not to try to pour the tower without their expensive help, their so called “windpower expert” abused us on the phone. He called us “You who are destroying the whole windpower cause by trying to build a windmill”. We answered back by adding seven people to the windmill group.

While the boards of one foundation after the other, governmental or private, pried into our applications for financial support for our work to find a tiny reason for saying no, no and no again, common people from the whole country flocked to the building site to look, to talk, to tell us their thoughts about energy.

And while the Danish Television Company time and again gave broadcasting time to our Minister of Commerce revealing the blessings of nuclear power, at least 500 people a week confided to the mill builders and the students and pupils at the schools that all people are for windpower - and that it is only “the high-ups” who want nuclear power.
“It’s the Government and the industry who want all this nuclear business - because they will profit from it. That is why.”
And so we continued building, supported by the common opinion. By the opinion of the many Danes.

It is us you can see in the pictures. With labour, sweat, laughter and growing comradeship we haul, push, pant, pour and win in the struggle to raise the mill and ourselves. The mill from gravel, cement, water and iron, from care, debate, quarrels and resounding unity.

Ourselves from the lack of confidence that common people like us can do things like building a big windpower station, from the fear of the materials, from the ignorance of the physical laws and the actual size of the natural forces, from the ignorance of even elementary concepts of the technological world, this disintegrated, fragmented expert world, which no one today can overlook, from the traditional view on girls’ ability to build anything.

The hole was built at first. The iron was bound afterwards. The concrete mixed and poured around the iron. The base of the tower completed slowly. And then one day we glided upwards leaving the tower under us. Metre by metre, hour by hour, and after 22 days at the very top. So this was the position of the blades.
At this height, well, well. From here they were to go round and round.

In fine weather, that is windy weather, we could see the sea and all our neighbours. Not to forget the schools where 500 students are working with our history, our future and each other. And the buses in which they went to Africa and Asia and America. And the fields they cultivate and the theatre they dance and play in. A good view.
We continue building until the end, until the beginning. The blades have started to go round, the production of electricity increases with every month while neighbours gather and ask questions and get answers. And tea.

The government is preparing a proposal for nuclear power plants. It is to be put before the “Folketinget”, the Danish Parliament, soon. Maybe we cannot stop them doing it. But we and many people are learning that together we can change anything we want to.
Even if the next tower has to be built into the skies.