I fell in love with the image of this little medieval looking 'light house'. I looked it up and wiki tells me;
"A vippefyr or bascule light or tipping lantern was a type of small navigational aid popular in Denmark in the eighteenth century and before. It consisted of a basket in which wood or coal was set; this was then burned. The basket was affixed to a lever that allowed it to be manipulated as required. (The bascule - from the French for "see-saw" - refers to the counterbalancing of the lever, which facilitates raising and lowering the basket; when one end is lowered the other is raised.) The vippefyr system was generally viewed as ineffective, as it produced little light and was usually unreliable."
Apparently however, this basket lighthouse was built in 1932 as a tourist attraction using drift boulders from Tjøme.
Nonetheless, I think it is a charming tribute to navigational beacons of old.
4 comments:
Low tech and gorgeous!
Angela....
Do you think they put a lantern in that basket?
I would love to see this in person.
Have a good rest of the weekend.
xo, Rosemary
I fell in love with the image of this little medieval looking 'light house'. I looked it up and wiki tells me;
"A vippefyr or bascule light or tipping lantern was a type of small navigational aid popular in Denmark in the eighteenth century and before. It consisted of a basket in which wood or coal was set; this was then burned. The basket was affixed to a lever that allowed it to be manipulated as required. (The bascule - from the French for "see-saw" - refers to the counterbalancing of the lever, which facilitates raising and lowering the basket; when one end is lowered the other is raised.) The vippefyr system was generally viewed as ineffective, as it produced little light and was usually unreliable."
Apparently however, this basket lighthouse was built in 1932 as a tourist attraction using drift boulders from Tjøme.
Nonetheless, I think it is a charming tribute to navigational beacons of old.
Vicki....
Thanks for that excellent history lesson!
xo, Rosemary
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