# A Voyage to Bring Norway’s Lighthouses Into the 21st Century

More than 2,000 navigational beacons, big and small, oversee the nation’s 60,000-mile-long coast. Now they need an upgrade.

Photographs by Michal Siarek

Text by [Alan Burdick](https://www.nytimes.com/by/alan-burdick)

Aug. 3, 2025

If ever there was a beacon of hope, it is the lighthouse — “immovable, immortal, eminent,” as the novelist (and son of a lighthouse designer) Robert Louis Stevenson put it. The oldest lighthouse still in use, built in Galicia by the Romans, dates to A.D. 100.

“I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse,” George Bernard Shaw once wrote. “They were built only to serve.”

The lighthouse hit its peak in the mid-20th century, before radio, radar and global-positioning satellites made ship navigation nearly inch-precise. In Norway today, all the lighthouses are now unmanned and automated.

But they remain essential to mariners as a visual backup — in case the fancy electronics fail or are scrambled by Russia’s military — and to small boats that lack the proper technology.

Norway is undertaking a grand renovation of its lighthouses in accordance with the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities, which sets the standards for maritime signaling. The effort coincides roughly with the 200th anniversary of the Fresnel lens, a marvel of glassmaking artistry and optical science that revolutionized seafaring and global commerce.

![An aerial view of a small fishing village on an islet with a row of mountains of the mainland in the far distance and a tall red lighthouse with a white base in the foreground.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-06/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-06-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)

> The fishing village on the archipelago of Grip, which dates to the 16th century, is inhabited only seasonally. Grip Lighthouse, completed in 1888 on Brattharskollen, a barren islet, has been unmanned since 1977.

![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-07/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-07-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/30/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-08/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-08-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-09/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-09-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)

> Slettnes Lighthouse, the northernmost mainland lighthouse on Earth; repainting the lighthouse on Lille Haukoya last July; the shadow of Slettnes, cast across the tundra at the start of polar summer.

## ‘Another heaven’ on Earth

Early lighthouses were lit by open wood fires; later ones with lamps fueled by pitch, tar, coal and, starting in 1780, oil. This light, in turn, was cast outward by ever more elaborate mirrors that sat behind the lamp. But even the best light was scattered and feeble, visible from no more than a few miles away. A ship could founder on sandbars by the time it saw the warning.

In 1823, a French engineer, Augustin-Jean Fresnel, unveiled the Fresnel lens: concentric rings of glass prisms that, meticulously aligned, bent the light into a unified beam. Much less light was lost and much fuel was saved. Stationed high enough, the light could be seen by ships 50 miles away.

At the time, scientists insisted that light was composed of particles. Fresnel championed the new “undulationist” theory, that light acts as a wave, and his lens proved its utility beyond doubt. (Physicists today recognize that, improbably, light is both a wave and a particle.)

![Technicians kneel while working with a Fresnel lens, which sends beams of light in many directions in a small room of a museum.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/08/05/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-10/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-10-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)

> At the North Cape Museum in Honningsvag, Arnt Edmund Ofstad and Erik Lingjaerde reassemble a Fresnel lens from Helnes Lighthouse, which was decommissioned two decades ago.

![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-13/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-13-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/30/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-12/00SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-lenses-03b-kbpf-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/28/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-11/00SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-lenses-01b-zvhl-qpzf-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)

> Decommissioned lenses at the Norwegian Coastal Administration in Kabelvag; an energy-efficient LED unit like this one will eventually replace the lamp at Fruholmen Lighthouse; inside the lighthouse on Spildra island.

Lighthouses equipped with Fresnel lenses soon lined the French coast. Other nations quickly adopted the technology, starting with Norway in 1832. The number of shipwrecks around the world plummeted.

“For the sailor who steers by the stars, it was as if another heaven had descended to earth,” the French historian Jules Michelet wrote in 1861.


![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/31/03SCI-LIGHTHOUSE-vid-50296-cover/03SCI-LIGHTHOUSE-vid-50296-cover-superJumbo.jpg)


## Upgrading a nation’s lightscape

The Fresnel lens focused the aspirations of the Industrial Age. It made shipping safer, projected global ambition and catalyzed international trade.

“The moment a Fresnel lens appeared at a location was the moment that region became linked into the world economy,” Theresa Levitt wrote in “A Short Bright Flash,” her history of the invention.

Today, small Fresnel lenses are everywhere, from traffic lights to stage lights. But the production of lighthouse-scale glass lenses ceased in the 1960s. Those that remain are fragile, expensive to maintain and hard to repair, for lack of parts.

Many of Norway’s Fresnel lenses were destroyed in World War II by retreating German forces. Only 80 or so are still in use.

![A helicopter in mid-air places a lighthouse piece on the rocky cliff of a very small island. ](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-14/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-14-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)

> The small lighthouse on Brattholmen is replaced by an omnidirectional sector light, an all-in-one unit with L.E.D. lamp, solar array, batteries and electronics for remote operation.

![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-15/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-15-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-16/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-16-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/08/05/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-17/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-17-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)

> Returning to the ship Gamle Oksoy after a work visit to Terningen Lighthouse; Captain Eivind Lande fills out the ship's log in the company of Gro Anita Bardseth, right, and her daughter, Klara Ingebjorg Pilskog; technicians with the vessel OV Bokfjord calibrating the light at Hansneset Lighthouse.

Technicians with the Norwegian Coastal Administration have been visiting the lighthouses one by one, upgrading older lamps and replacing diesel generators with solar arrays. Some Fresnel lenses are moved to museums; some are dismantled, to serve as spare parts elsewhere. Where Fresnel lenses remain, they are delicately cleaned and repaired.

Naturally, this work is best done in summer, when daylight lasts for weeks and most lighthouses are turned off. The lenses are kept shrouded under curtains or cozies to prevent the sun, focused as if through a magnifying glass, from starting fires.

## A radiant culture

As well as a guardian to mariners, the lighthouse served as anchor and emblem to many isolated coastal communities. Norway’s lighthouses are no longer manned, but in their time, each was maintained by locals, sometimes clusters of families, who kept the lamp working, did repairs and wiped the lens free of smoke. At some lights, this work was done around the clock in four-hour shifts — a life as arduous, meticulous and vital as any aboard a ship.

![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/00SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-expedition-06-wljc/00SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-expedition-06-wljc-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/07/28/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-23/00SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-olsen-fltj-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-22/00SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-museum-04-qblh-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)

> Kristine Moltu, a museum conservator, conducting LIDAR scans of Kjeungskjaer Lighthouse to create 3-D digital models for posterity; Ottar Olsen, the last master keeper from Slettnes Lighthouse, who died in 2024; a model of a breakwater with a new navigational light.

![Espen Jensen Wilhelmsen wears reflective gear and holds a round piece of removed lens to a small inflated boat at the rocky shore of an island.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/08/05/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-18/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-18-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)

> Espen Jensen Wilhelmsen removes the Fresnel lens from the small lighthouse at Maursund.

For four generations, the family of Espen Jensen Wilhelmsen, an electrician with the Norwegian Coastal Administration, tended the light at Maursund by rowboat from their farm across the strait. With Mr. Wilhelmsen’s help, the light is now fully modernized and automated.

## Waves upon waves

“The most surprising part about dealing with lighthouses is how much they are a sensory experience,” said Michal Siarek, who took these photographs. During the polar summer, the low sun hits the lens and projects hypnotizing patterns on the walls. In winter, the light catches your eye as it sweeps across the landscape.

“It brings a sense of reassurance that someone is on duty and watching,” Mr. Siarek said. “The low machine-hum of the rotor and the warmth of the light in the lantern room feel like basking in the sun, against a raging storm outside that makes the tower tremble and sing.”

![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-19/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-19-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-20/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-20-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/04/04/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-21/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-21-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&quality=90)

> Refractions created by the dismantled Fresnel lens from Bokfjord Lighthouse; Slettnes Lighthouse radiates beneath the northern lights; the Slettnes light illuminating falling snow.


![A distant view of a lighthouse, whose light reflects on the water, under a moody, cloudy dark sky.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/08/05/multimedia/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-22/03SCI-NORWAY-LIGHTHOUSES-22-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)

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[Alan Burdick](https://www.nytimes.com/by/alan-burdick) is an editor and occasional reporter of science and health news for The Times.