BEACONS OF HOPE

A VOYAGE TO BRING NORWAY'S LIGHTHOUSES INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

- STORY: ALAN BURDICK / NYT

If ever there was a beacon of hope, it is the lighthouse — “immovable, immortal, eminent”, as 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 100 AD.

“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 unstaffed 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 signalling. The effort coincides roughly with the 200th anniversary of the Fresnel lens, a marvel of glassmaking artistry and optical science that revolutionised seafaring and global commerce.

'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.