According to Albert Camus, Sisyphus was a happy man, in spite of being condemned forever to roll uphill a huge stone that always rolled down again. I have spent more time than I care to remember on research on Falconbridge, Norwegian industrial history and the local history of Kristiansand. At times the tasks have appeared Sisyphean, but I have carried on. Even academic drudgery may sometimes lead to happiness.

This work started as a commissioned history of Falconbridge Nikkelverk A/S, Falconbridge's subsidiary in Norway. I am very grateful to all the members of the advisory committee for this book, especially the historians Ketil Gjølme Andersen from the University of Oslo and Knut Sogner from BI Norwegian School of Management. Sometime after this project was finished I received a one-year scholarship from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology to use the Falconbridge history as a basis for a dissertation. Falconbridge generously translated the original book. However, the leap from a commissioned history to a dissertation in academic English was much bigger than I envisaged and I was only halfway through when the money ran out. Afterwards, I worked on the dissertation in between my teaching at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

I am very much indebted to my supervisor Hans Otto Frøland, the prime ‘mover and shaker’ in our small group of economic historians in Trondheim. I defended my dissertation in November 2008 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.