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This is an excerpt from the paper entitled "Stora Kopparberget: the Great Copper Mountain" by S Rydberg, published in the Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 1988-89 Vol 60.
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In this paper the Author describes the early years of the Copper Mountain in Sweden (Stora Koppaberget), which in the 17th century produced copper enough to satisfy two-thirds of entire European demand. The author describes the operations from the earliest years: mining, wood management, haulage and pumping, smelting, refining, and culminating in the ingenious inventions of Christopher Polhem around 1700.
"Down the ages the Swedish copper trade has been almost wholly concentrated in one spot in central Sweden, called, logically enough, Stora Kopparberget - the Great Copper Mountain. At its first entrance into the light of written history, 700 years ago, it was already a well organized operation. It was in the form of a business co-operative, a type of company in which shares could be bought and sold. The owners were members of the Swedish royal family, the aristocracy, the merchants of Lübeck and perhaps local landowners…..
Mining
There was a daily rhythm in the work that developed early and was kept down the centuries. At the end of the day logs were thrown down into the mine, accompanied by loud cries of warning. The logs were piled up against the faces that were being worked and then lit. It was important that all the fires be lit simultaneously, after the workers had had time to leave. In the morning the fires were quenched and the ashes cleared away, at which stage the rock which had been made brittle by the heat could begin to be mined. The rock that had been extracted also had to be removed before the next team could come on and start throwing down their logs…
Smelting
In older times the master miners’ smelting houses were always small and had only one furnace. During the course of the 18th century, larger smelting houses started to be built, but more than 75% remained the same modest size. The furnaces were up to 20km from the mine along suitable streams. A good head of water was more important than the transport distance. At the peak there were 132 smelting houses in the Falun district. King Gustav Vasa, who ran smelting of his own starting in 1540, had double furnace houses built, and wanted to get the master miners to follow his example, centralizing their operations at the same time...
The most expensive items at the smelting houses were the alternating bellows. Six oxhides were required to make two good-sized pairs of bellows. The leather lasted approximately two years. The worn leather was re-used as gloves, shoes or horses’ harness...
Refining and products
The decision was taken to mint the strange rectangular coins made of copper plate that are thought to be the largest in the world. The reasons were several: they were cheaper to produce than the smaller round coins, for which the actual minting cost 20% of their nominal value; they could serve as both means of payment and commodity; despite their size they were not all that difficult to move, and above all they were intended as a means of controlling the price of copper. When the international price (ie the price in Amsterdam) was low, the copper would be absorbed at home. When the price of copper rose, minting would cease or be limited...
Later developments
Technically, this was a period of great interest (c1720). In Christopher Polhem, Sweden (and thereby the mine) possessed a man who was perhaps the foremost mechanical engineer in Europe at the beginning of the century. Polhem brought wooden pump and hoist techniques to perfection. The first result of his genius was the famous hook hoist at the Falun mine, on which the buckets were hauled up not using cables but with the aid of four hanging beams equipped with hooks, lowered and raised in tandem, lifting the buckets from one pair of hooks to the next and so on to the surface….
Christopher Polhem's King Karl XII hoist Since the beginning of the 19th century the Copper Mountain and its fortunes have been by no means the major interest in the company that bears the mine’s name. For, from the 19th century, the master miners realized that their future lay in the other great natural resources owned by the company: the forests and the iron-ore deposits. By about the turn of this century the Great Copper Mountain had become the largest company in Sweden, its main production comprising electrical power generation, iron, sawn timber, pulp and paper. The iron operations have since been wound up but the forest industries have flourished, to the extent that the Stora of today is Europe’s largest manufacturer of forest industry products."
The complete text of this paper (15 pages, 5 illustrations) can be purchased on line from our archive.
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