Eleventh International Geological Conor 



39 



Ids song- led by Graessner and sung to the finish with Incn 

 gusto and effect. Our way to the surface and daylight was op the 

 easy steps cut in the rock, where climbed the miner in the <i, 

 the Reformation, and where even before that time sat Roman 

 man with old-style candles, counting the men as they passed. It 

 was all impressive and made us feel small and new and insignif- 

 icant. 



From the oldest and most important copper mine in Sweden we 

 passed in two days' travel almost straight north to the vow 

 iron mine in Sweden and the largest in the world. This mine hi 

 in Swedish Lapland, and is called Kirunavaara or Ptarmigan moun- 

 tain. It has been opened and put in operation during the past ten 

 years under the management of a Swedish Captain of Industry i 

 Hjalmar Lundbohm. 



Here within the Arctic circle, North latitude G6°, where 

 electric lights are started at 2:30 on winter afternoons, are I 

 hundred men mining iron ore for shipment to England, German] 

 and the United States. The daily output is about 9,000 tons: 

 it is shipped over a first-class modern railroad in steel ore cars about 

 one hundred miles farther north to the harbor of Narvik on the 

 Norwegian coast, already mentioned. 



The amount of ore in the Kirunavaara has been repeatedly esti- 

 mated; and each time the estimate is larger. When it is lealized 

 that this deposit of hard ore averages about 275 feet in thickness 

 and is more than two miles in length, and rises in a mountain about 

 eight hundred feet above the surrounding country, it may not be 

 so difficult to believe that it contains approximately one billion tons 

 of ore. 



It is mined in open cuts or terraces; and the blasting can be 

 heard for fifty miles. The annual output of ore now amounts to 

 about three million tons. It is limited by the Government at pres- 

 ent to 3,500,000 tons. The Swedish Government not only owns one- 

 half of the stock of the operating company, but has an option to 

 purchase the remaining half at an agreed price in about twenty- 

 three years' time. 



There is material for an evening's lecture in this mine alone, 

 and there is only time now for a brief mention of it and its salient 

 features. Although attention had been repeatedly called to this 

 mountain of iron by Laplanders and hunters returning from the far- 

 away northern wilds, yet very little was known about it until the 

 Swedish Geological Survey Party led by Dr. Lundbohm camped there 

 and collected material for reports. The first time was in 1875 and 

 the second in 1896. Situated about 145 kilometers north of the 

 Arctic Circle, 300 kilometers from Lulea on the Baltic, and 176 

 kilometers from Narvik, the distance from Stockholm is 1413 kilo- 

 meters, or about 850 miles. 



The first work preparatory for mining was in 1898. In 1899 the 

 railroad (owned by the Government) reached Kiruna, and in 1902 

 was built to Narvik. Shipments began in 1903 with a production 

 of about 800,000 tons. 



Kiruna is situated in a desolate country, uninhabited before 

 mining began, and only periodically visited by the nomadic Laps. 



