century until 1992. In and around the mine, some very strong characteristics of Sweden saw day light for the first time. The most famous ones are the Falukorv, a typical Swedish sausage, and Falu rödfärg, the paint used to give Swedish cottages their red color. More about this and also the sad story about Fet-Mats can be found here.Matts and I took the under ground tour and then we got to wear the lovely orange outfits that you can see on the picture above. The tour started on a platform with a fabulous view of the Great Pit that was formed when the mines collapsed in 1687.
The tour then took us down to the man made caves and it was really interesting to walk inside the mountain and to picture what it must have been like to work there. Our guide told us that because of the fires that burned all night to soften the walls made the temperature in the mine very high: in the mornings it often was around 50 C and then it sunk to 30 C before it was time to call it a day...
The guide also told us that the men often used the buckets to transport themselves into and back up from the mine. They would jump onto one bucket and stand on it with one foot, holding on to it with one hand and using the other to carry their tools. In addition to this, they held a torch on a stick in their mouth and as an effect of this they didn't have any facial hair, had burned face skin and very short teeth...
After the guided tour in the mines, we had lunch and visited the museums and exhibitions around the mine and six hours later we returned home, satisfied after a very interesting day.
1 comment:
Very interesting!
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