Dannemora is an old mining town and a locality situated in

Östhammar Municipality Östhammar Municipality () is a municipalities of Sweden, municipality in Uppsala County in east central Sweden. Its seat is located in the city status in Sweden, city of Östhammar. The present municipality was created during the local governmen ...

, Uppsala County,

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. It had 213 inhabitants in 2010.

Dannemora mine

Dannemora is the location of an important

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

mine, the Dannemora mine, which formed the basis of the

iron industry Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's ...

Uppland Uppland is a historical province or ' on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital. It borders Södermanland, Västmanland and Gästrikland. It is also bounded by lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. The name literally ...

. It provided the raw material for about 20

finery forge A finery forge is a forge used to produce wrought iron from pig iron by decarburization in a process called "fining" which involved liquifying cast iron in a fining hearth and decarburization, removing carbon from the molten cast iron through Redo ...

s that produced bar iron for export. In the early mid-19th century, numerous workers from this town emigrated to the United States, with some settling in upstate New York at the site of other iron mines. They named the community Dannemora, after their former home. In England, iron produced from Dannemora ore was known as '' oregrounds iron'', after the port town of Öregrund, from which it was shipped. Bar iron from these forges was considered the best raw material for producing blister steel by the

cementation process The cementation process is an Obsolescence, obsolete technology for making steel by carburization of iron. Unlike modern steelmaking, it increased the amount of carbon in the iron. It was apparently developed before the 17th century. Derwentcot ...

, owing mainly to the extremely low levels of sulphur and phosphorus in the ores, and their relatively high manganese content. In 1878 the

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

(891 mm) Dannemora–Hargs railway was opened to the port in Hargshamn. The iron ore was exported directly from this port. The mine was closed down in 1992. With world market demand rising again, the feasibility of reopening the mine was investigated. The mine was re-opened in June 2012 in a ceremony performed by King

Carl XVI Gustaf Carl XVI Gustaf (Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus; born 30 April 1946) is King of Sweden. Having reigned since 1973, he is the longest-reigning monarch in Swedish history. Carl Gustaf was born during the reign of his paternal great-grandfather, K ...

References

External links

Data on the mine

Picture of the workings
Populated places in Uppsala County Populated places in Östhammar Municipality 891 mm gauge railways in Sweden {{Uppsala-geo-stub

Dannemora mine

See also

References

External links