Kärrgruvan is the name of the northern part of the locality
Norberg
Norberg () is a locality and the seat of Norberg Municipality in Västmanland County, Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is th ...
, located in
Norberg Municipality
Norberg Municipality (''Norbergs kommun'') is a municipality in Västmanland County in central Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Norberg.
History
The area, located within Bergslagen, the mining district of central Sweden, has histor ...
in northwestern
Västmanland
Västmanland ( or ), is a historical Swedish province, or ''landskap'', in middle Sweden. It borders Södermanland, Närke, Värmland, Dalarna and Uppland.
Västmanland means "(The) Land of the Western Men", where the "western men" (''väste ...
,
Sweden. The locality is mainly famous for its history of industrial mining which lasted for more than 800 years.
Etymology
Just like in many other parts of Norberg, Kärrgruvan has quite many
open-pit mines
Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow.
This form of min ...
in the nature. The name Kärrgruvan comes from a small open-pit mine with the same name and can be translated as "the marsh mine" or "the swamp mine".
The locality
Most of the houses and buildings in Kärrgruvan are located along highway 69 (actually ''riksväg 69'', also known as ''Hedemoravägen'', former ''länsväg 270'') towards
Hedemora
Hedemora is a Urban areas in Sweden, town in Dalarna County and the seat of Hedemora Municipality, Sweden, with 7,273 inhabitants in 2010.
Despite its small population, Hedemora is for historical reasons normally still referred to as a Stad (Swede ...
and along the road ''Linnévägen''. Its centrum is where highway 69 and Linnévägen meet and consists of a pizzeria, a gas station and a nowadays disused grocery shop.
Signs of mining
''Mossgruveparken'' is an abandoned mining area with deep, water-filled open-pit mines where iron ore was extracted until the beginning of the 20th century.
There is a mining museum in Kärrgruvan called ''Norbergs gruvmuseum''. Under the museum there is a deep shaft used to bring water out of the mines. A waterwheel a couple of kilometers away from there, called
Polhemshjulet, ran the pumps with a lever mechanism. Inside the museum visitors can be shown how the process worked. The museum also shows how the earliest method for extracting iron ore worked; to break the mountains by using gunpowder, nitroglycerine and dynamite. Drilling techniques, tools and machines for that are shown in the museum.
Habitation
If one includes the villages Kylsbo and Kallmora, Kärrgruvan has just below 1 000 inhabitants. This number has been about the same for the last 50 years. During the 1960s the majority of Kärrgruvan's population was settled in five apartment buildings, together called Bolagshagen,
a rare and probably unique name which can be translated as ''The company pasture''.
See also
*
Bergslagen
Bergslagen is a historical, cultural, and linguistic region located north of Lake Mälaren in northern Svealand, Sweden, traditionally known as a mining district. In Bergslagen, the mining and metallurgic industries have been important since ...
*
Ecomuseum Bergslagen
Ecomuseum Bergslagen ( sv, Ekomuseum Bergslagen) is an open-air museum in the western part of the former mining and smelting region of Bergslagen in central Sweden. The museum opened in 1986 and is today the world's largest ecomuseum. The museum i ...
References
Västmanland
{{Västmanland-geo-stub