Ytterby () is a village on the Swedish island of

Resarö Resarö is an island in the Stockholm archipelago and a locality in Vaxholm Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden. It had 3,212 inhabitants in 2020. Resarö includes the hamlet of Ytterby, famous for the discovery of several rare-earth elements ...

, in

Vaxholm Municipality Vaxholm Municipality (, semi-officially ) is a municipality in Stockholm County in east central Sweden. The municipal slogan is "Vaxholm – the capital of the archipelago", due to its central location in the archipelago. Its seat is located ...

in the

Stockholm archipelago The Stockholm Archipelago () is the largest archipelago in Sweden, and the second-largest archipelago in the Baltic Sea (the largest being the Archipelago Sea across the Baltic in Finland). Part of the archipelago has been designated as a Rams ...

. Today the residential area is dominated by suburban homes. The name of the village translates to "outer village". Ytterby is the single richest source of

elemental An elemental is a mythic supernatural being that is described in occult and alchemy, alchemical works from around the time of the European Renaissance, and particularly elaborated in the 16th century works of Paracelsus. According to Paracelsu ...

discoveries in the world; the chemical elements

yttrium Yttrium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Y and atomic number 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal chemically similar to the lanthanides and has often been classified as a "rare-earth element". Yttrium is almost a ...

(Y),

terbium Terbium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Tb and atomic number 65. It is a silvery-white, rare earth element, rare earth metal that is malleable and ductile. The ninth member of the lanthanide series, terbium is a fairly ele ...

(Tb),

erbium Erbium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Er and atomic number 68. A silvery-white solid metal when artificially isolated, natural erbium is always found in chemical combination with other elements. It is a lanthanide, a rare- ...

(Er), and

ytterbium Ytterbium is a chemical element; it has symbol Yb and atomic number 70. It is a metal, the fourteenth and penultimate element in the lanthanide series, which is the basis of the relative stability of its +2 oxidation state. Like the other lanthani ...

(Yb) are all named after Ytterby, and the elements

holmium Holmium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ho and atomic number 67. It is a rare-earth element and the eleventh member of the lanthanide series. It is a relatively soft, silvery, fairly corrosion-resistant and malleable metal. Like many other ...

(Ho),

scandium Scandium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Sc and atomic number 21. It is a silvery-white metallic d-block, d-block element. Historically, it has been classified as a rare-earth element, together with yttrium and the lantha ...

(Sc),

thulium Thulium is a chemical element; it has symbol Tm and atomic number 69. It is the thirteenth element in the lanthanide series of metals. It is the second-least abundant lanthanide in the Earth's crust, after radioactively unstable promethium. It i ...

(Tm),

tantalum Tantalum is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ta and atomic number 73. It is named after Tantalus, a figure in Greek mythology. Tantalum is a very hard, ductility, ductile, lustre (mineralogy), lustrous, blue-gray transition ...

(Ta), and

gadolinium Gadolinium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Gd and atomic number 64. It is a silvery-white metal when oxidation is removed. Gadolinium is a malleable and ductile rare-earth element. It reacts with atmospheric oxygen or moi ...

(Gd) were also first discovered there. Local roads connect Ytterby to and hence the mainland. Except for the winter months, passenger ships of the ''

Waxholmsbolaget Waxholms Ångfartygs AB, commonly referred to as Waxholmsbolaget, is a shipping company owned by Stockholm county council and is responsible for the seaborne public transport in the Stockholm archipelago and Stockholm harbour. The company, which i ...

'' call at a pier in Ytterby, providing a connection to Vaxholm town and

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Mine

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

was mined in the area beginning in the 1600s for the ironworks in

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 ...

Feldspar Feldspar ( ; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagiocl ...

was mined for local porcelain manufacture, such as Gustavsberg, and the porcelain trade with

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. The mine is likely the first feldspar mine in Sweden, starting in 1790. Feldspar mining was likely sporadic and based on manufacture demand. This demand increased in the 1860s, leading to deeper mining efforts at Ytterby. The mine became one of the most productive quartz and feldspar mines in the country. Feldspar and quartz mining continued until 1933, when the mine was shut down. With 177 years of feldspar mining, it was the longest-mined feldspar mine in

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 ...

. Towards the end of the 1940s, the Swedish state, through the REF (''Riksnämnden för ekonomisk försvarsberedskap'') became interested in the possible usage of the mine. In 1953, the mine was renovated and used for the storage of jet fuel,

MC 77 JP-4, or JP4 (for "Jet Propellant") was a jet fuel, specified in 1951 by the United States Department of Defense (MIL-DTL-5624). Its NATO code is F-40. It is also known as avtag. Usage JP-4 was a 50-50 kerosene-gasoline blend. It had a lower flas ...

. The storage method led to contamination of the jet fuel, leading to problems in jet engines that used the fuel. The storage of jet fuel ended in 1978. It was subsequently used to store diesel. In 1995, the mine was emptied, and in the following years the area was rehabilitated. The mined quartz and feldspar are part of a pegmatite dyke that has a NNE-SSW orientation and a dip of 60° to the west. The

pegmatite A pegmatite is an igneous rock showing a very coarse texture, with large interlocking crystals usually greater in size than and sometimes greater than . Most pegmatites are composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica, having a similar silicic c ...

dyke include sections of

aplite Aplite () is an intrusive igneous rock that has a granitic composition. Aplites are fine-grained to aphanitic Aphanites (adj. ''aphanitic''; ) are igneous rocks that are so fine-grained that their component mineral crystals are not vi ...

and

graphic granite Graphics () are visual perception, visual Image scanner, images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustration, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial represe ...

. The surrounding host rock is "gabbro-like greenstone".

Chemical discoveries

The mine's elemental history began in 1787, when Lieutenant

Carl Axel Arrhenius Carl Axel Arrhenius (29 March 1757 – 20 November 1824) was a Swedish military officer, amateur geologist, and chemist. He is best known for his discovery of the mineral ytterbite (later called gadolinite) in 1787. The discovery of ytterbit ...

found an unidentified black mineral. He had previously explored the area for a potential fortification. His hobby interest in chemistry led him to notice the unusually heavy black rock, which he and his friend Bengt Geijer examined with Sven Rinman. It was not until 1794 that Finnish chemist

Johan Gadolin Johan Gadolin (5 June 176015 August 1852) was a Finnish chemist, physicist and mineralogist. Gadolin discovered a " new earth" containing the first rare-earth compound yttrium, which was later determined to be a chemical element. He is also con ...

fully analysed the mineral and found that 38% of its composition was a new, unidentified earth element. Swedish chemist Anders Gustaf Ekeberg confirmed the discovery the following year and named it ''yttria'', with the mineral named ''gadolinite''. Many rare earth elements were discovered in the mineral

gadolinite Gadolinite, sometimes known as ytterbite, is a silicate mineral consisting principally of the silicates of cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, yttrium, beryllium, and iron with the formula . It is called gadolinite-(Ce) or gadolinite-(Y), depending o ...

, which eventually proved to be the source of seven new elements that were named after the mineral ore and the area. These elements include

(Y),

(Er),

(Tb) and

(Yb) and were first described in 1794, 1843, 1843, and 1878, respectively. In 1989 the

ASM International ASM International N.V. (with ASM standing for Advanced Semiconductor Materials) is a Dutch-headquartered multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, sells, and services equipment used in the fabrication of semiconductor devices. Its ...

society installed a plaque at the former entrance to the mine, commemorating the mine as a historical landmark. In addition,

(Sc) and three other

lanthanides The lanthanide () or lanthanoid () series of chemical elements comprises at least the 14 Metal, metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57–70, from lanthanum through ytterbium. In the periodic table, they fill the 4f orbitals. Lutetium ...

—

(Ho, named after

(Tm, named after

Thule Thule ( ; also spelled as ''Thylē'') is the most northerly location mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography. First written of by the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia (modern-day Marseille, France) in about 320 BC, i ...

, a mythic analogue of

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

), and

(Gd, after the chemist Johan Gadolin)—can trace their discovery to the same quarry. The transition metal

(Ta, after the Greek mythological figure

Tantalus Tantalus ( ), also called Atys, was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: for either revealing many secrets of the gods, for stealing ambrosia from them, or for trying to trick them into eating his son, he ...

) was also discovered in a mineral sample from Ytterby in 1802. The European Chemical Society gave the Ytterby mine and the industrial complex of ABEA, Crete, Greece its Historical Landmarks Awards for 2018.

References

External links

Blog entry on YtterbyYouTube tour of the mine siteLocation on Google MapsGoogle Earth view of YtterbyWeb log — What do these elements have in common?
{{authority control Populated places in Vaxholm Municipality Science and technology in Sweden Naming of chemical elements Feldspar mines in Sweden Quartz mines in Sweden Pegmatite mines

Mine

Chemical discoveries

See also

References

External links