Norrköping - Sätragruvan

Early in the morning we enjoy our sun terrace with its lake view over a leisurely breakfast. Afterwards we chat a little with our host, who recommends a few more places in the area. For today, however, we already have another destination: The abandoned mines of Sätragruvan.

Sätragruvan lies in the municipality of Finspång, in the forest on road 215 between Finspång and Skärblacka, a good 20 kilometres west-northwest of the centre of Norrköping as the crow flies. According to the local newspaper Folkbladet the forest there is called Risingeskogen, and the mine lies just south of Doverstorp. The name means «the mine of Sätra».

Pyrite for the paper industry

A good hundred years ago, though, there was a lot going on at this site. 80 people are said to have worked here mining pyrite. As at the Oljekoken Gössäter two days earlier, here too it was the First World War that forced people to tap their own resources, as importing certain necessary goods was no longer possible. This included the urgently needed sulphite for the pulp and paper industry, which could be obtained from the sulphur ore mined here at the time.

Pyrite is a brass-yellow mineral with a metallic lustre, made of iron and sulphur. In the sulphite process, once an important method of making pulp, wood chips, mainly from spruce, are cooked under pressure in a solution of sulphur dioxide and sulphite. In 1916 the company AB Kis decided to start mining here. It had bought the Sätra farm and the land around it. Now it built houses for the workers and planned a shop, a bank and a pharmacy. In the processing plant the ore was crushed and separated from the rest of the rock with water from Lake Glan, and then tipping wagons took the pyrite to the railway at Doverstorp.

But the processing never worked efficiently enough, and too much pyrite ended up in the waste rock. When the war ended in 1918 the mining no longer paid, and AB Kis went bankrupt. A later attempt to make red paint from the ore failed as well. In 1922 the whole site was sold, together with the Sätra farm.

Through the forest to the mine entrance

We walk through the very dense forest, full of old spruces, moss and hanging lichen. The path is partly blocked by large fallen trees, and we have to find our own way through.

At some point we spot a fenced-in area ahead of us, inside which we can walk up to the entrance of the former mine. Beyond that, the deep sulphur puddle makes it impossible to go any further without wellies. The tunnels lead through the hill into the deep open pit behind. The Folkbladet reporters who wrote about the mine in 2017 followed the fence up the slope. On the way they saw many lumps of ore with a reddish surface, which forms as the iron oxidises, and from above the reddish water at the bottom of the open pit. The iron in the ore is also what gives the water at the entrance its orange colour. The same article says that Länsstyrelsen Östergötland, the county administrative board, has investigated the contamination of the site and assessed it overall as a very high risk.

The area is not fenced off for nothing either, as there is of course an acute risk of falling rocks. For this reason (and because of the huge number of mosquitoes) we prefer to take just a few quick photos of part of the old mine rather than venture deeper into the tunnels. The map and GPX of the short path are on the page for the hike to the Sätragruvan mine.

About half a kilometre northwest of the mine, the Sätra nature reserve begins. According to Länsstyrelsen Östergötland it lies above the Vånga fault (Vångaförkastningen), which stands out in the landscape as a clear step in the terrain. In and around the fault many different minerals occur, and some of them were mined, mainly in old marble quarries and copper mines. We did not walk the loop trail of about two kilometres in the reserve.

A hot afternoon by the lake

Afterwards we drive to an ICA and then to our Airbnb, where we settle down to read and edit photos while enjoying the afternoon sun. It is very strong and pushes temperatures well above 30 degrees. According to SVT Väder, a heatwave begins on this day, mainly affecting southeastern Sweden and lasting until 22 June.

For dinner we have risotto, pasta and tomato and mozzarella salad. In the evening we go for an after-dinner stroll to a jetty that runs out onto the lake.