In the innermost part of Øvervatnet (the Upper Lake), approximately midway between Fauske and Sulitjelma, by the estuary of the river Sjønståa, lies an old settlement. A farm (actually 2) with such a beautiful (skjønn-) name must be absolutely splendid, you might think, and yes, this is as being in a fairytale; with a meandering river, steep mountain sides and beautiful old buildings. The name is not explained with full certainty, but may come from ‘skinstøde-å’, i.e. the river at a place where the cows seek shelter from insects in the summer heat. No beauty explanation, actually.
Sjønstå. The ‘Øvergården’ yard: Stove house from the 17th century, stables with room for one horse, barn in the background and sheep barn to the back right.
Sjønstå is mentioned for the first time in a tax census from 1665, under the name Süinstad. Øvervatnet is directly connected to the sea via Hermogsundet (Nervatnet) and Finneidstraumen, to Skjerstadfjorden. Fishing was therefore an important supplementary income to agriculture. The tax to be paid in 1666 was 9 kg dry fish in military tax (leidang), 3/4 barrel of grain and 4 kg of cheese to the church, and also 18 kg of dry fish in land debt.
More of Øvergården’s yard: The barn to the left is from around 1780, built in the norse ‘sjelter‘ technique.
The farms at Sjønstå had little opportunity for expansion, since the place is surrounded by steep mountains. At the census in 1865, there were 21 people living in Sjønstå, divided into three households.
Nergården. Øvervatnet in the background.
With the establishment of the Sulitjelma mines, Sjønstå became a hub in the transportation between Sulitjelma and Finneid/Fauske. Transport of ore from the mines took place by boat on Langvatnet. From Langvatnet to Sjønstå, they initially went by horse and sledge 10 km over the mountain. This was a slow and expensive transport, and construction of the railway started almost immediately, opening in 1892. Transshipment took place on the east side of the river, and in 1920 a bridge was built across it so that the farm’s people could easily get to the steamship quay and railway station. Between 1890 and 1956, Sjønstå had 300 inhabitants.
The bridge over the Sjønstå river, newly restored and chique (2023).
Transport of ore from the mines only took place in the summer, when the waters were ice-free. There was a strong desire for a railway all the way from Sulitjelma to Finneid, and finally, in 1956, the line was complete from Fagerli to Finneid, including 3 long tunnels. The last stretch of the Sulitjelma Railway was opened by King Olav V in 1956, and closed down again in 1972, when the track was turned into a road within just 3 weeks (county road 830). This was the end of Sjønstå’s function as a transport hub. The place was quickly vacated, except the old farm, which continued until the bachelor Andor Karolius Hansen died in 1973 (Øvergården).
Øvervatnet. The old storage hall for ore can be seen in the background.
At Sjønstå there are good swimming opportunities from the beach on the east side of the river. You just have to throw yourself into it!
Idyllic!
After a refreshing swim at Sjønstå, time is just right to get new energy into the body. Today, almost all newer houses (from the 20th century) have been demolished, but on Sundays there is a cafe in ‘Folkets hus‘ in Sjønstå. ‘Møsbrømlefse‘ is made by heating a thin ‘lefse‘ filled with ‘duppe‘ (brown cheese sauce). This is a signature dish from the Salten region in Nordland, which we will strongly recommend. Buon appetite!
Møssbrømlefse. If it is too far for you to go to Sjønstå, there is an option in Oslo, at the cafè ‘Spor av Nord‘. Møssbrømlefse is heavy stuff, but very good.
The Swede Nils Persson founded Sulitjelma Aktiebolag 10/2-1891, after 4 years of trial operations. Sulitjelma had a permanent settlement of 50 in 1880, which increased to almost 3,000 within 30 years. The immigrants came from all over the northern hemisphere, and the community became a conglomerate of Sami, Kven, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Germans and Russians. Here you could make money, but the work was hard and the living conditions miserable, especially in the early days.
The Mining Company ‘Sulitjelma Gruber’ consisted of 18 different mines.
Sulitjelma’s nickname for many years was ‘The Hell of Lapland‘, which says something about the poor conditions. The term was first used by the agitator Kata Dalström, the writer August Strindberg’s niece. It was strictly forbidden to agitate for trade unions. All agitators were chased from the village as soon as they were discovered. As was said in Sulis: ‘Norway’s laws stop at Finneid‘. A female agitator who managed to speak in the Sulitjelma mines before the spies discovered her, was Helene Ugland from Froland near Arendal:
“Aren’t you worth as much as the foremen and leaders? No, you are worth more. Do you understand that? It is you and your dirty, powerful fists that have value to the exploiters. You are the ones who raise money for the foremen, the managers, the clerks or whatever they are called, the ones who squander it. And what do you get in return? Pay for the work… yes, but you get something else, too. You get mocked and fired if the managers don’t like you.“
Old Sulis. A large flow of water in the Giken river. The lake ‘Langvatnet’ in the background, with two cable cars.
Like many other mining communities, there was a clear distinction of class in Sulis. Clerks and engineers had good living conditions, high wages and access to hunting and fishing. Workers who tried to do some hunting, however, were dismissed. In the beginning, only the mining company had a shop (sometimes very poor products), so they got the money back from the workers. For a long time they also had their own money system in Sulitjelma. Hence, the Company could save all salaries in the bank, and earn interest on it.
Christmas lights on a new home (2023) at Charlotta in Sulitjelma.
A strategic ploy to keep wages down was to sell work assignments at auction once a month, a kind of auction called ‘lisitation‘. To get the job, the worker teams had to underbid each other, and the result was mistrust between the teams. The ‘Mining Act‘ of 1848 gave the mining companies the burden of support for the personnel when they had lived on the mine’s premises for two consecutive years. According to the law, sick or injured workers were therefore supposed to receive support from the Company, but this could be avoided by dismissing workers after 23 months of service at the latest. In this way, the Company could evict workers who were injured or fired, and also the families of workers who died. Later, the same (living) worker could easily get a new job – at Sulitjelma Gruber. Martin Tranmæl has said that Sulitjelma was “a small tsardom, where the capitalists ruled unrestrained“.
Langvatnet (the Long Lake). View inwards, Sandnes and Fagerli in the background.
Towards the end of 1906, the management got an idea to introduce use of something they called ‘control marks‘. The point was to know exactly how many hours the individual miner worked. This was to happen by each worker being handed a lead chip in the morning. The chip was ment to be worn at the chest, and when the mark was returned at the end of the day, the working hours were clear. The chips were immediately named the ‘Sulis Medal‘, or the ‘Slave Mark‘, and were deeply hated. The scheme with the control marks was first introduced in the Charlotta mine, which the management knew had the largest proportion of workers with family responsibilities. It was thought that this would go under the radar in the other mines , but that did not happen.
The slave marks. “We are not slaves!“, the miners shouted, knocking over the chip box. The following night, the marks disappeared after a break-in at the mining office.
At the Hanken and Charlotta mines, 200 men were dismissed when they refused to wear control marks, and a rebellion, the ‘Mark War‘, spread from mine to mine. The workers wanted to start a trade union, but how was that to happen when the Company had banned all kinds of meeting activities? The Company owned all houses, roads and all the land in the valley. They also had a private police force. Where could they meet? The solution was lake ‘Langvatnet’. Nobody owns the water, and the 13th of January 1907; 1,300 people met on the ice at Langvatnet. Ole Kristoffer Sundt spoke standing on a margarine box: ‘Everyone who wants to join the trade union goes to the left!‘ No one stepped to the right. This happened during church time, and the comment from the priest was as follows: ‘The old Sulitjelma is falling now!‘
The Hanken miners represented by computer-worker Knut.
After the meeting at Langvatnet, 13 trade unions were established: 7 for miners and 6 workers’ unions. Sulitjelma had scattered settlements and difficult transport conditions, therefore this many departments.
The film ‘Sulis 1907‘ was directed by Nils Gaup and presents some of the prelude to the miners’ uprising. Knut (to the right) was a featured extra in the movie. Here in Olavsgruva at Røros.
After living with the Sulis movie for many weeks in 2022, Tobatheornottobathe just had to take the trip to Sulitjelma and experience the place for ourselves. We wanted to have a bath in lake Langvatnet! Ideally it should have been done through a hole in the ice, but as the premiere was set to October, this was relatively impossible. And where to swim? Langvatnet (Spoiler alert!) is actually quite long, almost 11 km (under a kilometer wide), so the possibilities are many. We chose the new housing estate Charlotta, built on the slag heap of the Charlotta mine.
A bit difficult to walk on the water this time.
A bath here was fine for us, but as previously mentioned: The locals hesitate, because of polluted water!
Ref: – Frifagbevelse.no – https://frifagbevegelse.no/magasinet-for-fagorganiserte/slavemerket-som-reiste-arbeiderkampen-pa-norges-nest-storste-arbeidsplass-6.469.821411.e4bf5b2fa7 – Eyvind Viken: ‘Pioner og agitator – et portrett av Helene Ugland‘, Falken Forlag, 1991 – Wikipedia: Sulitjelma Gruber
Sulis was for many years Norway’s most polluted place, but now (in 2023) the forest has returned.
In Sulitjelma (nickname Sulis), human activity has been traced 1,000 years back in time, but then we are talking about nomadic Sami people. Permanent settlement began with the Norwegian Anders Larsen in 1848. The name Sulitjelma comes from Pitesami language, but is not explained with absolute certainty. Suggestions for translations are ‘The Eyes’ Threshold‘ or ‘The Sun’s Eye‘.
Not all that glimmers is gold, but pyrite (“Fool’s gold”) certainly looks very much like it.
In 1858, the Sami Mons Petter found a stone that he thought was gold. Disappointingly, he did not become rich, as it turned out that he had found pyrite. However, the industrialist Nils Persson realized what it was, and that this could be useful in his factory at Hälsingborg, Sweden. He started test mining operations at Langvatnet southwest of Fauske, in 1887. This became an industrial adventure that was to last for over 100 years.
Outside the Mining Museum, Fagerli.
Sulitjelma Aktiebolag was founded on 10/2-1891. The population in Sulis increased dramatically from 50 around 1880 to 2,750 in 1910 (today less than 400 people). A total of 18 mines were opened in the area, and Sulitjelma Aktiebolag was for many years Norway’s second largest employer. With the mines came the need for cable cars, a laundry, an ore crusher, a power station, a wharf and eventually also a railway. The transport was demanding and expensive, with several reloadings along the way, to and from rail and boat.
In Sulis, a visit to both the mining museum and the visitor mine is just right. Photo: Unknown other visitor
The Sulitjelma mining industry closed in 1991. During 100 years of operation, 6 million tons of metal and sulfur were produced. Most of it was sulfur. The rest were: 470,000 tons of copper, 215 tons of zinc, 282 tons of silver, and 3.7 tons of gold. The visitor mine is located at +59 m (above Langvatnet). The mine shafts (which are now mostly filled with water) go all the way down to -396 m (ie approx. 250 m below sea level). The length of the shafts corresponds to a journey of 1240 km (Sulitjelma – Drammen).
The passenger lift down into the depths had an incline of 45 degrees. In the visitor’s mine, you can ride the mine train 1.6 km into the mine, but you cannot take the lift into water filled tunnels.
After a mine visit and the corresponding mining museum, a bath must be just right, we thought. However, after several testimonies from the locals, the conclusion was that ‘You don’t swim in Sulitjelma, it’s polluted here!‘ Too bad, we thought. Or? Maybe we could have a bath anyway? It felt really, really disappointing not to bathe, as tobatheornottobathe see it.
Look at this marvellous waterfall in the Giken river!
What if we did the bathing thing with our mouths closed? If the problem is heavy metals, then surely they won’t jump into our bodies during a short bath? And we thought this waterfall in the Giken River was so extreme in its colours, that we just had to bathe it.
The Giken River, heavy polluted.
Most of the pollution in the Sulitjelma waterways comes from the Giken River. After the mine was closed (1991 to 2013), NIVA has estimated the amount of heavy metals coming out of Lake Langvatnet to approximately 25 tons of copper, 30 tons of zinc, 80 kg of cadmium and 4,500 tons of sulphate – each year. Today, the pollution mostly comes from runoff from the mines. Attempts have been made to stop this by filling the mine tunnels with water. The fish in Langvatnet, though, actually do not contain heavy metals above the recommended values, but the people in Sulis still do not want to eat it (or to swim in the water).
Swimming in the Giken River is basically not something we recommend, even if the colors are spectacular.
