Mining Area of the Great Copper Mountain in Falun - UNESCO ...

2. Justification for Inscription
a. Statement of significance
“Falun Mine deserves indeed to be called the eighth wonder of the world, for as
regards the difficulty of the work and the pains and expense which it demands, the
age, renown and importance of the mine, it not only equals but surpasses all the
others (…) He who has not seen the Great Copper Mountain has not seen Sweden..”
Thus the map-engineer (markscheider) Olof Naucler wrote in a dissertation about the
Great Copper Mountain in 1702. Innumerable are the travellers, princes,
ambassadors and kings who have visited at Falun and been fascinated and terrified
by the vast depths of the mine, the dark, constricted working spaces, the shafts and
galleries below ground and the appalling furnace smoke by which Falun and its
surroundings were perpetually wreathed in sulphurous fumes of almost asphyxiating
density. Buildings in the mining town of Falun were blackened and all vegetation
was suffocated. Round about the mines and copper furnaces, the ground was laid
bare and completely sterile. The black slag landscape presented neither moss, lichen,
grass, shrubs nor trees within a radius of 2.5 km from the mine.
The Great Copper Mountain (in swedish "Stora Kopparberget") at Falun is the oldest
and most important mining enterprise in Sweden. Its oldest surviving document dates
from 1288 and the oldest surviving charter from 1347. Scientific analyses suggest
that the history of the mine goes back even further, to the eighth or ninth century
A.D.
Round about the Great Copper Mountain in medieval times was created a unique
man-made landscape and a distinctive cultural region known as Kopparbergslagen.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the Great Copper Mountain was the mainstay of
Sweden’s economy, enabling the country to become one of the leading states of
Europe. In the mid-17th century, the Great Copper Mountain was providing twothirds
of all the world’s copper output. In the mid-17th century, the government of
the realm declared: “This kingdom stands or falls by the Great Copper Mountain!”
Copper from Falun was exported all over the world and provided shining copper
roofs for palaces like Versailles in Paris and for churches and manor houses in
Sweden and Europe. Spain adopted a copper coinage standard and used coins struck
in Falun copper. In Sweden, mints were established at Säter in 1624 and at Avesta in
1644. The Swedish 10-daler piece, weighing about 20 kg, is regarded as the largest
sheet metal coin in the world.
The Great Copper Mountain was organised as a corporative operation, with yeomen
miners (bergsmän) owning shares (known as fjärdeparter) proportional to their
holdings of copper furnaces or shares in the same. The 1347 charter dealt among
other things with ore extraction, settlement and trade within the region. The
organisation of the mine was an early precursor of the joint stock companies of later
ages, and it is often referred to as “the oldest company in the world”.
The Great Copper Mountain and its Cultural Landscape in Falun has a unique,
outstandingly rich industrial history, with excellent documentation, collections,
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