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Barren Berry Season Leads to Far Richer Discovery
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
OVERTURINGEN, Sweden — It was a lousy blueberry season in 2007, said Siv Wiik, 70, one of a pair of Swedish grandmothers now credited with discovering what experts say may be one of the richest gold deposits in Europe. “That year it was too cold in the spring, so there were few berries,” she said.
Berry picking is a serious business to Mrs. Wiik (pronounced VEEK), who was born in this village of 171, and her friend, Harriet Svensson, 69. For 40 years the two, widows with children and grandchildren, have explored every patch of field and forest clearing in the region, hunting for mushrooms and wild berries — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cloudberries.
But the women are also amateur geologists. They never leave home for a stroll in forests or fields without their geologists’ hammers, with their 30-inch handles, and their magnifying eyepieces, dangling from ribbons around their necks.
So in that terrible August when the blueberry crop failed, they decided to poke around for minerals. They went to a place called Sorkullen, far down an unpaved logging road, where trees had recently been felled, upending the earth and exposing rock to the air. Using their hammers, they cleared soil from around the stones, digging for about six hours, deeper and deeper, until they found a rock with a dull glimmer.
Sweden has gold, but it is not in the major league of gold mining countries, as the women were well aware. Still, they were hopeful. “We often found bits of copper and gold there,” Mrs. Wiik said. “So we thought, somewhere there must be a mother mountain. Now, we hope we found it.”
The women phoned Arne Sundberg, of the Geological Survey of Sweden in Uppsala, who came the following day. “When he looked, he thought something was wrong with his eyepiece,” said Mrs. Svensson, laughing. Analysis showed that the stone contained more than 23 grams of gold per ton; most active mines in Sweden yield less than 5 grams.
The women entered a sample in an annual geological competition run by Mr. Sundberg. “You must find something that’s new and unusual, that looks promising for the future,” Mr. Sundberg said by telephone. “It could be a new mine, not just gold, but something new. It was the first time the ladies entered.” Needless to say, they won.
Mrs. Svensson and Mrs. Wiik are in many ways quite different. Mrs. Wiik, the smaller of the two, is intense and thoughtful; Mrs. Svensson is taller, quick and outgoing. But both are careful planners.
A huge Swedish lumber conglomerate, S.C.A., owns the land where they found the gold, but not the mineral rights. So they proceeded to obtain the rights for a large area around the find, then entered into negotiations, alone and without lawyers, with about 20 mining companies from Sweden and abroad, finally choosing Hansa Resources, of Vancouver, Canada.
This month, Hansa began boring at the site to obtain samples to send to Vancouver for analysis. “Whether it’s gold or not, even with a high-grade ore, you cannot see it with the naked eye,” said Anders Hogrelius, project manager for the drilling. “This was a surprise, and I think it’s positive, since it shows that it’s worthwhile to go outside the traditional mining areas.”
The windfall for the women has until now been modest. Hansa paid the women about $125,000 for the mining rights, and if a second round of boring is authorized this fall, the company will pay an additional $225,000. But the women have also been given a 20 percent stake in any future mining activities, which could yield a bonanza for many years to come.
“By then I’ll be out in the churchyard,” Mrs. Wiik said with a laugh.
Yet she concedes that their lives have already changed. “We’ve had a thousand visitors: miners, journalists, a lot of prospectors, Canadians and Australians,” she said. In the fall, she and Mrs. Svensson plan to treat themselves to a trip to White Cliffs, Australia, to search for the opal that abounds there.
“You cannot live forever, so we hope it goes to our children,” Mrs. Wiik said. “If they mine, we get 20 percent, but that is if. Then the money will come in.”
Not only money. The village of Overturingen is essentially dying, as young people desert the forests to find work in the big cities. The population is down from about 500 in the 1960s, when logging still provided jobs and families like Mrs. Wiik’s supplemented their incomes by fishing the lakes and keeping cows, pigs and hens.
“Last year we had 35 births, where we should have had 100,” said Sten-Ove Danielsson, mayor of Ange, the nearby town of which Overturingen is now a part. Population decline is a plague across northern Sweden.
Mr. Hogrelius, the drilling project manager, said a fully operating mine would bring jobs. “We usually estimate five jobs created in services for every one in the mines,” he said. A first estimate of initial investment, he added, comes to about $15 million.
Such talk is music to Mayor Danielsson’s ears, for only jobs can keep people on the land. The women share his hope. “You must be realistic, for only one of 100 finds proves to be a mine,” Mrs. Wiik said. “But the analysis of our find is remarkable, so one can hope.”
“If it’s just 50 jobs,” the mayor added, “it’s big for the area.”
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
OVERTURINGEN, Sweden — It was a lousy blueberry season in 2007, said Siv Wiik, 70, one of a pair of Swedish grandmothers now credited with discovering what experts say may be one of the richest gold deposits in Europe. “That year it was too cold in the spring, so there were few berries,” she said.
Berry picking is a serious business to Mrs. Wiik (pronounced VEEK), who was born in this village of 171, and her friend, Harriet Svensson, 69. For 40 years the two, widows with children and grandchildren, have explored every patch of field and forest clearing in the region, hunting for mushrooms and wild berries — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cloudberries.
But the women are also amateur geologists. They never leave home for a stroll in forests or fields without their geologists’ hammers, with their 30-inch handles, and their magnifying eyepieces, dangling from ribbons around their necks.
So in that terrible August when the blueberry crop failed, they decided to poke around for minerals. They went to a place called Sorkullen, far down an unpaved logging road, where trees had recently been felled, upending the earth and exposing rock to the air. Using their hammers, they cleared soil from around the stones, digging for about six hours, deeper and deeper, until they found a rock with a dull glimmer.
Sweden has gold, but it is not in the major league of gold mining countries, as the women were well aware. Still, they were hopeful. “We often found bits of copper and gold there,” Mrs. Wiik said. “So we thought, somewhere there must be a mother mountain. Now, we hope we found it.”
The women phoned Arne Sundberg, of the Geological Survey of Sweden in Uppsala, who came the following day. “When he looked, he thought something was wrong with his eyepiece,” said Mrs. Svensson, laughing. Analysis showed that the stone contained more than 23 grams of gold per ton; most active mines in Sweden yield less than 5 grams.
The women entered a sample in an annual geological competition run by Mr. Sundberg. “You must find something that’s new and unusual, that looks promising for the future,” Mr. Sundberg said by telephone. “It could be a new mine, not just gold, but something new. It was the first time the ladies entered.” Needless to say, they won.
Mrs. Svensson and Mrs. Wiik are in many ways quite different. Mrs. Wiik, the smaller of the two, is intense and thoughtful; Mrs. Svensson is taller, quick and outgoing. But both are careful planners.
A huge Swedish lumber conglomerate, S.C.A., owns the land where they found the gold, but not the mineral rights. So they proceeded to obtain the rights for a large area around the find, then entered into negotiations, alone and without lawyers, with about 20 mining companies from Sweden and abroad, finally choosing Hansa Resources, of Vancouver, Canada.
This month, Hansa began boring at the site to obtain samples to send to Vancouver for analysis. “Whether it’s gold or not, even with a high-grade ore, you cannot see it with the naked eye,” said Anders Hogrelius, project manager for the drilling. “This was a surprise, and I think it’s positive, since it shows that it’s worthwhile to go outside the traditional mining areas.”
The windfall for the women has until now been modest. Hansa paid the women about $125,000 for the mining rights, and if a second round of boring is authorized this fall, the company will pay an additional $225,000. But the women have also been given a 20 percent stake in any future mining activities, which could yield a bonanza for many years to come.
“By then I’ll be out in the churchyard,” Mrs. Wiik said with a laugh.
Yet she concedes that their lives have already changed. “We’ve had a thousand visitors: miners, journalists, a lot of prospectors, Canadians and Australians,” she said. In the fall, she and Mrs. Svensson plan to treat themselves to a trip to White Cliffs, Australia, to search for the opal that abounds there.
“You cannot live forever, so we hope it goes to our children,” Mrs. Wiik said. “If they mine, we get 20 percent, but that is if. Then the money will come in.”
Not only money. The village of Overturingen is essentially dying, as young people desert the forests to find work in the big cities. The population is down from about 500 in the 1960s, when logging still provided jobs and families like Mrs. Wiik’s supplemented their incomes by fishing the lakes and keeping cows, pigs and hens.
“Last year we had 35 births, where we should have had 100,” said Sten-Ove Danielsson, mayor of Ange, the nearby town of which Overturingen is now a part. Population decline is a plague across northern Sweden.
Mr. Hogrelius, the drilling project manager, said a fully operating mine would bring jobs. “We usually estimate five jobs created in services for every one in the mines,” he said. A first estimate of initial investment, he added, comes to about $15 million.
Such talk is music to Mayor Danielsson’s ears, for only jobs can keep people on the land. The women share his hope. “You must be realistic, for only one of 100 finds proves to be a mine,” Mrs. Wiik said. “But the analysis of our find is remarkable, so one can hope.”
“If it’s just 50 jobs,” the mayor added, “it’s big for the area.”
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