Today we discovered Kongsberg's silver mines. We went 2.2 km inside the mines with a small train. We were literally in the middle of the mountain, 300m underground in a mine that goes as deep as 1.1 km. These mines were founded in 1624 by King Christian IV and produced over 600 tons of silver over the years. They stopped in 1958. It's so impressive to see what human ingenuity can do: from the techniques developed to go deep down the mine, to the fire setting technique used to crack rocks before dynamite was invented. With this technique, the miners were able to dig at a rate of about 3ft per month vs. 20 cm per month by hand...
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| Ready to board the small train that took us inside the silver mines! |
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| Inside the (small) train car... Scary if you're claustrophobic. |
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| Inside the mine. It was only 6 degree C inside... |
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| In front of one of the "elevators" that was developed to get miners down. They could fit up to 7 miners in there! |
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| Proudly wearing my Columbia shirt 300m underground! For my little buddy Simon! |
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| In front of the mines main entrance |
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| Picnic outside of the silver mines |
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| Layla picking blueberries |
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| Demonstration of the "fire setting" technique used at the time to crack the hard rock formations |
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| Chippin' away! |
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