History

Copper mining at Falun is first documented in 1288 CE, when Bishop Peter of Västerås accepted one-eighth of a share in the mine as a bequest — suggesting the mine was already a significant economic entity. Medieval copper production was small-scale, using hand tools and fire-setting (lighting fires against the rock face to crack it with thermal stress). The mine was worked cooperatively by the local burghers of Falun.

The great expansion came in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Swedish Crown needed copper for coinage, artillery, and international trade; Falun was its primary source. By the mid-17th century the mine employed approximately 1,200 workers and produced an estimated 3,000 tonnes of copper annually — the equivalent, in some years, of two-thirds of global copper production. This copper funded Sweden’s military power in the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), when Sweden emerged as the dominant power in northern Europe and occupied much of northern Germany. Falun was, in effect, the financial foundation of the Swedish Empire.

The disaster came on Midsummer Day, 24 June 1687, when most of the miners were absent for the holiday. The central section of the mine — where intensive extraction over decades had left the supporting rock pillars too thin — collapsed catastrophically, creating the vast open crater (Stora Stöten, “the Great Pit”) that still defines the site. No lives were lost because of the holiday; had it occurred on a working day, the death toll would have been catastrophic. The collapse actually clarified the site: it revealed the full extent of the ore body, allowing a more systematic approach to mining.

Production continued after the collapse and remained significant into the 18th century, though never at 17th-century levels. By the 19th century iron pyrite (for sulphuric acid production) had become more economically important than copper. Mining continued, increasingly mechanised, until the mine was finally closed in 1992.

The mine’s most pervasive legacy is invisible to most people who know it: Falun Red (Faluröd), the characteristic dark red-ochre paint on Swedish timber farmhouses. The paint is made from iron sulfate, iron oxide, rye flour, and linseed oil — waste products of the copper-smelting process. Cheap, abundant, and effective as a wood preservative, it has been applied to Swedish country buildings since the 17th century. Today roughly 80% of Swedish rural wooden buildings are painted in some variant of Falun Red.