Holes in the Ground

A pleasingly late start. Even the kids aren’t up until nine, which is unheard of, and blissful.

After a slow breakfast, and a trip to the nearest pharmacy to deal with Freya’s skin infection, we decide to spend the afternoon in a geological pursuit, and go in search of Tinnsjå Copper Mine. Getting to within a few hundred metres is easy enough, but the entrance is elusive. “This is a proper adventure!” Freya declares.

While I’m thrashing about in the undergrowth the landowner runs into Liz and gets all proprietorial with her. “You can’t take anything away!”, he tells her. In forty years of underground exploration (Yes, I started young. I was exploring mines with my Dad and his friends when I was as young as five), I’ve yet to meet a landowner who delights in having an interesting hole in the ground on their property.

It turns out that the Norges Kart map is incorrect. Errors of position are one thing, but topological errors are quite another; it turns out the mine entrance is on the other side of a track from where it is marked.

We’re not equipped to enter today, and have no intentions of doing so. We’ll come back with the proper kit another time, for an efficient trip now the entrance is located.

There has been repeated interest in this copper-silver deposit from its discovery 1780 up the the present day, so who knows what we’ll find.