headquarters of the Kopparberg Mining Company, the, oldest industrial
corporation in the world. The buildings date back to the seventeenth
century and the mines are even more ancient. A mortgage bond was filed
upon them in the year 1288 by a German company, and the records show
that in 1347 the privilege of working them was sold by the king of
Sweden to a syndicate of Lubeck miners. But these documents which are
on file in the archives of the town are comparatively modern, because
the copper deposits at Fahlun were known and worked in prehistoric
times, and from them the Vikings obtained the sheathings for their
ships and the material from which their copper armor, implements, and
utensils were made. An immense amount of copper was used and worked
with great skill in Scandinavia even before the Christian era, and the
most of it came from the great deposits at Fahlun.

The iron industry is old in Sweden. Isaac Breant, a tradesman in
Stockholm, founded a company and received a charter from Charles XI in
1685. He built the first blast furnace in Sweden, and died in 1702,
leaving the property to his son, who died in 1720. The heirs sold out
in 1722 to a man named Grill, in whose family the property remained
until 1800, when it was purchased by the ancestors of the present
owners.

The famous Dannemora mines, which produce the best Bessemer ore in the
world, have been worked continuously since 1481. It is one of the most
valuable and extensive iron deposits in the world, and resembles those
of Lake Superior. The area of ore already located covers 12,500 square
meters.[m]