Sulitjelma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sulitjelma (Northern Sami: Sulis, Swedish: Sulitelma) is a village in Fauske municipality in Nordland, Norway. The village has 481 residents (2007).^[1]

[edit] History

Labour day, 1 May, being celebrated in 1908 at Sulitjelma

This section does not cite any references or sources. (June 2008)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The village has origins as a Sámi settlement, with archaeological findings dating more than a thousand years back, with evidence of summer breeding of reindeer at the end of the 1500s. In 1858 copper and sulfur was found in the area, and a limited excavations were performed. In 1887 the Swedish industrialist Nils Persson bought the rights to the findings, was the mining started. Sulitelma Aktiebolag was founded in 1891, and by the early 1900s it was the largest mining company in the country, and the second largest industrial company. At the peak in 1913 the company had 1,750 employees. In 1983 the mining rights were inherited by the state, who operated the mines until 1991. The mining company operated a railway, Sulitjelmabanen, from Fauske to Sulitjelma, from 1892 to 1972.