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Arne O. Holm:
Sulitjelma: The World is Rearming For War – It is Felt Deep in The Mountains of Northern Norway
Comment (Sulitjelma): At the mining museum in Sulitjelma, Northern Norway, they are preparing for the summer season. A few kilometres further down the road, preparations are under way to open a new mine. And the noise from the cooling fans at the crypto factory is still almost deafening.
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This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. All views expressed are the writer's own.
A world that has gone from deep peace to bloody war leaves its mark far into the mountains of Northern Norway.
I am visiting Sulitjelma, or Sulis as many call it, in still air and brilliant sunshine. An idyll disturbed only by a continuous roar from the fans cooling an unknown number of computers in a round-the-clock hunt for cryptocurrency.
A somewhat absurd grimace at a region suffering from an acute shortage of power, or rather a shortage of grid capacity that can send the power where it is needed.
Arctic Sapphire
Wall to wall in the former workshop hall at Sandnes, there is a new possible star in the industrial sky of Northern Norway.
At Arctic Sapphire there is not a speck of dust on the floor, in sharp contrast to the chaos inside the crypto factory. Like the crypto factory, Arctic Sapphire is also dependent on access to electricity. But that is where any resemblance between the neighbours on the industrial site on the shore of Langvatnet (Long water) in Sulis ends.
The noise from the crypto factory is deafening.
To this day, the drive from the turn-off from the European route E6 just outside the town of Fauske and onwards along county road 830 to Sulis is a journey back in history, but perhaps also a journey into the future.
From the former shipping harbour for copper at Finneid, outside Fauske, the road follows the old railway route up to the old mining community of Sulitjelma. Today, just under 500 people live here.
At a time when ship tunnels on the west coast are being prioritised over railways in the north, it is fascinating to follow a more than 100-year-old railway route along the Sjønstå River, begun in 1891 and completed the following year.
They built a railway
Later, the railway was extended in two stages, and gradually replaced what must once have been the world’s most complicated transport leg for copper from the mines.
From 1956, when the entire railway route was completed, it was no longer necessary to shift the raw material between boats; in winter, dynamite had to be used to blast channels through the ice on Langvatnet, along with horses, carts and sheer muscle power.
The road, today pure idyll between the tunnels, was opened in August 1972 after an intense three-week construction period.
In the car on the way to Sulis, I find myself thinking about this. Many of the challenges in the north still concern infrastructure, such as roads, railways and electricity.
The wars decide
Then there is a parallel as well. A historical parallel that very few saw coming. During the First World War, metal prices soared and made mining highly profitable.
Then, as the Cold War gradually ebbed away, prices fell, and in 1991, after many years of hard struggle between owners, authorities and trade unions, the mine closed for good.
It could have been the end of the old mining community. But then, 35 years later, with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in their respective presidential chairs, it is once again the weapons that are doing the talking. Together with an almost explosive technological development, ever new acts of war are leading to a renewed hunt for minerals.
A hunt for minerals, but also a race between China and the United States for control of the raw materials, not least for the development of AI, artificial intelligence.
A geopolitical brawl that has reached all the way into the idyllic mountain region on the border between Sweden and Norway.
Full stop
A few kilometres before the first turn-off to Sulis, at Glastunes, which like most place names up here is a Norwegianised version of original Sámi names, an excavator is parked outside a closed gate in the mountainside.
As recently as April, there was very different activity here. The company New Sulitjelma Mines (NSG), owned by Canadian Blue Moon Minerals, set to work on the known Rupsi deposit. A deposit that has never been in production, only explored. Once again, mines were to be opened in Sulis.
But then everything came to a complete halt. Another company, Luxembourg-based VMS Exploration, also holds rights in the same area.
Arctic Sapphire, a new industrial shooting star?
Outside the closed gate in the massive rock face, I speak with Blue Moon’s spokesperson and managing director, mining enthusiast Øystein Rushfeldt. The next day, he is due to travel to Oslo to meet that very competitor, VMS Exploration.
“The aim is to reach an agreement between the two companies, instead of sabotaging each other. I believe we will succeed,” Rushfeldt explains.
Learning of the ship tunnel
But first, he too is making a stop in Sulis. There, he will meet 20–30 representatives from business associations in Northern Norway. They have chosen Sulitjelma as their meeting place as they shape future strategy and lobbying efforts.
The head of the hosts, Anja Fagereng of the Fauske Business Association, tells me she is inspired by the lobbying that secured a political majority which, in the revised national budget, ensured funding for the Stad Ship Tunnel.
“We have a great deal to learn here,” she says ahead of the meeting with her Northern Norwegian colleagues and Øystein Rushfeldt.
For Øystein Rushfeldt, the meetings with VMS in Oslo are about finding a way forward for mining in Sulis.
“Instead of getting in each other’s way, which is also entirely possible if we do not reach an agreement,” says Rushfeldt.
After the meetings, Rushfeldt remains optimistic.
“But it will take a few weeks before we have a final result,” he tells me.
The meeting is, in reality, a question of whether or not there will be new mining in this area. For the time being, the gate is closed, while the signs insist that this is a construction site.
Among the residents of Sulitjelma, there are differing views on opening a new mine. Those who want new mining hope the two companies can co-operate. Others believe life in the former mining community stands on its own feet without new mining.
The mining museum
I continue on to the Mining Museum, part of Nordland Museum.
An engaged former miner, John Gunnar Olsen, takes an exclusive party consisting of Marta Anna Løvberg, communications manager for Nordland Museum, Marianne Normann, marketing manager for the museum’s southern division, and myself through the history of the mine.
I have visited the museum before, but Olsen adds new dimensions to the museum’s exhibition. Oddly enough, I become fixated on the slightly absurd fact that the miners in Sulis played tennis. In one photograph, Bjarne Braaten poses, who, at least from 1945 to 1946, in addition to a number of other sports-related roles, was head of what was called the Tennis District Association.
The late Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation profile Herbjørn Sørebø wrote a poetry collection in 1972 entitled “Farmers do not play tennis”. Perhaps not, but the miners in Sulis actually did play tennis.
Later the same day, John Gunnar Olsen and his colleague Tom Vegard Larsen are to fire up an old diesel locomotive and transport me 1.6 kilometres into the main adit of the Giken mine, the last mine that remained in operation until it closed in 1991.
For me, this is also an encounter with my first fumbling steps into journalism. As early as the late 1970s, the first mobilisation against a possible closure of mining operations in Sulitjelma began.
Together with the leaders of what had developed into one of the country’s strongest trade unions, I was allowed to go into the mine and meet the miners. How deep into the mountain we went at the time, I cannot remember.
Negotiating to open a new mine in Sulis.
Conscientious objectors
At its deepest, the mine lay 545 metres below Lake Langvatnet.
“We do not concern ourselves with the sea in here. Langvatnet is our zero point,” John Gunnar Olsen explains.
Today’s trip into the visitor mine, open to those who want an insight into what underground life was like, stops at the wagons that carried the miners farther and farther into the mountain. The journey to work from the point where one entered the mountain to a workable deposit took almost an hour.
But up here too, the copper lies visible in the tunnel. A few blows with the original sledgehammers — in the early years the ore was extracted by hand — reveal the unmistakable smell of sulphur. Pyrite and copper, two different minerals, are usually found in the same lump of ore.
Until 1858, Sulitjelma did not exist. The change came when Sámi Mons Petter found what he thought was a lump of gold. Or rather, many years later. The lump of gold turned out to be something entirely different, namely pyrite.
Valuable enough for a Swedish investor, on an ice-cold day in February 1887, to send the engineer Alfred Hasselbom, leading 50 convicted conscientious objectors, into the mountains of Northern Norway.
The recruitment was no coincidence. The climate was brutal, and the working conditions just as harsh.
At its peak, 3,000 people lived in Sulis, in addition to between 300 and 400 in Jakobsbakken (Jacob's Hill), a mining town further in and higher up in the mountains. Today it is a gem of a community where parts of the historic building stock have been converted into holiday homes, while others are still owned by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission.
Artificial sapphires
Today, just under 500 people still live in Sulis. That number could quickly increase, even without new mining activity.
The explanation is found roughly where this story began, in the ultra-modern factory premises down in the old industrial area at Sandnes. Here, production manager Erik Lund of Arctic Sapphire works alongside a modest staff of five. The ambition is for significant growth in the workforce.
There is talk of several hundred employees.
Arctic Sapphire is an Austrian-owned industrial company that produces artificial sapphires, or sapphire crystals. It is a complex and partly secret process behind a highly sought-after product.
Like the minerals that may be extracted from the mountain, the crystals produced in Sulis are also part of the geopolitical race taking place between Europe on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other.
It is about becoming self-sufficient in crucial inputs for modern technology. The crystals are used in smartwatches, cameras, phones and other LED technology.
In Sulitjelma, green energy and cooling from Langvatnet, at a production cost far lower than that of competitors, are both the most important input factors and the strongest selling point.
Erik Lund gives a tour of a production facility where the employees themselves have so far installed a total of six furnaces. Technological development is moving quickly, and space has been cleared for 100 new furnaces if the company succeeds in taking a leading market position, which is long-term and demanding work.
The war industry
Back outside again, it is the roar from the fans cooling the German-owned crypto factory Bluebite that dominates. In addition to gigantic, power-hungry fans, the doors into the premises have been removed and replaced with grilles to keep the temperature down on the computers hunting for cryptocurrency.
A very special and controversial form of mining, or crypto mining as it is called. Without ripple effects for the local community. Without local employees. Hardly any employees at all.
At the mining museum I learn that the miners played tennis.
Large gaps in the grilles that replace locked doors make it easy to get inside.
The last time I visited the factory, one of the owners showed me a separate corner with computers supplying Israel with artificial intelligence, a crucial part of the Israeli war machine, produced with green energy from the Arctic.
I leave Sulitjelma with a few paradoxes in my luggage.
The obvious one first.
Despite strong opposition, international crypto speculation continues to extract scarce resources in the north. The transmission system operator in the Norwegian energy system, Statnett, has put its foot down on the allocation of new power above 5 MW. For all practical purposes, that is a no to new industry.
Or illustrated in another way, the same amount that Bluebite is currently allowed to use without benefiting the region.
Then the more intricate part.
The labour movement, not least in the north, and especially in Sulitjelma, was strongly anti-militarist. Even in a mine where the first to break the ore, using sheer manual force, were Swedish conscientious objectors.
Through his trilogy about Sulis, the eminent author Dag Skogheim has provided powerful testimony to how the Norwegian labour movement, in cooperation with its Swedish and Finnish colleagues, rose in protest against rearmament before the First World War.
“The generals’ war is never the workers’ war,” was one of the slogans.
I leave Sulitjelma with a few paradoxes in my luggage.
Today, the political leaders of the United States, Russia and Israel are sending their soldiers into ever new wars. In the wake of war follows a growing need for minerals extracted from the mountains.
Finally, the political paradox.
The history of industry in Sulitjelma, together with the history of the Swedish LKAB in Kiruna on the other side of the border, comes together not only in a shared labour market, but also through a willingness to build railways in areas where people scarcely believed it possible to build infrastructure.
The truth may rather be that it has never been more difficult to build infrastructure in the north than it is right now. In 2026, there is no shortage of either money or technology.
It was the willingness to invest that disappeared along with our own wealth.
