Historical mining tour

Our most popular guided tour, Historical Mining in the Cobalt Mines, is packed with history and excitement and is best suited for children and adults from 10 years and up. Highlights on the tour include walking over a “floating” glass floor and 32-meter-long underground suspension bridge—the first in Norway!

Facts
Where Koboltgruvene, Malmveien 620, 3370 Vikersund
Suitable for From 10 years
Age Limit none
Duration 1.5 hours
Adapted for Wheelchair
Tickets:
Adult 299,-
Children 4-15 years 210,-
Children under 4 years free entrance.

The tour begins at the Mining Yard, right in the middle of the mining landscape. Here you meet your guide and, at the mine entrance, receive your obligatory miner’s helmet and fleece cape. Inside the mountain, it is approximately 4 degrees centigrade.

Once in the mine «Clara Stoll» you pass through a 200-meter-long transport tunnel into the ore lake in the mountain. Along the way, you learn about the techniques used to create the many mining tunnels and extract the cobalt-rich ore, and the chemical process that turned ore to cobalt-blue pigment.

You will pass shafts that give a sense of the enormous dimensions of the Cobalt Mines. In Shaft 10 South, for example, it is almost 25 meters up to the ceiling, while in the Kormannsjakt, or Korman Shaft, the bottom is 40 meters below you.

Glass floor

400 meters inside and 50 meters underground in the Cobalt Mines is one of our newest attractions - ready to be stepped on. The underground glass floor in the Edvard Shaft is the first of its kind in the Nordic region. When this shaft was first cleared, we came across an original timber walkway left from mining in the 19th century, 20 meters down. At first, the question was, how to show this historic relic? But then our museum director, Tone S. Steinsvik, got the idea of putting in a glass floor. After consultations with numerous experts, her idea became reality - and now you can walk right out and over it!

For many visitors, even the most intrepid, it comes as a shock to see the old timber walkway floating 20 meters below them, but there’s no reason to feel unsafe: The construction was carefully tested and built to withstand eight tons. The Glass Floor is an exciting and spectacular element of this popular mining trip.

Suspension bridge

As if an underground glass floor is exciting enough, we also have a 32 metres long suspension bridge inside the mines. The bridge let us walk in the middle of the cobalt ore, in the Glück Auf stope.

Together we promise you this is an unforgettable experience.

The entire tour is on footpaths and can be experienced with a wheelchair. (If you’d prefer not to venture onto either the glass floor or the suspension bridge, that’s fine!) This tour has no age limit.

Season opening in 2024 is 11 May.

Schedule for guided tours:

May 11 - June 21:
Tuesday and Wednesday: 12.30pm
Saturday and Sunday: 12, 2pm and 4pm

June 22 - August 18:
Every day: 12, 2pm and 4pm

August 19 - September 22:
Tuesday and Wednesday: 12.30pm
Saturday and Sunday: 12, 2pm and 4pm

Terms of sale

See also

Barn i Koboltgruvene

Children's Mine Tour

Gruvebutikk med turistinformasjon, Koboltgruvene

Mining shop with tourist information

Gruvekroa, Koboltgruvene

The Miner's Inn

Barn ser på utstilling i gruvemuseene, Scheidehuset, Koboltgruvene.

The mining museums

Fra Gruvesafari i Koboltgruvene

Mining safari

Dagbrudd i Nordgruvene, med blåse som markerer første malmfunn. Tone Steinsvik som ser utover. Koboltgruvene.

The hunt for cobalt

Kittelsenmuseet på Koboltgruvene

The Kittelsen Museum

Dagbrudd i Nordgruvene, med blåse som markerer første malmfunn. Tone Steinsvik som ser utover. Koboltgruvene.

The North Mines Trail

Sydgruvene, Koboltgruvene. Kultursti

South Mines Trail