Exploring a Hidden Mine in Norway’s Forest – Egelandsgrua

Deep inside the forest of Southern Norway an alleged old mine is hiding among trees and green bushes. Obviously we had to go explore.

Prepared for exploration we drove towards Vennesla, a small town north of Kristiansand in Norway. Although the mine, named Egelandsgrua, should be well hidden our research had found a forest track running very close by the mine with less than a kilometer to walk from the nearest parking space.

From here we were following the forest track until it split in two and then kept to the right.

The track had been clearly marked, but the use of plastic for this was not particularly impressive. Isn’t there enough plastic in nature already?

We prefer painted markers over plastic in nature…

Carrying on the hike brought us into denser forest. It may not look like a path at all, but with tall trees on both sides the centre path of bushes only made it easy to find the way.

What’s nice about photos is that you can’t see the abundance of ticks hiding in the bushes. When we walked past on the other hand, it was pretty hard to ignore…

A few hundred metres later the terrain opened up and turned to marshlands.

From what we’ve read there should be more markings here.

Tada! This was a pretty obvious sign. There was also supposed to be another plastic marker here, which apparently had disappeared. That’s why you don’t put plastic in nature!

Shortly after taking a right we saw this:

Even more plastic on a tree. Like we haven’t seen enough of that…

All the small rocks on the ground made it clear that this was from mining. And yes, as soon as we arrived at the plastic-marked tree the mine came into view:

The water in the small “puddle” is apparently 12 metres deep!

Tada! For sure flying bears and dragons live here, but we were brave enough to venture inside.

The tent had to be pitched and we quickly realised that a place filled with small rocks was far from ideal when you want a soft foundation for your tent. Thankfully the rocks could be moved and three thousand rocks (or something like that) later we had a soft and nice spot for our tent.

Since there was water in front of the entrance to the mine we had to climb around it. Carrying as little as we could we left our tripod and flashlight behind and had to do with light from our phones and a hand held camera.

Another potentially 12 metre deep puddle appeared inside. As we brought no spare clothes Jørn decided that balancing on the one tree crossing the water was a rather poor idea, but Tora saw no flaws with that plan and carried on. To our great surprise it all went well and Tora discovered that the mine ended a few metres further in (we also got to confirm that there were no flying bears or dragons there, but they could of course just be out on a hike too).

The view from the mine was rather good and we considered moving our tent to that spot, but the hard-to-reach entrance around the 12 metre deep puddle made us realise the tent was best left where we pitched it.