The History of Gold on the Ivalo River

The story of Lapland’s gold is of old origin. The first public information dates back to the days of Gustav Vasa, the king of Sweden and Finland during the first decades of the 16th century. It was rumoured that gold had been found near an old Sami dwelling and market place in the present region of Utsjoki. However, prospecting yielded such poor results that digging was financially unprofitable at that time. The king of Denmark was very excited about the same deposit in the 18th century, but in the trial panning in 1868 the deposit was found to be financially unimportant. The expedition exploring the deposit did trial pannings also on other rivers, lastly on the Ivalo River in September. The story of the gold of Ivalo began on the 16th of September in 1868. The expedition managed to pan such an amount of gold within a few days that its leader Johan Conrad Lihr reported excitedly that “Finnish California had been found”. That led to several decades’ activity on the Ivalo River.

The Origin of the Gold

The region of the Ivalo River belongs to the granulite area curving through Lapland south of Lake Inari. The best gold deposits have been found near the southern edge of the granulite arc. Gold occurs in nature either in connection with other minerals or in pure form in the bedrock and in gravel weathered from it. In gravel carried by water, heavy gold grains have sunk in the bottom of streams and rivers or in layers of different ages. It is likely that panned gold originates near its site of discovery. There are probably several parent rocks and they can be of different types. The shape and colour of gold nuggets vary according to their discovery site. The important bases in the goldfields on the Ivalo River have been Kultala and Ritakoski, as well as Pahaoja (Eurogranites Arctic 2009 Stop 1) and Moberginoja on the Sotajoki River.

Old Pahaoja gold prospector’s cabin on the river Sotajoki.