Though Sweden furnishes but an insignificant quantity of iron when measured by an English scale, yet, in point of quality, its produce is unrivalled in the world. The purest iron-ores (magnetic iron-stone) abound in the mountain chains which traverse the kingdom, and immense forests afford almost inexhaustible supplies of charcoal for their smelting, so that hitherto the want of roads has alone prevented the production of iron from attaining dimensions equal to the natural resources of the country. Many of the richest mines, particularly in the more northern provinces, have never yet been worked, as for instance the enormous mounds of magnetic iron-ore at Gellivara (67° N. lat.) in Swedish Lapland, beyond the Arctic circle, which, from their situation in a polar desert, have hitherto been totally useless. In 1865 an attempt was made to utilize them by means of a railroad and the canalization of the river Luleo, but after a heavy expense the works were finally abandoned. Thus the manufacture of iron, which, under more favourable circumstances, would reach as far as its ores extend, is confined to Dalecarlia, the more central provinces of Kopperberg, Wermland, and Upsala, where the celebrated mines of Dannemora, which furnish the fine Oeregrund iron, largely imported into England for the manufacture of steel, deserve our particular notice, both for their ancient renown and their wild and colossal grandeur. An excellent road leads from the famous university town of Upsala to Old Upsala, old and hoary in the fullest sense of the word, for its church dates from the Pagan times, and close by rise three tumuli which, according to popular tradition, contain the remains of no less important personages than Odin, Thor, and the divine Freya. Further on towards the north-east, six geographical miles from Upsala, lie the iron-works of Oesterby, remarkable for their beautiful situation in a natural park of forests and lakes, and thence half an hour’s walk over the plain brings one to the far-famed pit of Dannemora.