ABOUT HARALD HOLMGREN
Today we know that the discoveries and the work that Harald Holmgren made between 1932 and 1936 were very valuable. To this day, there are still many geologists from all ovar the world that are coping to visit Varuträsk to have a look at this place for themselves.
By the end of the 19th century, there was a family in Varuträsk, consosting 9 siblings. One of them was Harald Holmgren, born 1892. At a very early age, Harald helped out at the farm. Milking cows and hunt for rabbits were some of the tasks he helped out with and he always had a very high working morale in everything he did.
The years went by and when Harald was 26 years old he, together with a colleague, founded Norrbottens cement foundry. Business went great and Harald’s sense of entrepreneurship kept him in constant movement and in 1928 he decided to move and start delivering gravel in Strömfors. That business was so successful and Harald was at that time called “The Gravel King”.
In 1930 Haralds father had reached an age where he felt that it was time to sell his farm in Varuträsk. In order to keep the property in the family, Harald decided to move back to his childhood village and buy the farm from his father. Therefore ha had to end the mining business and become a farmer full-time.
One day when Harald was out hunting, he ending up on a mountain.Due to his passion for exploring, he started investigating the area and to this big surprise, he noticed some pegmatite. Pegmatite is a silicate rock that, togheter with quartz, feldspar, and mica geological forms the so-called Skellefte-granite. Between 1932 and 1935 ha ran the mining.
Harald understood that this rapid development would be far too expemsive to continue without heavy macinery and decided to sell the area to Boliden in 1936. That was a deal he never came to regret. Through the years ha had gotten himself a big family with three daughters and three sons, and Harald wasworking as a farmer after ha sold the mine. The only ones with regrets were probably the people in the village, who kept calling Harald crazy beacuse of all his work in the mine.
The mine work stopped in 1946 and at that point, 28.904-ton pegmatite and over 50 different minerals had been extracted from the mine.
Because of the work Harald put in, he is a respected guru among other geologists and today no one believes that he was out of his mind.