Lapphyttan in Norberg Municipality

Norberg Municipality

Norberg Municipality is a municipality in Västmanland County in central Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Norberg.- History :...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, may be regarded as the type site

Type site

In archaeology a type site is a site that is considered the model of a particular archaeological culture...

 for the Medieval Blast Furnace

Blast furnace

A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...

. Its date is probably between 1150 and 1350. It produced cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

, which was then fined to make balls of iron known as osmonds. Osmonds

Osmond iron

Osmond iron was wrought iron made by a particular process. This is associated with the first European production of cast iron in furnaces such as Lapphyttan in Sweden....

 occur in English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 Customs records in the 1250s and seem to be alluded to in a commercial treaty with Novgorod in 1203. Furnaces of this type have also been identified in Mark (Märkische Sauerland) in Westphalia and north of the Schwäbische Alb both in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Further reading

• N. Björkenstam, 'The Blast Furnace in Europe during the Medieval Times: part of a new system for producing wrought iron' and M. Kempa and Ü. Yalçin, 'Medieval Iron Smelting in southern Germany: early evidence of pig iron' both in G. Magnusson (ed.), The importance of Ironmaking: Technical Innovation and Social Change: papers presented at the Norberg concerence 1995 I (Jernkontoret, Stockholm 1995)

External links

• Järnet på Lapphyttan
• http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/scitech/iron_steel.html