The day we learned the story of White Gold.
- Lisa Olafsdottir
- Apr 17, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 19, 2024
One unusually gloomy April’s day in Zell and See, we decided to take a break from skiing. We weren’t sure how to spend this grey Easter Bank holiday Monday but decided on visiting a salt mine museum. The idea of travelling deep into the depths of the Durrnberg plateau on a little odd-looking train and then sliding between mine levels on a miner’s slide immediately caught our interest!
The Salzwelten salt mine is redundant (although they still produce gourmet salt) turned museum and is located just outside the town of Hallein, a little over an hour's drive away from Zell am See. The area has a long and rich history of mining for salt with evidence of people mining for salt dating back 7000 years and first mentioned in a deed way back in the year 1198. Here salt is known as white gold, the essence of life and was traded all across Europe bringing riches and prosperity to the region.
Fun fact, in 1607 the mine greeted its first guests which made it the first salt mine in the world to open its doors to the public, 417 years of salt production education, not too bad that!
While we waited for our tour to begin we took a stroll through a replica of an authentic Celtic Village, SALINA Celtic Village. We got a sneak peek into how Celtic minor families lived and worked on the Durrnberg plateau some 2500 years ago as we wandered from hut to hut. Each hut was dedicated to a specific trade and showed how life was in the distant past with illustrations, sounds and hands-on replicas of original objects used in the Celts day to day life. All objects that have been found in archaeological digs on the Durrnberg and sites of other Iron Age settlements.
This sparked an interest and curiosity in us to later check out the Museum of the Celts in Hallein where the original artefacts are kept safe and on display … I digress ... when it was time for our tour to begin we were asked to kit up in overalls to protect our clothes from the damp and salty walls of the mines. The pre-teen and teen weren't too keen on the outfit but they quickly forgot their outfit sorrows as they began their underground journey.
After watching a beautiful introductory film about salt's origin 3.8 billion years ago, we geared up for our interactive time travel.
The first stop was a modern mine where our guide told us about the workings of modern mining and salt production. From there we were taken to the murky Middle Ages and then ended up in a mine showing us how the Celtic miners of the Iron Age mined for salt. As any welsh folk will know, mining is and was a tremendously dangerous and hard work. To make this journey through time we travelled on a train, and foot, crossed the subterranean border between Austria and Germany, slid down on wooden miner’s slides between levels and went on a raft. The raft ride as slow and mesmerising and took us across a mystical underground salt lake under the low ceilings of the mine all the way to the enchanting world of Baroque Salzburg, built on the wealth of white gold and the salt miners toil.
This was a fabulous adventure and we learned all about the origin of salt and how it is regarded as the essence of life. Like Olafur said he’d never paid any attention to how salt came about and still it is in most things. We weren’t sure what to expect for our impromptu visit to the mine. It was a lucky find and we found it very informative, interesting and most importantly, it was a fun day out. We like fun.
Lisa
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