Horse Whims in Persberg

In Persberg, all hoisting up until the year 1719 had been carried out using hand windlasses. After that, three horse whims were installed. For many years, horse whims would prove to be the most efficient hoisting device for rock, and were used at several smaller mines right up until around 1900.

Johan Blåder’s Recollections (interview 1962)

In an interview from 1962, Johan Blåder (born 17 September 1876 in a turf hut at Norra Hammarrepet, Persberg) speaks about his childhood and life at the mines.

At the age of 14 he began working as a ”whim-driving boy”, which he himself described as the worst job one could have.

He drove the horse whim at Lyckfallet, most likely at the Bolandsgruvan mine. For every barrel hoisted, the horse and the ”whim-driving boy” completed 18 circuits. Rock was hauled during the day and water during the night.

Blåder recounts that the horses were often difficult to manage. They did not take well to the hard and monotonous work. The worst were the cold winter nights:

”It could be so cold that the air cracked.”

Manager H. V. Tiberg on Horse Whims (1898)

In 1898, manager H. V. Tiberg wrote the following about horse whims:

”The limit for the use of a horse whim, when one horse is employed, lies at a hoisting quantity of approximately 125 ton-settings per day, corresponding, for example, to hoisting 25 tons of rock and water from a depth of 5 settings, and when two horses are used, at double that quantity. The net load is usually close to or around ½ ton and the hoisting speed 0.16 m per second, and if one calculates the work performed by the horse based on the gross weight hauled, it is found to amount to 1.6 up to as much as 2.3 horsepower, not counting friction and power loss in the horse whim itself.”

(1 setting ≈ 10 metres. TN)

Transcribed from: Annals of the Värmland Mining Association, 1898. January 2025, TN.

Early References to Horse Whims (1683)

Harald Carlborg writes:

”In the 1683 report, the mine master states that he had a horse whim constructed for Nygruvan, and at the autumn assembly of the same year the mine bailiff was ordered to procure a horse whim rope at Hennickehammar, so that ’the whim shall now without any delay be brought into operation’.”

This shows that horse whims were in use in the area as early as the 17th century.