The Grindstone Museum
Orsa Grindstone Museum is one of the Swedish official local museum,
focusing on our cultural heritage of industri and workmanship.
Here you find the Museum building with a nicely furnished restaurant.
Up along the3,5 kilometer long Grindstone Footpath you will find the last standing mine cabin (where peolpe lived during workweeks), a hacking cabin (for the stone masons) and a large number of old daystripmines, most of them in the oldest parts overgrown nowadys with thick foliage.
Throughout the area you can also find all kinds of machinary and technical installations from the old mineworking days.
The restaurant Famous Moose
open hours: 10 am - 3 pm weekdays, lunch is served 11 am - 2 pm. Coffee and tea is available. Open hours will be updated in time for the summerseason. Take a look at the homepage: http://famousmoose.se/index.html
The Museum
You can book your own guided tour of the Grindstone Museum for your group:
Call to book:
Agneta, at 070-563 42 91 or
Annmari at 070-689 14 65.
Here you can find information about some of the geologically interesting places we have in Dalarna and in Orsa.
You can also watch videos from geologically interesting places.
Take a look in the Grindstone Museum and its exhibition, showing what life was like in our strip mines for centuries back in time.
Welcome!
The Museum
building by the
maine road (Landsvägen)
that runs through Mässbacken. Here you find all the old tools they used for centuries in the craftmanship of hackning grindstones and whetstones. Displays are showing the enormous importance this particular handicraft have had for the Orsa people since several hundred years. The old tools and photographs, texts old ducuments and the displayed scenes all show you the heritage from and the hard facts about circumstances for all the people trying to make a living in Orsa in the old days.
English, Deutsch and Netherlandic museum guides are available for borrowing, with all museum texts translated. In the first chamber you can find folders about upcoming activities as well as history and maps of the area wich make the footpath easy to find. Here is also our guestbook, a display of the Mine Cabin and an geological display wich includes some stone samples from our region.
Inside to the left is a small conference room and a very nicely furnished cafè.
BACK
The Grindstone Cabin and the Hacking shed
There is also a Mine Cabin and a Hacking Cabin in the area. On our History Tour you are welcome inside. Inside you can also find artifacts from the old craft like tools, grindstones in the making and machinery.
that runs through Mässbacken. Here you find all the old tools they used for centuries in the craftmanship of hackning grindstones and whetstones. Displays are showing the enormous importance this particular handicraft have had for the Orsa people since several hundred years. The old tools and photographs, texts old ducuments and the displayed scenes all show you the heritage from and the hard facts about circumstances for all the people trying to make a living in Orsa in the old days.
English, Deutsch and Netherlandic museum guides are available for borrowing, with all museum texts translated. In the first chamber you can find folders about upcoming activities as well as history and maps of the area wich make the footpath easy to find. Here is also our guestbook, a display of the Mine Cabin and an geological display wich includes some stone samples from our region.
Inside to the left is a small conference room and a very nicely furnished cafè.
BACK
The Grindstone Cabin and the Hacking shed
There is also a Mine Cabin and a Hacking Cabin in the area. On our History Tour you are welcome inside. Inside you can also find artifacts from the old craft like tools, grindstones in the making and machinery.
The Grindstone Footpath
The Orsa Grindstone Museum also includes the whole Grindstone Mine Area with all its many old daystripmines and gravelmounds. In this area is also the 3,5 kilometer long Grindstone Footpath with information displayed along the way.
The Grindstone Footpath leads you through fine pine forest and lush greeary during the summer and it takes you trough the daystrip mine area. Here it is easy to imagine the work that went on in the old days.
Maps are available in the folders you find on this website first page at the bottom and in the Museum.
The old handicraft in the Grindstone Mines are nowadays but a memory and today there is instead a 100 year old and dense wood growing in place. You can still see the old daystripmines with their footpaths. The oldest parts of the Museum Area is part of the cultural industrial heritage of Sweden today and as such protacted.
The Lindå Mine
At the old Lidå Mine you can see an old winsch, raiway tracks, railway wagons and a horse winsch. A part of the old mine itself have had its moss removed and is shown at the History Tours as it used to look when it was worked. On the History Tour you may also see the nice photo exhibition, under the protected roof that is used by the grindstone cutters nowadays.
In the Lindå Mine the active grindstone cutters in Orsa gathers every summer to work with their handicraft. They have their own smithy here and tools and other equipment for grindstone cutting. People are always welcome to watch and ask questions. It is also possible for anyone who want to try themselves to make their own grindstone.
