April 04, 2008
Filed Under (News) by Morten Rand-Hendriksen

According to Canadian company Hansa Resources, the new Klondyke is in Sweden – more precisely Överturingen. They’ve recently signed a $2.8 million deal with two Swedish women for the rights to the gold the women found while on a blueberry picking trip.

Siv Wiik (69) and Harriet Svensson (64) are chefs and label themselves as “hobby geologists.” They’ve been searching for gold for over 40 years but on the 21st of August, 2007, they were out looking for blueberries. “When we couldn’t find any berries, we cracked out the geologist hammers and started chipping away at the bedrock” says Svensson to Dagbladet. After chipping away at an outcropping that had shown signs of gold in the past, they saw something that “shimmered like a fish.” When they took the rock for analysis they found that a third of it was zink and over 23 grams was pure gold. The sample also contained silver and lead.

Now, six months later, the failed blueberry trip has turned into a literal gold mine. Hansa Resources will pay Wiik and Svensson $600,000 over the next 4 years and they also get a 20% share of the profits of the gold sold. But for the two women, what matters the most is the investment and development in the local community. As part of the deal, Hansa Resources will invest $1.7 million in work programs that will be turned into jobs for the locals.

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