The short story of the Black Angel Mine.

In the 1920:ies, the Danes started mining marble at a place deep into the Uummannaq Fiord, called Marmorilik (left point center in map link, mine on the east point) in the Uummannaq Municipality, northwestern Greenland (same degree north as North Cape in Norway). This mining continued up to the start of the second world war, yelding a high grade marble, as good as the Italian Carrara marble.

In 1936, a young swedish boy, his father there as a mine overseer, found some strange glittery stone on the shore opposit the mine. It where forgotten until the 60:ies when a danish geologist, visiting the family, got to see the stone. It was a high grade sphalerite/galena ore piece, some 8 % galena (lead ore) and 10 % sphalerite (zinc ore). At the time, the only other mine in the world with such concentrations where located at Mester Vig on the east coast of Greenland, north of the Scoresbysund fiord system.

The dane, working with Cominco Ltd. in Canada, got his Canadian partners interested in the find and the place was prospected. It was concluded that the ore was placed across the fiord from the marble quarry, 700 m up on a vertical cliff, 350 m below the top. It was associated with a dark pelite outline on the cliff, long named the Black Angel by the inuits.

In 1973 a simple harbour was built, housing a passanger ship as the first lodging. It was also erected a cable system up to the mine enterance, seen as two small dark dots just under the tip of the lower left wing in the picture above. Via this we, the miners, and the ore was shuffled in and out daily until the mine closed around 1990, at that time taken over by Boliden Mining in Sweden.

Well, it wasn't every day we could go up to the mine ;-). If we where lucky there was strong shear winds from the inland ice 3 km away and they stopped the cable cars. If you where unlucky, you had to ride the storm out inside the mine, no food available, just some tea, coffee and juice.

Marmorilik and Black Angel Mine, where one of the most inaccessible places in the world, only surpassed by a another mine that Cominco operated up until to 2002 on the Little Cornwallis Island, the Polaris Mine , in the canadian arctic achepelago.

But Marmorilik still where solemn and grand. I sure miss it.

The ore was layded down in an dry desert lagoon/estuary enviroment, not unlike the one found in some costal areas of present day Persian Gulf, as in Kuwait, or in Shark Bay, Australia. A carbonate enviroment with chemically saturated tidal pools, cyanobacterias reducing atoms to sulfides. While mapping a dump transport tunnel 1981, I found remnants of fossiles of some of the oldest still living lifeforms on earth, stromatolites, today best known from just Shark Bay. Though in Marmorilik they lived some 1.800 million years ago. They where previous known to exist, through finds at the surface, but the Chief Geologist had never heard about any finds in the mine before mine.

Reason for me recognizing the structures was, that my prior mine, Dannemora Mines, at that time one of the oldest continously operated mines in the world (some +700 year), we had a very similar geological layout, with a lot of stromatolites findings.

In Marmorilik the carbonates was dolomitizated, then metamorphosed to marble. Due to the latter process, the ore often was recrystalized, creating large iron disulfide - pyrite - cubes. The largest I saw had a cross section of approximatly 1 sqm. The cubes where always severly fractured due to the ground pressure and excavation explosions. Also the sphalerite and lead was at times as crystals of a couple of centimeters, but normally as a coarse grainy matrix, together with the pyrite. The thickness of the ore varied from some 10-20 m down to the "cut-of grade" of half a meter. If thinner, we seldom pursued the ore, only if we knew it to thicken later on, based on the prospecting drillings.

Note Dec.1998: Platinova, a canadian/greenlandic mining company run by several old Cominco people has been talking with the Home Rule about reopening the mine. Due to the current zink and lead prices and world economy the project is currently on hold.

Note April 2005: Platinova has since closed their operations, the re-opening of the Angel did not succeed. Platinova also closed all other operations, both in North as South Greenland, and the company seems to been withdrawn as a registred company. No note of forclosure found though.

Note July 2007: A new company [Black Angel Mining Ltd - BAM] was formed in UK 2005 to prospect the possibility of re-opening the Angel. The results from the field work 2006 was very promizing and BAM has started a lot of work revaluating the remaining ore reserves. In June this year the CE and Chief Geologist (a former workmate from 1982) from BAM meet with the Greenland Home Rule and the dismantled Uummannaq Municipal Council about the future operations. During BAM's prospecting around the mine 2006, it was found that retreating parts of the inland ice had freed a large previously unknown in situ find of high grade ore south of the old mine. The BAM site have some very nice photos under their News pages.

Note May 2012: BAM had to scale down 2009, due to the global crisis, and has as of yet to begin production. In the end they folded around 2010-11, reconstituted as Angel Mining. They still works with the Angel, but they also bought the gold mine "Nalunaq" in south Greenland, to balance their operations.

Note August 2014: Angel Mining folded in their turn early 2013. All likely due to the continuing global slump. Right now, there is no sign of any action, their website is taken down. Still, there is yet an estimated ore reserve of around 10-20 years in Marmorilik, with the early 1990:es production rates.