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The Hotel
The "Toppstugan" Cottage
The Mine
The Industrial Museum
The activity center "Sörgården"
 


The Mountain
Hiking paths
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The Taberg railway
Ancient remains
More to do
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The Mountain.

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"C'est fer de Takaberg!" It's iron from Taberg! the pistol smiths in Paris exclamated already during the middle ages when they were particularly satisfied with a piece of work. The mountain has always been impressive.

The 343 metres high Taberg (Småland's Taberg) is located approximately 15 kilometers south of Jönköping and is visable from wide afar. It's history goes back 1,2 billion years when the body of ore was created. The initially slowly moving substance was forced upwards but became stale before it reached the earth crust. Surrounding types of rock have then over time eroded and today, the Taberg rise approximately a 100 metres over the otherwise rather flat landscape. Already during the 15th century, the breaking of iron ore began and the Taberg iron soon became famous for its high quality.

The special basic rock foundation supports the many rare plants that can be found here. Where Alp plants meet Central European, over 400 types of plants and ferns have been found. The two very unique ferns and improbable to be found in the same area, the southern Adulterated spleenwort ("Asplenium adulterinum") - and the nothern Green spleenwort ("Asplenium viride")  meet here for example. Taberg also has Sweden's richest flora of moss; six endangered types of moss can be found here.

The animal kingdom also offers unique lives: In the rocky steeps, the Sand lizard sunbathes its emerald green sides. It's a heat demanding and very sensitive animal, also protected. In the Taberg Valley breeds the Black-bellied Dipper ("Cinclus c. cinclus")  and Grey Wagtail ( "Motacilla cinerea")  and sometimes also the kingfisher.

During the winter, however, only the bat is allowed to be in the caves. In Taberg and its surroundings, there are nine types of bats, and six of them hybernate in the caves. They spend their sleep in the 1,5 kilometre long and windy tunnels, and if a bat accidently is woken up, it can loose so much energy that it won't survive the winter.

The mountain contains of titanomagnetite olivinite, a very special kind of rock that only exists here and in Rhode Island, USA.
In 1831, the geologist N.G. Sefström discovered the base substance Vanadin in ore from Taberg. Vanadin is a alloy which hardens steal. The plans to start a production, however, was never realized, which makes the last and largest breakings in Taberg were during World War II, when Germany was in great need for iron.

In 1986, the nature preservatory organisation in Sweden bought the rights to the mines with the help of private fundings from all over Sweden, and thereby the continuation of nature distructive mining, slalom slopes etc. had reached its end. The area is today a protected nature park.