The Boliden mine in northern Sweden was discovered, containing massive deposits of gold, silver, copper, and arsenic. It became known as the 'gold treasure of the North' and operated for decades, extracting a rich polymetallic ore. The mine's toxic tailings and arsenic contamination later led to a major environmental scandal and the infamous 'Boliden' waste spill in Spain.

The Boliden mine is deeply embedded in the 'Norrland' literary tradition of Sweden, which views the northern forests as a resource colony for the industrial south. Poets like Harry Martinson, a working-class autodidact who won the Nobel Prize, wrote of the 'Artic' mining as a brutalist, sublime encounter with nature. The 'arsenic' and 'gold' duality in his poetry represents the ambivalent gift of modernity—the promise of wealth mixed with slow poisoning. Martinson's 'Aniara' (a space epic) echoes the catastrophe of Boliden's pollution, seeing the mine as a microcosm of humanity's tendency to destroy its own environment for 'shiny metals.'