Mining operations at the Rostvangen ore field began in 1904, extracting copper-bearing pyrite from deposits high in the Osterdalen highlands. The site was remote enough to require a self-sufficient community, and the mining company built one from scratch. Electricity came from the Eidsfossen Hydroelectric Power Station, constructed specifically to power the mines -- a significant investment that signaled confidence in the deposit's long-term viability. In the early years, the operation employed about 100 workers. By 1909, that number had grown to 170 as extraction expanded. The peak came between 1916 and 1919, when wartime demand for copper drove the workforce to 260 and the settlement took on the character of a genuine small town.

What distinguishes Rostvangen from countless other abandoned mining sites is the completeness of the community that was built here. This was not just a cluster of shafts and smelters. Workers could collect their mail, buy goods at the company shops, attend meetings in the hall, and watch films at the movie theater -- all without leaving the settlement. The residential buildings and barracks housed families as well as single workers. A bakery supplied fresh bread. The infrastructure suggests a company that expected its operation to last, and workers who expected their lives there to have some measure of normalcy. Mining settlements of this era were often bleak, functional places. Rostvangen aspired to something more, and for a short time, achieved it.

The downturn arrived in 1919, when copper prices fell from their wartime peaks and the economic problems that would eventually kill the company began to accumulate. By the time Rostvangen Mines declared bankruptcy in 1921, the workforce had already shrunk from 260 to 120. What happened next was swift and thorough. All machinery was removed from the site. Most houses and other buildings were demolished or dynamited -- apparently the company or creditors saw more value in clearing the site than in leaving the structures standing. Only the largest buildings survived: the Heim building in Tynset and the Vidarheim building in Tolga, both substantial enough to repurpose. The workers themselves left immediately, most relocating out of the district entirely, though a few settled in nearby communities. The whole operation, from first shaft to last departure, had lasted just seventeen years.

Today, the remains of the Rostvangen ore-washing facility stand among the grasses and low scrub of the highland plateau, their stone walls and concrete foundations slowly succumbing to frost and time. The ruins are remote -- reaching them requires a journey into the sparsely populated country between Kvikne and Tynset, at an elevation where the growing season is short and winter lingers. From the air, the site reads as a cluster of geometric shapes interrupting otherwise unbroken terrain, the straight lines of foundations and walls conspicuous against the organic curves of hillside and stream. For those who make the trip on foot, the scale of what was built here comes as a surprise. The ruins suggest something larger and more permanent than seventeen years of operation would seem to warrant -- a town that believed in its own future right up until the moment it ended.