Formation of salt deposits
How it all began...
Because we are already leafing back so far in the book of history, a few million years no longer matter to us. We have to calculate millions of years if we want to investigate the question of where the rich salt deposits come from: Around 240 million years ago, you wouldn't have had to go to Bibione or Porec for a seaside holiday, but could have stayed in Hallstatt. At that time, at the end of the Palaeozoic Era, a shallow sea covered parts of the country. The climate was warm and dry.
The Northern Limestone Alps
At that time, the Northern Limestone Alps with our Hallstatt were not north of the main Alpine ridge as they are today, but further south. But the main ridge of the Alps was not a mountain range either. In protected lagoons of the shallow sea, salt was excreted by the strong evaporation of the seawater. In the course of the following millions of years, thick other rock layers covered the salt and protected it from dissolution. When the mountain world of our Alps, which is much admired today, was formed about a hundred million years ago, the salt was folded together with its surface layers. In addition, the specifically lighter and plastically easily malleable salt was much more mobile compared to the surface layers.
Today's extremely complicated construction of our Alpine salt deposits is an impressive testimony to this. If you follow the salt-bearing zone along the northern ridge of the Limestone Alps, you will notice that there is a Hallein and a Hall (in Tyrol), a Reichenhall and, last but not least, our Hallstatt. At Mariazell, where the saline rock begins, there is a Halltal, at Admont, where it ends, a Hall, at Berchtesgaden a Hallturm, near Salzburg a Hallwang and Hallmoos. Names with "Hall" always have something to do with salt. Linguists traced the syllable "hal" to Greek, where there was the river Halys, i.e. the salt river, in Thrace.
Salt mining for thousands of years
During the splitting of the Alps, the highly pressed salt domes mixed with the neighbouring deposits. Therefore, our current salt warehouse is a mixture of different types of minerals and rocks, such as salt, gypsum and clay slate. Before the Haselgebirge becomes salt, it must first be separated from the "barren rock". The Hallstatt salt deposit is developed in a length of 3000 metres, a width of 640 metres and a depth of 500 metres. We don't know how deep the salt dome still reaches into the interior of the mountain. What we do know is that it was salt that brought people to this remote high valley 4500 years ago.
Discovery of natural brine springs
The natural brine springs were discovered as early as the early Stone Age. The people of the Hallstatt period (800 to 400 BC) had developed mining in Hallstatt to perfection, traded salt at distances of up to a thousand kilometres and thus established a wealth that has been handed down to us in artistic treasures. ( More on this in the chapter "Prehistory - Hallstatt as godfather of an epoch of human history"). Salt also ensured prosperity for the people of Hallstatt in the Middle Ages, especially when state salt mining began in 1311. Salt mining for three millennia, however, is not only the treasures that migrated to Hallstatt in exchange for salt, these are not only prehistoric tools, not only the first documents that speak of foundations in the 8th and 9th centuries, of salt-laden ships on the Traun, these are not only the spacious buildings of the wealthy salt lords.
Bloody battles
The salt of Hallstatt was also the cause of bloody battles: Rudolfsturm In the Salt War (1291 to 1297), the Traunau, the first core of the settlement of Hallstatt, and the mining operation that had been built shortly before in Gosau were destroyed. The Rudolfsturm on the Hallstatt Salzberg is a reminder of this time of murderous competition between the archiepiscopal saltworks of Hallein and those of the Habsburgs in Hallstatt and Aussee. Duke Albrecht I, the eldest son of Rudolf of Habsburg, had a fortified tower built in 1284 to protect the Hallstatt salt mine and named it Rudolfsturm in honour of his father. Anyone who sits on the viewing terrace of the Rudolfsturm today and enjoys the magnificent view with a glass of wine or a bowl of coffee does not think of salt wars, mining accidents, fire disasters, the terror of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and what else is noted in the book of fate of this salt works. But you can feel that it's not just any mine.
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