Fossil-Filled Swedish Quarry Goes from Rock to Rock

Stefan Lovgren in Dalhalla, Sweden
for National Geographic News

October 14, 2003

When Kalle Moraeus first played at Dalhalla, the weather gods didn't cooperate. "It was absolute chaos," said the veteran folk artist, famous in his native Sweden. "It was raining so hard the show had to be stopped. Some of our equipment was floating around on stage."

Since that inauspicious beginning, Dalhalla—an old limestone quarry that's been turned into a 4,000-seat amphitheater—has become the premier open-air stage in Scandinavia, celebrated for its magnificent acoustics.

Moraeus has returned for a dozen concerts.

"There's no place like it," said Moraeus, standing on the stage as he was rehearsing recently for Dalhalla's tenth anniversary show. "It's just a fantastic place for an artist to play."

A Natural Amphitheater

Limestone has been mined for centuries in Sweden. Excavations in Dalhalla began in the 1940s, and mining continued here until 1991.

Soon after that, Margareta Dellefors, a renowned opera singer, was traveling around Sweden in search for a location on which to build an opera stage. A friend suggested that she visit a quarry set deep in the woods outside Rättvik in the Dalarna region of central Sweden.

As soon as she arrived at the quarry, Dellefors knew she had found her stage. The giant crater opening up before her—400 meters (440 yards) long, 175 meters (190 yards) wide and 60 meters (66 yards) deep—was a natural amphitheater. She climbed down to the water that had collected at the bottom of the pit, and began to sing from Tosca, the opera.

Work soon began on building the stage, and in 1994 Dalhalla held its first concert. The cost of the project ended up being a relatively modest one million dollars (U.S.).

The name, "Dalhalla," is a reference to Valhalla, the "Heaven of Heroes" in Nordic mythology. The Dalhalla founders saw the arena as the perfect site for performing the mythology-laden operas of Richard Wagner.

The first impression of Dalhalla is awe-inspiring. Visitors are led down a path through the surrounding forest, which dramatically opens up to reveal the majestic quarry. They then walk down a gravel path into the giant pit. The stage is set in front of a shimmering lake of green water.

"There's no place where you'll find music and nature intertwined like this," said Håkan Ivarsson, the managing director of Dalhalla.

The acoustics are so illuminating that many of the operas are performed without microphones. Audiences must remain absolutely quiet—unwanted noise is magnified several times over and will interfere with the performance.

"We call it green acoustics," said Ivarsson. "Silence is a part of the experience."

Struck By a Meteor

Dalhalla also serves as a history and geology lesson.

The limestone in the quarry was formed from mud and dead animals in a tropical sea during the Ordovician period (505 to 440 million years ago) when Sweden was situated in the southern hemisphere.

Among the fossils that can be found in the walls of the quarry are sea lilies, headless mollusks, and a three-lobed animal that is a relative of wood lice and existed as far back as 600 million years ago.

The nearby Siljan, one of Sweden's largest lakes, was created when a four-kilometer-wide meteor hit the area some 360 million years ago, shattering the limestone formations on the surface and pushing the underlying bedrock deep into the crust of the Earth.

The impact crater was enormous and can still be seen today in a circular chain of hills around the lake that ranges more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) across.

Jazz and Rock-n-Roll

Dalhalla has revitalized the tourism industry of Dalarna, a historic region of Sweden that is famous for its traditional midsummer's eve celebration. Dalhalla attracts more than 100,000 visitors per year, and Ivarsson estimates it generates U.S. $13 million annually in additional tourism revenue.

"Dalhalla has become a brand," he said. "A lot of people may know of it, but they're impressed when they visit because it's bigger, better and more powerful than they thought it would be."

While it was built as an opera stage, Dalhalla now puts on a range of shows, from jazz to rock concerts. Critics complain that some musicians are abusing the natural acoustics of the venue.

"Some artists don't trust the natural sound and use a lot of electronic amplification," said Ivarsson. "We want the listening experience to be as natural as possible, but it's not always the case."

Over the years, the crowds have learned how to deal with Sweden's unpredictable weather. At one show this past summer, a concert tribute to Ray Charles, the skies opened up just as the show was about to begin.

As if on cue, the 3,000 people in the audience whipped out their rain gear and settled in for the show.

Virtually no one left.