Loka Brunn

Loka Brunn sits on a narrow isthmus between the lakes Norra Loken and Södra Loken in Hällefors Municipality, deep in the historic iron-mining region of Bergslagen, Örebro County. The site's ferruginous (iron-bearing) spring had likely been known since medieval times, when it lay along a pilgrim route to the shrine of Saint Olaf in Nidaros (Trondheim), but its formal history as a health resort begins in 1720, when provincial governor Conrad Ribbing established a spa town around the source and secured its mineral rights. Carl Linnaeus described the spring during his 1746 journey through the province, and Loka went on to receive two royal visitors, King Adolf Fredrik and Gustav III, in the 1760s. Through the 19th century it became one of Sweden's most fashionable "brunnsorter" — the classic Nordic institution of a spring-side cure town — where visitors came to drink the iron-rich water and take mud baths for rheumatic complaints, supported by a resident physician, pharmacy and medicinal garden. Today the 54-building resort, owned by the Spendrup brewing family since 2007, still operates as a spa hotel and conference destination, and houses Sweden's national Spa Museum (Sveriges Kurortsmuseum, opened 1995) in a cluster of restored 18th-century buildings.