Central Sweden's Bergslagen district is a country of lakes, spruce forest and old iron, and the Engelsberg Ironworks stands in the middle of it, a few kilometres from Fagersta. It is one of the best-kept examples in Europe of a pre-industrial iron foundry, with its blast furnace, the forge buildings, the workers' houses and the manor all grouped around a pond where the water that once drove the machinery still flows. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 1993 as a place where the whole system of an old Swedish works, from smelting to community, can still be seen at once.
The reason works like this existed lies in the ground. Bergslagen has mined iron and copper since the Middle Ages, and Swedish iron, which was exceptionally pure, supplied half of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furnaces needed water for power and charcoal from the surrounding forest, so they sat beside streams and rivers, with a whole village growing around each. Engelsberg became a showpiece, and the buildings that remain mostly date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Guided tours in summer take you inside the furnace hall and explain how the process worked, which is far better than reading about it.
The ride from Stockholm is long, around two hours or more each way, mostly on good roads that cross the Mälaren lowlands before dipping into hillier forest. Once you leave the main route, the country roads wind through dark spruce, past red-painted farms and small lakes, with surfaces that are generally smooth and traffic that is light. It is gentle, rhythmic riding, rather than a dramatic run. Look out for elk at dusk, and respect speed limits, as cameras are common and Swedish police are not forgiving.
Fagersta, around thirteen kilometres away with nearly twelve thousand inhabitants, has fuel, supermarkets and cafes, and Norberg to the south has a mining museum at its old open-pit mine, which is worth a stop on the way back. Summer from June to August brings the guided tours and the warmest weather, while September has good light and the first autumn colours in the birches.