Foreign Investors Join Icelandic Gold Rush

Foreign investors have joined in the search for gold in Iceland, which has been continuing for at least the past year and a half.

MBL reports that unnamed foreign investors have joined up with the Icelandic gold-searching company Melmi hf., putting “a few hundred million” ISK into the effort. In exchange, the investors will get the right to engage in the production of any gold found, if viable quantities are discovered.

A permit lasting until 2016 has been granted to explore nine separate areas in Iceland, including Þormóðsdalur (where gold was once found about one hundred years ago) near Reykjavík and Vatnsdalur, in northwest Iceland.

Plumbing Þormóðsdalur for gold has been going on since at least early 2013. Further investigations towards the end of the year revealed greater quantities of the metal than was originally expected.

“The grade is high enough,” North Atlantic Mining Associates Ltd (NAMA) managing director Vilhjálmur Þór Vilhjálmsson told reporters at the time, referring to the quantity of pure gold in the ore. “Now we have to find out if there’s a large enough quantity [to begin mining production].”

The other locations for possible gold mining have not yet been revealed.