In 1862 a boy found a piece of pure gold at Lykling. The gold piece changed hands, first to a worker, and then to the mining inspector Dr. Dahll, who paid 8 Norwegian crowns for it. But, at that time there hadn't yet been any discoveries of gold from the mountainside there. In 1882, two telegraphers, a farmer and a school teacher, prospected for copper ore. When one of the telegraphers broke open a piece of the source-rock, he found that it still hung together, and that it was gold that was binding the two halves together! With this find, the biggest gold adventure in Norway began. In the period from 1883 until 1989 there was an industrial mining operation, reportedly yielding about 137 kilogrammes of pure gold.
In the old piles of slag off-cuts it is still possible to find gold. It occurs both as clumps and as small grains within quartz veins, together with carbonate and oxide mineral ore, but sometimes also hidden together with pyrite. The veins cut their way through both the gabbro, which dominates in the bedrock, and other intrusive rock types. Inexperienced prospectors can easily confuse pyrite and chalcopyrite with gold. These minerals can nonetheless contain finely pulverized gold. In the Oscarsgangen vein there has even been discoveries of pure silver. Chemical analysis shows that the gold from Lykling can contain 13-25% silver.
In Bømlo there has been experimental operations for gold not just in the Lykling area, but also in Hiskjo and near Meland and Sakseid. In Hordaland outside of Bømlo there are several smaller gold mines, which have their origins in quartz veins. At Hovdaneset near Buavågen in Sveio there was activity in the biggest of several smaller mines, "Niels Berg's Gold mine, right up until 1884. There are also reports of smaller and poorer gold occurrences at Halsnøy and in Hyttevågen near Ølve (R252). In addition, there is a gold-bearing quartz vein on Vernøya Island at Reksteren. Here, the gold occurs together with arsenopyrite ore. On Varaldsøy Island there are proven occurrences of gold in ore that was quarried for pyrite, mainly in the 1860-70s.
