Case file · Folklore / legend
Kobolds and the naming of cobalt
German miners in the Ore Mountains blamed kobolds, mine goblins, for ores that looked like silver but gave none and released poisonous fumes when smelted. The metal later isolated from them was named cobalt after the goblin.
1735 CE · 50.60, 12.64 · status: explained
The account
The ores were cobalt arsenides; roasting them gave off toxic arsenic oxide, which miners blamed on malicious spirits. The Swedish chemist Georg Brandt isolated the metal around 1735 and kept the miners' name. Nickel is said to have a similar origin, from 'Kupfernickel', 'copper-demon'.
The sceptical view
A clear case of folklore explained by chemistry: the 'goblin' was arsenic.
Connections in the atlas
- Paracelsus names the gnomes
- Agricola's mine demons
- Erdstall tunnels: 'dwarf holes'
- The knockers of the Cornish tin mines