Labradorite
as we know it today was described by missionaries from the Moravian church on
Paul Island late eighteen hundred near the settlement of Nain; the northern most
town of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Although the description
was done by missionaries, the discovering of labradorite was most likely done
by the native Eskimo Inuit.
Nain was founded
by a Moravian mission in 1771. The Moravian church has been derived from the eponymous
province Moravia in the Czech Republic. It
is a Protestant denomination that fled Moravia in 1722 to escape persecution. It
were also the Moravian missionaries that brought Labradorite stones to Europe.
They sent labradorite stones to their London based mission secretary.
Under a special
act approved by British parliament in 1749, the Moravians were accepted and
recognized as a religion. This act was the start of Moravian missions in the
New World. The minister for colonies at that time invited the Moravians to Nova
Scotia, the largest British naval base in Canada.
A variant
of Labradorite is also found in Finland, called spectrolite. This spectrolite
was coincidently discovered at the beginning of the Russian-Finnish war in
1940, also known as the winter war. The Finnish armed forces needed stones and rocks to make a line of
defence against Russian tanks, so they quarried a lot of stones out of the southern
part of the country by using explosives. They discovered a blue shiny shimmer
from the stones that they had blew up. An interesting detail is that the areas
in South Finland were the spectrolite was found is located not far from the circle
of latitude as Nain and Paul Island were the Labradorite was found.
The dissimilarity
between labradorite and spectrolite is caused by the intensity of the shimmer
and the range of the colors visible. It is said that labradorite has a softer
tone of colors than spectrolite.
Nowadays a
lot of labradorite is originating from Madagascar mining activities.
Looking for Labradorite gemstones or pendants?
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