Sweden’s iconic Kiruna Church is set to embark on a two-day journey to a new location, slowly traversing an Arctic road to protect its historic wooden structure from ground subsidence caused by the expansion of the world’s largest underground iron ore mine.
Weighing 600 tons and 113 years old, the church has been lifted from its foundations and placed onto a specially constructed trailer.
This monumental undertaking is part of a broader 30-year initiative to relocate thousands of residents and buildings within the Lapland city.
Mine operator LKAB spent the past year preparing the route for the red-painted church, often hailed as Sweden’s most beautiful and one of its largest wooden buildings.
The 5km (3-mile) winding journey will lead it to a brand new Kiruna city centre. While the move ensures the church’s survival, it marks its departure from a site it has occupied for over a century.
Lena Tjarnberg, the vicar of Kiruna, reflected on the significance: “The church is Kiruna’s soul in some way, and in some way it’s a safe place. For me, it’s like a day of joy.
“But I think people also feel sad because we have to leave this place.”
For many of the region’s indigenous Sami community, which has herded reindeer there for thousands of years, the feelings are less mixed. The move is a reminder of much wider changes brought on by the expansion of mining.
“This area is traditional Sami land,” Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen, chair of the local Gabna Sami community, said. “This area was grazing land and also a land where the calves of the reindeer were born.”
If plans for another nearby mine go ahead after the move, that would cut the path from the reindeer’s summer and winter pastures, making herding “impossible” in the future, he said.
“Fifty years ago, my great-grandfather said that the mine is going to eat up our way of life, our reindeer herding. And he was right.”
Symbol of transformation
The church is just one small part of the relocation project.
LKAB says around 3,000 homes and around 6,000 people need to move. A number of public and commercial buildings are being torn down while some, like the church, are being moved in one piece.
Other buildings are being dismantled and rebuilt around the new city centre. Hundreds of new homes, shops and a new city hall have also been constructed.
The shift should allow LKAB, which produces 80 pre cent of the iron ore mined in Europe, to continue to extend the operation of Kiruna for decades to come.
The state-owned firm has brought up around 2 billion tonnes of ore since the 1890s, mainly from the Kiruna mine. Mineral resources are estimated at another 6 billion tonnes in Kiruna and nearby Svappavaara and Malmberget.
LKAB is now planning the new mine next to the existing Kiruna site.
As well as iron ore, the proposed Per Geijer mine contains significant deposits of rare earth elements, a group of 17 metals critical to products from lasers to iPhones and green technology key to meeting Europe’s climate goals.
Europe – and much of the rest of the world – is currently almost completely dependent on China for the supply and processing of rare earths.
In March this year, the EU designated Per Geijer as a Strategic Project which could help speed up the process of getting the new mine into production.
Around 5km down the road, Kiruna’s new city centre will also be taking shape.
“The church is … a statement or a symbol for this city transformation,” mayor Mats Taaveniku told Reuters.
“We are right now half on the way. We have 10 years left to move the rest of the city.”
