The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please log in.
Kiruna is Sweden's northernmost town, and it is leaving.
The iron ore mine under it, LKAB's Kiirunavaara, is why the town exists and why it cannot stay. In 2004 the company told residents the ground beneath their streets would crack and give way as the ore body was dug out. So Kiruna agreed to move: about two miles east, onto rock the mine will not touch, building by building. Around six thousand people, schools, a hospital.
The first frame is the old centre: a cracked parking lot, cars, a red-brick block, an ordinary afternoon. The second is the new edge, bare dirt and identical grey houses with no grass yet, the town caught mid-step. The third stops me. Inside Kiruna Church, the wooden one, once voted the country's most beautiful building. On 19 and 20 August 2025 it was lifted off its foundations and carried down the road whole, 672 tonnes, altar painting and thousand-pipe organ still inside.
I keep coming back to towns that stay by moving. Monowi has one person and holds its ground. Kiruna has seventeen thousand and is walking east. In Nebraska, Elsie Eiler w
... Show more...Kiruna is Sweden's northernmost town, and it is leaving.
The iron ore mine under it, LKAB's Kiirunavaara, is why the town exists and why it cannot stay. In 2004 the company told residents the ground beneath their streets would crack and give way as the ore body was dug out. So Kiruna agreed to move: about two miles east, onto rock the mine will not touch, building by building. Around six thousand people, schools, a hospital.
The first frame is the old centre: a cracked parking lot, cars, a red-brick block, an ordinary afternoon. The second is the new edge, bare dirt and identical grey houses with no grass yet, the town caught mid-step. The third stops me. Inside Kiruna Church, the wooden one, once voted the country's most beautiful building. On 19 and 20 August 2025 it was lifted off its foundations and carried down the road whole, 672 tonnes, altar painting and thousand-pipe organ still inside.
I keep coming back to towns that stay by moving. Monowi has one person and holds its ground. Kiruna has seventeen thousand and is walking east. In Nebraska, Elsie Eiler writes her own town's tax bill. Here a whole town is moving to keep existing, one building at a time.
#streetview #Kiruna #Sweden #geography #Arctic #mining
