Kiruna, Sweden: The Arctic City Moving to Escape Its Own Mine

Kiruna exists because of iron. The town was founded around 1900 by the state-owned mining company LKAB, high in Swedish Lapland, beside a mountain made of iron ore called Kiirunavaara. For more than a century, the mine and the town grew up together. Today LKAB runs the world's largest underground iron ore mine here, and the company produces nearly 80 percent of Europe's iron ore. The problem is where the ore goes. The deposit runs at an angle down beneath the town itself, and as it's mined from deeper and deeper underground, the ground above shifts and cracks. Residents began seeing cracks in buildings and roads. LKAB is now mining down to a depth of 1,365 meters. In 2004, LKAB told Kiruna's municipal leaders that if mining was going to continue, the town center would have to move. Together, the company and the town planned to relocate the city center about 3 kilometers to the east, onto stable ground, with LKAB paying for it. The project has been estimated to cost at least $1.2 billion. Work began in 2014, and the first buildings in the new center were finished in 2018. The first to go up was the new city hall, called Kristallen, "the Crystal." The old town hall, despite being protected as cultural heritage, was a brick building that would have been too complicated to move, and it was demolished in 2019. That was the pattern for most of old Kiruna: about 39 historic buildings judged worth preserving are being moved to the new center, while most others are demolished and replaced with new ones. The old city center isn't dangerous to stand in, but it isn't safe to build on, and it's set to become parks and green space. The most spectacular move came on August 19 and 20, 2025. Kiruna Church, completed in 1912 and one of Sweden's largest wooden buildings, was lifted whole onto two giant self-propelled transporters. The 672-ton church crept about 5 kilometers along a specially widened road to its new site between the cemetery and the new city center, while thousands of spectators watched. The move isn't over. The relocation is expected to be completed by 2035, and in 2025 LKAB announced that expanding the mine would require relocating about 6,000 more people and 2,700 homes. The upheaval has also put new pressure on the Sami reindeer herders who lived in the area long before LKAB arrived. Some residents worry the new city center may be up to 10 degrees Celsius colder in winter.