In the north of Sweden, there’s a little town called Kiruna (make sure you roll your R:s). It has always been known to me for one specific thing: Börje Salming, the hockey legend who spent 1099 games with the Toronto Maple Leafs and became one of the best, and most scarred (especially in his face), defencemen of the NHL. The lesser reason I know of this place is what lies beneath it, and now it’s also the reason parts of the town, and some of its 23 000 inhabitants, are being moved.
The iron mine is in the process of making the town unliveable, and the process of moving it will take decades. What you also could do is to NOT ALLOW THE IRON MINE TO DESTROY THE TOWN. Apparently not. Kiruna is the most northern place in Sweden that can’t be considered a village, or a group of huts surrounded by stereotypical non-existent polar bears. The local council decided in 2007 that the town were to be moved because the ground was breaking. Yes. That. But at least fire isn’t coming out of the taps, as would be the case if the activity was fracking and not mining iron. An architecture firm was given the assignment of moving the town. The result of which will be ten blocks of businesses which will move with the municipal buildings and 6000 of the affected Kiruanians. The church will be reconstructed, moved, and rebuilt. Like lego. All of this is going to take at least fifteen years and cost between 25 – 30 billion crowns. Which is fine because the municipality is more socially democratic than Tage Erlander’s armpit (Swedish PM for 23 years, 1946-69), i.e., public spending is the solution to EVERYTHING. Even awkward conversations with your mum. Just build a new swimming hall, and you’ve got something to talk about. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They’re moving the town even further to the north, despite the fact that if you go any further north you’ll end up in the malfunctioning melting pot that is the Arctic. The locals are heavily pragmatic about the issue. The ground is breaking, so find some new ground then – problem solved. However, the world media thinks it all very exotic. The project has been shown in the form of an exhibition in London, Rotterdam and is currently on display in the Swedish embassy in Washington. The new town will be smaller to increase density and the new town square will function as a meeting place and waiting spot for tourists waiting for a dog sleigh ride, rather than the bus. We really should update public transport in our metropolitan areas to be more canine-focused. Frequent callers to the architecture firm include The New Yorker, the BBC, and CNN, asking questions like “WHAT?”, “WHY?” and “WHAT?” But since Kiruna came to existence in 1890 because of the mine, the locals are among the few that actually get it.
Gustaf Kilander 