The Moveable City

 

"LKAB will buy my house within ten years from now.  After that, I will still stay there as a tenant.  LKAB is seeking a mining permit in my area, which means they must buy all of the houses in that area.  When they eventually start mining, it will probably take ten to fifteen years for the ground to be affected to such a degree that I have to move."
Anders Lindberg, information officer, LKAB
"We have looked at how much of the city will be affected when we go down to that level (1,365 meters).  It will take us between twenty and twenty-five years, and three thousand houses will be affected during that period."

When, at the turn of the 20th Century the first managing director of state-owned mining company Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) had the idea to create a city in the middle of nowhere, he decided he would create a community so appealing in the subarctic wasteland that he would have no trouble persuading workers to move there, so they could operate the largest iron ore mine in the world.

Hjalmar Lundbolm is long dead, but his memory as the founder of Kiruna is not.  His house, as the first managing direct of LKAB where he lived from 1855 to 1926 is one of the historic places scheduled to be moved to a new site.  To retain the hallowed historic component of this picture-perfect tourist town with its immense mining installation in its background. 

Located at the northern tip of Sweden, and home to 23,000 people, its adjacent location to the mine reflecting a worldwide demand for that resource dictates the entire city now be moved to allow for better access to that ore.  The city is planned to move over a long period of time, in stages.  The first stage will affect the city centre itself.

"We're not quite sure about how it will happen, and this is because LKAB has to negotiate separately with everyone who owns a building in the area", explained the company's information officer for the municipality of Kiruna.  The company is scheduled to open a new main level at the mine, the depth of which has finally forced the city to move from its mining-inconvenient location.

At the present time an area in which 140 households are located is being emptied as a result of their proximity to cracks that have formed in the mountain from the mining operation.  In anticipation of the moving of all those buildings the company has built new roads, a new railroad, and utilities.  Six billion SEK (about C900-Million has been set aside for this colossal enterprise.

And how might people who have lived all their lives in this city feel about their forced move?  They have, after all, little recourse to object and to insist that they will remain where they have always been, that this is their human right.  "Sure, we give you another nice place to live, but you will never be able to walk around in the area where you grew up, or where you raised your children."

It is never easy to casually inform people that their homes will no longer be theirs; that the property on which their homes sit are to be state-expropriated, that they will be obliged to come to terms with the reality of leaving the geography they are familiar with and love.