Every time he brags about relocating the city center in Arctic Sweden, Kiruna mayor Gunnar Selberg gets a replacement from a disgruntled citizen: his wife.
“I told him, ‘Can you imagine? To be part of it! We are building a new city while the old one is being destroyed,'” he told AFP, as he showed a mock-up of the construction project in the lobby of the new city hall.
“He was angry with me. He was disappointed. He thought it was sad. He didn’t even want to see the old city. It makes him feel bad.”
Progress of mining operations
The city of Kiruna, home to Europe’s largest underground mine, is slowly moving its town center three kilometers (1.8 miles) away to allow the iron ore mine to expand.
As mining operations continue to go deeper underground, the stability of the ground in the Lapland city is weakened, increasing the risk of parts collapsing.
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But like the mayor and his wife, the move has divided 18,000 people.
Kiruna was founded at the beginning of the 20th century, when the mining company LKAB was founded to find a huge deposit of iron ore, about 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
Last week LKAB announced the largest discovery in Europe of known rare earth elements, in the north of the city.
– A hard sell –
The new city center is officially inaugurated in September 2022.
The relocation process first began 15 years ago, and is expected to continue for 20 to 30 years – or possibly twice as long if the mine goes deeper in the future.
The bill for the move, estimated at around three billion euros ($3.2 billion), was partly borne by LKAB.
The new city hall, a magnificent circular structure designed by Danish architect Henning Larsen, is the first building to open, in 2018.
The imposing iron clock tower that once towered over the old town hall is symbolically placed at the new entrance.
Across the street, a modern hotel tower rises into the sky while nearby cranes are busy working on the construction of an indoor swimming pool.
But many, including the mayor, admit that some residents are struggling to accept the new city.
“Sometimes people tend to think ‘It’s fantastic! This is a huge project’. The operator, LKAB, always promotes images that are something good, that everyone likes. But not everyone,” said Selberg.
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According to the mayor, residents often complain that they are ‘caught between two cities’, or still want to go to restaurants in the old city.
In the center of the old city, all the buildings have been emptied and are now barricaded behind a high blue fence waiting for demolition.
About 6,000 people were relocated to the new city center – a number that could rise if LKAB is authorized to mine deeper.
– Ghost town –
Time is important to Kiruna.
Cracks caused by shifting ground have begun to appear in the city’s largest school, and the new premises are not yet ready.
And in city hall, there is concern that the current hospital will become unsafe for use before the new one is ready in a few years.
The city’s historic houses are being transported to the new city center in a special convoy.
The magnificent redwood church, considered one of the most beautiful buildings in Sweden, is expected to be completed in 2026.
But Mari-Louise Olsson, who sells indigenous Sami souvenirs and handicrafts in the city’s oldest shop, founded in 1907, is not interested in moving.
LKAB, which owns the space, gave them a few extra months to rent the space in exchange for receiving a compensation check of about 65,000 euros ($70,000) and a modern boutique in the new city center.
“I am very sad and disappointed”, sighed the 63-year-old shopkeeper.
“The mine is important, but I want to pay more attention to other businesses. Because of the mine, we have not been able to live here for many years,” he said while his daughter attended to the shop’s customers.
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Olsson’s childhood neighborhood fell apart last year, and her store is one of the few still open in what is slowly becoming a ghost town.
“Who can put a price on individual history? It cannot be compensated with money.
“That’s the feeling here, in this store. No one cares about this history, even though it actually exists.