Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

Wildflowers and grasses tend to shoot up all at the same time this far north, creating rather delicately weavings of colour across open areas in town. Every year at this time it’s a bit sad to watch them slaughtered so quickly, in the local council’s keeness for suburban neatness.

However, this summer the council has suggested that Kiruna residents leave some areas of growth around their houses untrimmed, ‘for the birds and the bees’, and said that they will be doing the same.

I should be pleased about this, since I’m not keen on lawns, but I learnt early on in my time in Kiruna that the cutting of grasses in town has a purpose. We’re surrounded by unchecked nature, and in the summer there are huge swarms of biting insects almost everywhere you go. It can be hard to find anywhere you can relax from the fight. The variety of biting insects that can be found is an entomologist’s dream – there was a recent report that they’ve just found 50 new species of insect here, though not necessarily all biters. Anyway, the main thing is, we’re not short of insects. Every new stage of the season brings out another kind of biter or stinger, and they can drive you crazy, dive-bombing your face and neck in a relentless search for blood. Town is the only refuge from attack. Reindeer learnt this long ago, which is why they huddle in the middle of roads where insects are less likely to be.

Kiruna’s ‘No Mow July’ idea means more areas of tall green growth everywhere in town. Believe me, this we do not need. Kiruna residents know this, and will ignore the advice. However, the council have the excuse not to cut edges of land on streets, awkward bits, and small bits of land in town, and that’s probably rather convenient.

Which brings me to the next item on their Facebook page – invasive plants. Specifically, the ‘Tromsö Loka,’ a version of the Giant Hogweed. It seems that, this year at least, they are very concerned about it. Once it begins to spread it’s a problem for three reasons: it’s rampant and prevents other types of growth; it will grow very large; and not least, if someone comes in contact with the sap by brushing against it in the sun, then serious skin damage can be the result.

The council’s stated concern came as rather a surprise to us. A couple of years ago when we reported a spread of ’loka’ in our street it was very difficult to get the council to take the issue seriously. Someone came along to look at the problem, and then delicately picked a few flowerheads, as if for a home flower arrangement, which did nothing to tackle the problem. But this year we are all urged to fight it, cut it, and bag it in a double plastic wrapper.

The ‘Tromsö loka’ is alive and well in our street, thanks to the lack of any agreed strategy to deal with it. It’s mainly spread by car tyres brushing against the flowers and then depositing the seeds at their next stop. Local business ‘Office’ at one end of our street seems to be cultivating them for export, enabling their growth on all four sides of its building. Further up the road there are many more ‘loka’ peeking out of cracks and growing on small strips of lands in front of houses. The post van is the unknowing ‘super spreader’.

We’ve tried telling the council again, explaining again how ‘loka’ are spread and the need to tackle all the plants that are in the street, removing them where possible at root level. Someone came to the street last week and collected a few flowerheads again, leaving the rest of each plant to flower again in a week or two. They also left most of the virulent plants that haven’t yet flowered.

So we’ve given up any hope of a strategy or plan to stop their spread. All that can be done, it seems, is to try and keep the plants subdued where they appear – that is, cut down growth of all kinds along land on the street on a regular basis. It’s a very good reason to mow.

We’re still picking up good vibrations. A couple of days ago they were particularly noticeable – 1.65 on the local scale, to be precise, which doesn’t mean much to anyone because they don’t use the Richter scale in Kiruna. The reported level of vibrations, on LKAB’s website, was 3.20 millimetres per second. Let’s just say when it happened I screamed, fairly loudly. Nothing fell off a shelf. Then in a second everything was back to normal, sort of.

It happens so often you just feel a bit stupid reacting to it, but at a certain level I can’t seem to help the scream.

At the time of this ‘seismic event’ (as they are called) we were gathering together our things for a day in the fjäll, a planned walk near the Norwegian border to the west. Later we learnt we missed a second ‘seismic event’ in Kiruna an hour later.

It’s caused by collapsing ‘hanging wall’, the bit left over after the ore is extracted. On the one hand we accept it almost without comment, but on the other hand, you do wonder.

Meanwhile, the (possibly vibration-damaged) heating pipes in the hole outside our house are still exposed to the world. We’re not sure what the problem is, why they haven’t covered them up again. One doesn’t know, in Kiruna, what’s going on underground.

Take our local bank, for instance, Nordea. We don’t often have reason to go there, but last week we needed a new ‘old’ card reader (long story, new technology not working, old card reader not with us). We were surprised to learn they were still in the old town, very close to where a lot of buildings are being demolished at present. When we looked it up we didn’t quite believe it – because it’s often like that, an address given is the old address, in the old Kiruna, and the company has either left town altogether, or moved to the new town. But this time it was true, it really was there, near all the barricades and works people stripping the neighbouring high rise of materials.

The bank’s own hole in the wall had been removed, but inside the branch it all looked very normal. Enquiring of the staff when they would be moving they said sometime in the autumn, probably. There’s a lot of local culture contained in that word, ‘probably’.

A few days later we read in the news that LKAB (the mining company) had told Nordea they had to move urgently, within the week. Those good vibrations just keep on coming.