It was a surprise a few years ago when a guest referred to the ‘slag heap’ in Kiruna. We had no idea what that was, and then realised she meant the remains of the overhead part of the mine.
Which, when we thought about, we could see is a kind of ‘slag heap’. But it’s also a notable structure in town, blanketed in white snow or sprouting summer flowers, lit up at night like a cruise liner, and at Christmas sporting a lit-up tree on top. Hardly a ‘slag heap’, but it depends on your point of view, and your imagination.
I’m finding my views on things more slippery than ever these days. Buildings are removed and reappear somewhere else, and an old building in a new place isn’t really the same building. Will Kiruna’s church still be one of Sweden’s favourite buildings after this summer, when it is taken from its green hilltop park of birch trees, with a view of the mine and the distant fjäll, and deposited by the roadside outside the new town, with a view of the airport and the wetlands? Will I still like the old priest’s house when it has a view of the external water chute in the new swimming pool?
Floating on my back in the current (old) swimming pool, I was able to look out over town through the pool window. I could see the top of Kiruna church – a red spire on a round bulbous tower, silhouetted against a snow covered backdrop. Weirdly, it’s a view that evokes in me thoughts of a small southern European village in the Alps.
In a few years’ time it will be hard to think this picture ever existed. No longer a pool here, no longer a church there, and – after we leave Kiruna – no longer my brain in the water thinking of the scene. Imagine that.
