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.
Kallasjärvi, a small village by the Kalix river, very scenic.
It just doesn’t seem right to me – what do you think?
I don’t really recognise it. Wasn’t there a mountain to the left back there, and a hot geyser? Where have they gone? And where’s the flippin’ party? It should be packed by now, it’s the April bean feast, it’s always packed. But there’s no-one else here! Where are the volcanic eruptions, did the volcanoes just disappear? And that horse over there – doesn’t seem right somehow. Too big, wouldn’t you say?
Maybe, maybe we got our directions a bit wrong? I mean, it was a strong westerly when we came over and we might have just been chatting and allowed ourselves to veer a bit off track. It’s possible, isn’t it?
In which case, where the hell are we? If it isn’t Iceland…. It must be, er, Norway. Or Sweden. Or worse still, Siberia. No, can’t be Siberia, not cold enough.
Seems there’s stuff to eat, but there’s a lot of ice in the way to get to it. Now that’s not right, is it? Ice in Iceland, in April? Nah, not where we usually meet up.
The three of them look disconsolately at the frozen river. There’s a patch of water though, much inhabited by whooper swans, who are a bit territorial.They waddle up the hill to snuffle around titbits in the snow. This trip is turning out to be a bit of a nightmare.
We see them from the track, three Greenland white-fronted geese. They have probably over-wintered in southern Ireland, or south west Scotland, and now was their time to head back north, stopping over in Iceland on the way.
We’d been walking on the river when we’d had one of those ‘Tales of the River Bank’ experiences. A man skied past below us where we were sitting on a log, and we watched him take his skis off and disappear onto the track. Five minutes later he returned, but this time walking determinedly, in the same direction he originally came from. He disappeared round the bend. Then after ten minutes or so he returned, with a woman, and this time he’s skiing again, but the woman is walking.
We get talking and the explanation is that she found the skiing too slippery so he took the skis back for her so she could return walking with more ease. We are talking about birds, as there are a lot of small feeding birds nearby. She tells us enthusiastically that there are some rare birds here, from Greenland. They’re causing quite a stir in the village where they seem to have paused for a break to reset their navigation system.
When we went looking for them they were not where they were supposed to be. Another wild goose chase, we thought. But we spotted them eventually, a little further away. They did look a bit puzzled. They also looked rather ordinary to me, but anything out of its normal place can be exotic.
I don’t know what Sweden could do to make them feel more welcome. They’d clearly rather be in Iceland.
It’s not often you feel sentimental about a dental surgery, but my eyes are repeatedly drawn to my old dental surgery with a rather surprising sense of longing, and loss.
The building is wooden, painted yellow with red details, picturesque window frames and interesting sloping rooves. Built in the 1920s as a house for the priest, it designates his high status in the early society of the new built town. In the time I have lived here, half of it has been occupied by my dental surgery. Which has been a charming place for a rather unenjoyable activity.
One winter I had a 6.30 morning appointment, on one of the coldest, snowiest, darkest days of the year. I took my kick sled and pushed it through thick mounds of light snow for the 15 minute walk. Ice crystals sparkled in the air. My route passed the church and it’s grounds, and I walked through them rather than on the road, feeling the tent-like architecture of the church fitted well in the morning’s sense of magic. I was in a fairy tale, on my way to the fairy dentist, to have, well ok, an oral hygiene appointment, but apart from that it was a magical feeling.
So back to the building, as charming as ever. Only now it stands alone, in a war-torn landscape. The buildings around have all been pulled down, so now there is just rubble, fencing, and keep out signs. In the distance a three storey block is having it’s outer wall knocked out. Large skips stand ready to take waste. The dental surgery stands tall above the flattened streets, once a smaller feature on the skyline but now towering above the debris, like a single tooth left standing in a gappy old mouth.
Around this building has been significant reconstruction. The old town’s roots have been anaethetised, and removed, bit by bit. It’s been a painful process, but now we’re at the stage when we feel almost nothing, just an overwhelming sense of loss. It’s the gaps we notice.
Advances in technology mean that a building can be moved and implanted elsewhere, with entirely new roots. Near to the dental surgery, Kiruna’s church is currently being prepared to be moved to the new town (a few kilometres away), and to move it requires foundation work to widen the route, and the building of a brand new bridge.
The dental surgery’s destiny is also magic sleigh ride to the new town – it’s life has also been spared. It stands blinking into the sunlight, waiting to be rescued. No-one has said where exactly it’s new home will be, but any place will do, so long as it gets out of this battleground. Implanted there it will sparkle among the concrete buildings of the new town of Kiruna, like Madonna’s gold grille.
I’ve been to a few LKAB (the mining company) information meetings in my time. I know what to expect – a fairly slick, but very slow, presentation, lots of words projected on a screen, reassuring smiles, and ‘fika’ – a coffee and bun. In the early days of discussing the need to knock down the town and rebuild it somewhere else there were many such meetings. They were never very well attended, but a number of Kiruna residents would make the effort, possibly mainly for the ‘fika’.
Meetings followed a pattern. After a rather tedious presentation by a couple of LKAB staff, there would be questions. Someone would ask a detailed technical question that no-one would be able to answer properly, and then another person would ask a question no-one understood, because it was off the subject, or at such a tangent no-one knew how to respond. The meeting would get a bit confusing, the audience lose interest, and then it would be brought to a hasty close so that we could have ‘fika’.
So it was last night in Kiruna’s church. LKAB held a meeting on how they planned to move the church building. It followed the usual pattern, except that a vicar was involved, and there was no ‘fika’.
We learnt virtually nothing about technical or engineering aspects of moving the building, the thing we were interested in. Instead we got a vague description of the process that we’d already read about in their information leaflet, plus a lecture on the history of the church. After that there was the expected technical question or two from the floor, and the predictable ‘difficult customer’ or two – who expressed that they didn’t want the church moved at all (who does?) – and then the meeting ended. It didn’t feel like it had hit the right note.
People in Kiruna probably care more about the church building than any other. What they wanted last night, it seemed to me, was recognition that this was an emotional issue as much as a practical one. They wanted reassurance. Instead they got a project management style description of a process for moving a building, and they didn’t even get a coffee and a bun.
They were worried that something might go wrong in the move and the church might be damaged. Were LKAB’s project team up to the job? someone asked. The man from LKAB replied with a smile that this was the responsibility of Mammoet (the Dutch company who physically do the moving) and they had lots of experience – implying it was not a concern of LKAB’s, or ours.
The man from Mammoet should have been there – the one with the joystick on a tray hanging round his neck. We saw him move three buildings in town a couple of years ago. We watched him at close quarters, through a wire fence, as he carefully lowered a large two storey building down onto its new foundations, controlling every millimetre of movement. When it was safely down he lit a cigarette and gave us a thumbs up. He knew we wanted that reassurance.
It was a sunny Sunday, and the temperatures had been over zero for days, so we didn’t know quite what conditions to expect for skiing on the Kalix river. The snow would be soft, that’s for sure, and indeed as we lurched down to the river from the road we sometimes sunk up to the hip in snow. But once on the river where we could get our skis on everything was plain sailing. Smooth fast snow, perfect for gliding.
Now and again there were a few people out on the sides of the river. Cooking sausages, or just sitting in the sunshine.
A man on skis, warm enough to ski in just a lumberjack shirt, stopped to chat, and brought news of the fisherman’s hut, our destination, when we asked if there were people using it. There were, but he thought it might be possible for us to reach other places to sit.
Some intrepid skiers wanting a rest in the sun had ploughed their way with a lot of trouble through the deep snow to one side of the paths where they had made themselves a raised snow seat. We greeted them, impressed with the seat, remarking that life could be worse. They agreed it was indeed awful out here today.
As we always do when we come here, we passed the man who lives nearby who makes sure there is always firewood in the hut, puts food out for the birds, and keeps the snow pressed down so we can ski on it. He is a very kind, considerate local resident. He shouted hello from a nearby track and pressed on, dragging his dog behind him.
Further on we found the fisherman’s hut unoccupied, and better still, a wooden bench with no snow on it, right by the river, with snow around it forming a wind shelter. We were especially grateful for this, having watched a woman prepare it for us – a week ago. We’d been there then and met two women in the hut. At the time the wooden benches nearer the river were deeply covered in snow. We watched one of the women use a bit of driftwood to sweep the snow away. It was hard work – she only managed to get a bit off, and what was left was a soggy mess. ‘But’, she said, ‘that will be ok to use later’. Later, like, the next week, when we arrived wanting to sit in the sun. What a wonderful unselfish act that was. We appreciated it.
While sitting there we saw the people we’d greeted earlier on their snow seat, carrying their fishing rods. They skied on and out of sight.
Later a lone figure reappeared. It was the man, with his fishing rod, but now he was alone. I tried not to think he might have pushed his wife in the river, or buried her under the snow, but it was difficult because I’d just been reading a book of short stories in which there were a lot of murders. We smiled at him, rather uneasily. He skied on.
We listened to the rippling water and ate our lunch.
When it was time to return we passed that man again, the one without his wife, sitting on the snow under a bare birch branch. He was talking on his phone. Reporting a murder, or arranging an alibi perhaps. So we just said hello again, and skied on.
I was looking for the whooper swans. They’d moved up river since we were here last. I left Rolf talking with the man with the lumberjack shirt, now settled on a bench by the bird feeders. I found the swans not far off – about five pairs. They appear in that particular stretch of water for just a few weeks every year, and it feels very reassuring to see them there again. There’s a timeless quality about their drifting around there, gathering for the next leg of their journey. I expect they have their own tales to tell, but all I heard was honking.
I returned to find Rolf still talking. He’d discovered that the man in the lumberjack shirt had used the computer program that he’d made for the mining company when he’d worked for them 25 years ago, long before we were living here. They had quite a few things to discuss. It was a rather surprising intersection of two people’s lives, uncovered one sunny day on the river.
Not wanting to go home yet we continued by car towards Nikkoluokta, heading for a place on the river where we knew there was a good view of the mountains. There was nowhere to park, so we intended just a pit stop. I got out briefly while Rolf turned the car round, and then the car got hard stuck in the soft snow. Oh the shame. We had a spade in the car so Rolf tried to free up the wheels.
Another car arrived and a man got out and started making helpful suggestions, and he and I and his partner were all pushing the car but still it wouldn’t budge. The man went to his car and brought out a spade neatly wrapped in plastic, before realising we already had one. We brought some gravel over to the wheels and tried pushing the car again. Eventually the car was released.
Obviously we were very grateful to the couple. They asked us where we lived and we said Kiruna, and then we asked them, and they said Stockholm. Now that was a surprise, Stockholmers not being known for their practicality or helpfulness. But they were both from Kiruna originally and were coming to stay in their family hut for a short while. (Aha, that explained the thoughtfully brought plastic covered spade, to move mushy springtime snow.)
On this one day on the Kalix river, we remarked in the car going home, we’d met several helpful, friendly people, and possibly, a murderer.
Cross country skiing without prepared ski tracks – let’s call it ‘wild skiing’. It means you can explore, you won’t have to keep getting out of the way for fast skiers behind, and you won’t have the feeling of going round in circles. We particularly enjoy lakes and rivers for this – when frozen over with a thick layer of snow on the top it is usually possible to ski on them, especially if a snow scooter has passed by that way.
On the down side there’s a lot of side-slip, there are many uneven snow areas to negotiate, and the going can be hard and slow. On the lake this week it all looked very promising, but it turned out there was a very thin layer of snow on top of ice, so a few strides of skiing was followed by some unexpected slipping and sliding, more like skating than skiing, which for an unconfident skier such as myself can be very challenging.
On occasions like this you remember there is something to be said for prepared ski tracks. You just slot yourself in and whoahey! you’re off! At speed, and always in a forward direction. One day last week we were surprised to find some prepared tracks on a section of the Kalix river where we usually ‘wild ski’.
We didn’t turn our nose up at them and insist on our own route – we willingly stepped into the tracks, abandoning any sense of being in control, letting them lead us where they would. It turned out that this was out in unknown territory, towards the middle of the river. We trusted that whoever had made the tracks knew what they were doing. We settled into a steady glide, wondering, but not worrying about where we were going.
Not unlike the mechanical trousers in The Wrong Trousers, prepared ski tracks really do take over – all decisions are theirs. This can be very relaxing.
Iron ore has always been transferred by rail from Kiruna to Narvik on a track built with huge difficulty through the mountain area. It has been a point of contention between the company and the state department responsible for rail networks in Sweden that this track is still a single track, which severely limits how much iron ore can be delivered, and therefore how much can be mined, and how much profit the company can make. It would be a big undertaking to make it a double track, but this is what LKAB (the mining company) have been requesting for years.
This winter there was a major derailment on the line, primarily due to weather conditions. It took a couple of months to clear the derailment and repair the track and during this time no trains could travel on the line, no iron ore was delivered or sold, and no passenger trains through to Norway. When it was opened again last month, an agreement was made to allow LKAB to have sole use of the track to try and speed up its delivery of iron ore, so there are currently no through passenger trains operating on the line.
It is a surprise to some of us that such a priority exists – company profits before transport accessibility – but there it is. Now it’s Easter there will no doubt be fewer visitors in the area than usual. People may fly to Kiruna, but then, how to get to Abisko? They can take a very expensive taxi, or a fairly expensive bus (but only if they’ve already booked a ticket).
Let’s not call it a problem, let’s call it an opportunity. There must be other ways for a true adventurer to reach the mountains. Well walk or ski, yes, but you won’t get there by Easter if that’s your goal, it’s a long way. What you’ll need is a mindset trained by images of the wild west. Steam trains trundling through landscape, outlaws jumping on and off rickety old wagons, shoot outs on a wagon roof. Why not hitch a ride on one of the many iron ore trucks heading your way?
What you’ll need is some camouflage – the usual jungle kit can be adapted by sticking bits of grey on the green (apply at the local tourist office, if you can find it). You’ll need to sneak up on the wagons when they’re resting in a siding near the mine, or perhaps approach a little further along at Krokvik. Choosing your moment you can hoist your bag over the top, haul yourself up and climb in. It’ll be just like in the Westerns, and you’ll be hoping no-one plans to hold up the train on the way because you haven’t packed your revolver.
Fortunately iron ore is transported in the form of round pellets, so you can lie back in relative comfort on the trip. Getting off at the right stop might be difficult. If there are red lights along the way then it will be easy to leap off onto the track. Otherwise you’ll have to launch yourself up at a wooden beam as you pass through a tunnel, and hang on until all sixty wagons have passed beneath you. Then drop down discretely and be on your way. A trip to Abisko has never been this much fun.
Since I’ve been back in Kiruna I’ve been feeling a little challenged by the street light shining right in my face when I am sat on the sofa. I’ve felt interrogated, unnecessarily highlighted. I don’t like Kiruna’s over the top street lighting but you have to learn to live with it so I thought maybe I was being over sensitive. But on closer inspection I saw that our street light had taken on a rather quirky look, angled up and out, as if looking for something.
Not looking for me, I reassured myself. It’s not the neighbours wanting a better look at our indoor activities. It must have been dislodged in the wind, or knocked by something. (But at that height? It was hard to imagine. Unless it was a crow preparing to build a nest in the nearby tree that didn’t like the light either.)
We reported it to Tekniska Verken that works for the local council managing street issues. We thought they would forward it to a community surveillance team, who would then realise that their plans to spy on people in our street needed to be dialled down a notch.
A couple of days later, a van – charmingly named Attentiv – arrived. The men inside were straining their necks to assess the nature of the problem by looking at the street light in their side mirrors. The angle was wrong – they had to get out and look. Realising the angle was still wrong, they drove off. Nothing happened so we had to just draw the blind down rather fiercely.
A week later there was another problem. Northern lights, and too much bright lighting all around us to see it. Then twenty minutes later all the street lights suddenly went off. Somebody flicked a switch, which was very nice of them I thought, though surprising given they aren’t usually sympathetic to the need to see aurora.
The next morning I was sitting on the sofa looking out the window when I noticed that our street light was now pointing straight down. During the night, or very early in the morning, someone had come to our street with a cherry picker machine, lifted themselves up to a height above the nearby building, straightened the arm of the light, lowered themselves back down, and driven off. All without a sound. It felt like magic, or maybe an unusually obliging town troll.
That night the light didn’t work at all. Yes, probably a troll.
It’s not something to put on Instagram. It’s when you’re out in the landscape and you don’t see a single reindeer, or a moose. Or at home, looking out the window at the snow – not a single arctic hare. Very few birds too.
And yet, this is a good feeling – we here, and the animals and birds, not here. They’re hidden in the bare birch forest, feeding out on the bogland, nibbling away at what’s at their feet, in their own quiet hidden places.
Visitors will be disappointed. The tourist office will have to get out that moose costume to entertain them on the ‘Wildlife Tour’. Apologies will be made no doubt, for their misfortune.
But the misfortune is entirely theirs, because the animals and birds are where they should be, hidden from sight. We see them when food is scarce, and this winter it isn’t. The far north of Sweden has had less snow than usual so the depth is penetrable, and the timing of occasional snow thawing – which then refreezes creating very hard layers – has been good, so animals can still paw their way through to or reach out to their food, and birds can see what they can eat.
Not seeing something isn’t always considered a misfortune. Consider the brown bear for instance. We’ve seen the poo, but not the bear. Bears are widespread in this area, but never seen, and for this we are always thankful.
We were part way through Rachmaninov’s Prelude No 1. when it happened. A few heads in the audience turned to look around, to check they’d not imagined it. Renowned concert pianist Irma Gigani, from Georgia, found herself playing in Kiruna church to an underwhelmingly small audience, but I’m betting that’s the first time she’s felt the ground move during a performance.
I wasn’t surprised by the mini-quake. The church is on threatened ground, like so much of ‘old Kiruna’, and we’re used to a bit of jiggling and thundering now and again. But I am surprised that it now looks like LKAB (the mining company) really is going to move the church, as a whole, to a site in the new town. For the last few years each time it’s been mentioned I’ve thought that when it comes to it they’ll just say it’s all too difficult, and instead they’ll just dismantle and rebuild it.
Kiruna church, not built for easy manoeuvring
But now, seeing is believing, and we see the preparations for the move. It’s a very wide bulky building and won’t fit on the existing road structure, so they are building some new roads, just for the church to travel on, just on one day later in the year.
It’s mind boggling really. There’s damage from a climate emergency, nations are at war, there’s the cost of living crisis and local councils all short of money. But in the magic world of LKAB, Kiruna church will go to the ball.
Kiruna has already lost some iconic buildings because they were too much trouble to move so it was reasonable to assume they would stall at the first fence when it came to moving the church. Yes it was once voted Sweden’s favourite building, but that was a while ago now and very few Swedes have actually seen it. Yes it was paid for originally by LKAB, but so were lots of things that are falling into the pit. Yes it’s a church and destroying churches isn’t a good look. But we still thought they wouldn’t bother.
But bother they do – there is an astonishing amount of road construction work planned to move it, just at a time when most of Kiruna is being knocked down. The church’s red carpet road will be built around the town’s old, abandoned, main through road, which will have to be widened significantly to allow for the church’s wide beamage. That means rebuilding very wide overhanging bridges, removing street furniture, closing roundabouts, and physically constructing new road along a three kilometre distance. It seems nothing is too much trouble for the church’s fairy godmother, LKAB in this instance.
Considering Kiruna’s long hours of darkness in the winter it’s not surprising that when electric lighting became available in the early 1900s the town installed it as a public utility long before most towns in the country. Light was a valuable resource in winter so these days locals will pay a lot of money for a fashionable light source, and Kiruna’s streets are aggressively over-lit with glaring lighting.
So that’s light. Something else in short supply in Kiruna are warm beaches and water you can swim in. This might explain why the local council is currently committed to an overspend of hundreds of millions of kronor on a new swimming pool, featuring water chutes and a relaxavdelning (rest area) with saunas and sun loungers. Now that the mining company is paying, they thought, we really can have it all. Paid generous compensation for the loss of the existing pool, soon to crack over collapsing ground like the rest of Kiruna, they sat back and let their imaginations run wild. By the time the project got started building costs had increased, and then following the lead of their rich imaginations, they then let these run more and more out of control.
It’s a bit mad because the current swimming pool is gloriously underused – I was there this morning for a full hour and was the only person in the pool. Maybe they think a relax area will change all that – but for what purpose? You can understand the council wanting something bigger and better than what they have already, but it does look like dreams and civic pride may have led them to invest in a scheme way beyond their resources. The overspend will now have them (and us) paying off large sums every year long into the future.
You can’t help but wonder if this was ever something that local people really needed or wanted.
Last week in a local street I came across major roadworks – there were broken hot water heating pipes there that leaked, creating a hot geyser effect at street level. We had the same problem (and subsequent pit) outside our house last summer. New pipes had been delivered to the scene in readiness, and the welders had been called in, but nothing much seemed to be happening – some technical issue with the pipes perhaps.
Anyhow, the welders didn’t have much to do. They looked relaxed, living in the moment. They were sitting on the side of the hole in the sunshine. One of them was lying with his eyes shut, fully stretched out, soaking up the sun and listening to the gentle hiss hiss of the hot water leak. He looked blissed out. He could have been on a sun lounger next to a pool anywhere in the Mediterranean, but he was in Kiruna’s latest relaxavdelning.
Returning to Kiruna and going into what is now known as ‘the old town’ is like approaching a battle ground. You know the battle is ongoing, though there are frequent pauses between bouts of destruction. You don’t know what to expect, except more destruction.
I approached cautiously, seeing the fences at the end of the street. The Bishops Inn was still there, and open, but it was on the edge of the war zone. Behind and below it there were gaps in the skyline where buildings had been brought down. Fences snaked either side, leading down to temporarily halted bulldozers and piles of snow-covered earth, concrete and other building debris.
Empty buildings sighed with neglect. Heating pumps had fallen off walls and were left swaying in the wind. There were holes in the sides of concrete buildings. Cracks marked lines of damage up and down, side to side. Some buildings looked almost normal, facing their future execution with brave bright faces, in denial of their future demise. I have an emotional investment in this town, and to see it removed, erased from view, is like having your memory wiped in front of you. What it must be like for people who have lived here all their lives is hard to imagine.
In these surroundings it was no surprise to see a couple of Swedish army officers strolling down the street in their combat gear. Peering round a corner I saw a sign for a bunker – Sweden has had these since the 1930s – and you think you might suddenly have to dive in one of them for shelter not from a falling bomb or chemical warfare, but from a falling building. You won’t of course – the mining company’s demolition of the town is slow and steady, and way ahead of any imminent danger.
NATO’s current Nordic 24 exercise is a fictional movement of army and equipment, planes and vehicles, around the far north of Scandinavia and Finland. They won’t have to use their imagination to picture Kiruna as a besieged, threatened, war-torn town.
