Arctic town seeks Swedish state help with relocation due to mine
Sweden’s Arctic municipality of Kiruna called for government help to relocate a third of its residents to allow the expansion of the world’s largest underground iron ore mine.
Kiruna has won fame for being moved in its entirety — a process started in 2004 — to accommodate the growth of the state-owned LKAB’s mine. In updated forecasts on Thursday, LKAB said it now expected 2,700 more homes and 6,000 more people, a third of the town’s population, to be directly affected by its expansion plans over the coming decade.
“I call on the Swedish government to contact Kiruna municipality as quickly as possible,” municipal leader Mats Taaveniku told a news conference earlier on Friday. “We can’t manage without help from the state and the government in this situation,” he said.
In 2022, a new retail area was opened 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from Kiruna’s previous center, and earlier this month, the town’s historic church was wheeled to a new site. The company said Thursday that relocation “must start now to secure operations until and beyond 2035.”
Sweden’s Minister for Energy, Business and Industry Ebba Busch said in a separate statement on Friday the government had contacted the municipality and understood the challenges it was facing, including how to “prioritize between different national interests.” LKAB “has been clear that it will take part in the compensation,” she said.
She added that it was positive that LKAB continues to make large investments in Kiruna’s home county of Norrbotten as this would help secure jobs and a supply of raw materials which did not rely “on dangerous states.”
(By Charlie Duxbury)
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