Sweden is moving a whole city three kilometres

Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, is built on top of the largest underground iron mine in the world, owned by the state company LKAB. The problem is geometry: the seam of ore does not run straight down, it tilts underneath the town, and every metre the mine digs deeper cracks the ground under the houses above a little more. In 2004, LKAB put a two-option choice to the town council: move the city or close the mine.

The city moved. The new centre was built three kilometres to the east and opened in 2022, with the town hall — a round building called Kristallen — already running since 2018. Some 6,000 people, almost a third of the town, changed their postal address without changing city. Twenty-one buildings listed as culturally valuable were not demolished: they were lifted onto wheeled platforms and taken away whole. What could not be moved came down: the old town hall fell in 2019 and only its clock tower was kept, now standing in front of the new one.

The biggest was the wooden church from 1912, once voted the most beautiful building in Sweden: around 700 tonnes that took two days to cover five kilometres along a road widened on purpose for it. Neighbours walked the route alongside it, at the speed of the church. The mine, meanwhile, did not stop for a single shift.