Historic Swedish church being moved to accommodate giant mine

A historic red wooden church, regarded as one of Sweden’s most beautiful buildings, has been loaded onto a lorry in Kiruna, northern Sweden, ahead of its relocation due to the expansion of Europe’s largest underground iron ore mine. The town’s centre is being moved to prevent damage from ground subsidence caused by deep mining operations.

Niklas Johansson, LKAB Senior Vice President said "We've been mining here since the turn of the century. And when we went underground in the 50s, what happens is that gravity makes the land want to fall into where we mined out the iron ore. And now we've been mining down to 1,300 meters. It continues to fall down slowly, slowly. And we need to move the city."

The expansion aims to more than double future output and extract value from by-products such as phosphorus and rare earth elements. Preparations for moving the church included building a 24-meter-wide road, reinforcing it with beams, lifting the building with jacks, and placing it on trailers for transport to its new foundation.