Day 6: Under Kiruna

Click here to enlarge this panorama or see an ultra high-resolution version.

I awoke to this view of Kiruna out the window of my hotel this morning:

It was pretty obvious that there would be few opportunities for panoramas of sun-drenched Arctic valleys today. I briefly entertained the idea of doing an all-monotone gray panorama, thus doing for this media what 4'33 did for music, but nixed the idea as being too far ahead of its time:-)

Instead, I booked a place for a guided tour of Kiruna's big iron ore mine, which I soon found out is "the largest and most modern iron ore mine in the world". Kiruna was founded in the 1890s to exploit two exceptionally rich seams in twin mountains, Luossavaara and Kiirunavaara, and the story of the company mining them, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB) is the story of Kiruna itself.

The figures and scale are staggering. Two percent of Sweden's entire energy capacity is expended on this one mine. The company switched from open pit mining to underground mining in 1962, and today they're digging the seam at over a kilometer below ground, and expect to be able to dig for at least another kilometer. We took a bus into the ground, driving several kilometers on underground roads to -540 meters, where the group got to walk around.

I lagged behind the group a bit and got to take the panorama above. The bore machine in the photograph is now retired, replaced by remote-controlled borers driven by employees above ground. Had it been working, though, you would not have wanted to stand at the spot where I took the picture from. 

Probably the most remarkable story about this mine is that the seam is not exactly vertical, but instead descends at an angle below the center of Kiruna itself. The ground above the mined part of the seam becomes unstable, and so by 2013 bits of the town itself will have to start being moved elsewhere — Literally: Entire buildings will be transported. Considering that many people here earn a livelihood at the mine, everyone seems okay with the idea.