How do you move a beloved Swedish church three miles up the road? With prayer, engineering and a special trailer
A church in Sweden is being moved three miles up the road over two days, in a major operation to save it from subsidence.
Kiruna Church is being moved to a new location, slowly traversing an Arctic road to protect its historic wooden structure from problems caused by the expansion of the world’s largest underground iron ore mine.
Weighing 600 tons and 113 years old, the church has been lifted from its foundations and placed onto a specially constructed trailer.
The move is part of a broader 30-year initiative to relocate thousands of residents and buildings within the Lapland city.
Mine operator LKAB spent the past year preparing the route for the red-painted church, often hailed as Sweden’s most beautiful and one of its largest wooden buildings.
The three mile winding journey will lead it to a brand new Kiruna city centre. While the move ensures the church’s survival, it marks its departure from a site it has occupied for over a century.
Lena Tjarnberg, the vicar of Kiruna, reflected on the significance: “The church is Kiruna’s soul in some way, and in some way it’s a safe place. For me, it’s like a day of joy.
“But I think people also feel sad because we have to leave this place.”
For many of the region’s indigenous Sami community, which has herded reindeer there for thousands of years, the feelings are less mixed. The move is a reminder of much wider changes brought on by the expansion of mining.
“This area is traditional Sami land,” Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen, chair of the local Gabna Sami community, said. “This area was grazing land and also a land where the calves of the reindeer were born.”
If plans for another nearby mine go ahead after the move, that would cut the path from the reindeer’s summer and winter pastures, making herding “impossible” in the future, he said.
“Fifty years ago, my great-grandfather said that the mine is going to eat up our way of life, our reindeer herding. And he was right.”
The church is just one small part of the relocation project.
LKAB says around 3,000 homes and around 6,000 people need to move. A number of public and commercial buildings are being torn down while some, like the church, are being moved in one piece.
