This week I'm living and working in Kiruna. And the more I walk around here, the clearer it becomes: this isn't a city that's just somewhere. It's a city that's on its way – literally.
The journey here
It was a sunny trip at 6 in the morning by car+train+plane+taxi
Older than you think
The first thing that surprised me: people have lived up here for more than 6,000 years. Even when the ice sheet retreated, people settled in the area around Kiruna – so there were functioning communities here when Stockholm was still the bottom of the sea. The city of Kiruna itself is young in comparison, only founded in 1900, ”planted in the wilderness” as the municipality itself puts it. But the land beneath your feet has been inhabited since long before Sweden even existed as a country.
The ore that built everything
Kiruna exists because the mountain did. As early as the 17th century, it was known that Kiirunavaara contained iron, but it was only when the railway was brought here in the late 19th century that the city was truly born. LKAB and the legendary manager Hjalmar Lundbohm were the architects behind both the mine and the community around it – Lundbohm wanted to build a city where the workers had a good time, with parks, schools and a church worthy of the name. That care is still visible.
Today, Kirunavaara is the world's largest underground iron ore mine, more than 540 meters deep. The ore has been excavated since the 1890s and still lies beneath almost everything that is built, demolished and moved above it.
Sights worth venturing out into the cold for
Kiruna church is the first thing I wanted to see. Designed by Gustaf Wickman, inaugurated in 1912, shaped like a wooden Sami hut – voted Sweden’s best building built before 1950. And here’s a detail I didn’t expect at all: 87 unknown graves were found under the church’s wooden floor during a renovation. A whole hidden history, right under the feet of everyone who has attended church there for over a hundred years. Right now, the church itself is in the middle of its own journey – the entire building has been moved to escape the cracks in the mine.
LKAB's visitor center provides insight into a mine whose scope is difficult to understand before seeing the films and models on site.
Esrange Space Center, just outside the city, is Europe's leading civilian space base. Rockets and research balloons have been launched from here since 1966, and now Europe's first mainland-based satellite launch facility is being built – in the middle of the mountain landscape.
And of course The Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, a short distance away – rebuilt every winter from ice from the Torne River, shaped by artists from all over the world.
Home of the week: Elite Hotel Frost
The hotel I'm staying at is itself part of the history that's happening right now. Elite Hotel Frost opened as recently as May 2025, in the middle of the new city center, and was built by LKAB as part of the compensation to the municipality for the properties lost in the move. 154 rooms, two restaurants, sky bar and a spa area – Vana Spa – at the top of the building with both an indoor and outdoor pool. The architecture is intended as a tribute to Kiruna's history and the Arctic nature around it, and it shows: everything is bright, Scandinavian, with views of the mountains and birch forest. Sitting in the sky bar one evening and seeing the northern lights (or the midnight sun, depending on when you're reading this) is exactly the kind of contrast that makes Kiruna so special right now – brand new, built on top of 125 years of mining history.
A city that rebuilds itself
What makes Kiruna unique right now is that you are not just visiting a city with history – you are seeing history happening, in real time. Since 2004, it has been known that the deformations of the mine would force a move of the city center, about three kilometers to the east. In 2022, the new city center was inaugurated. Over thirty culturally historic buildings are being moved, log by log – the church, Hjalmar Lundbohmgården, the old workers' housing. This summer, in 2026, another entire block in the old city center is being dismantled: including the old Domushuset and Centralskolan, which have stood there since the middle of the 20th century.
Recently, it was announced that the transformation is bigger than expected: up to 12,000 people are now affected, twice as many as in the first forecast. It is a stage full of both sadness over what is disappearing and curiosity about what is being built. At the same time, Kiruna is investing heavily in the future beyond ore – critical minerals, phosphorus, rare earth metals, and a growing space industry that is already being identified as strategically important for all of Europe.
Year-round in the extremes
What strikes me most is the light – or the lack of it, or the abundance of it, depending on the season.
- Winter gives three weeks of polar night, when the sun never rises. But amidst the darkness there is the ”blue hour”, a brief, magical twilight light in the middle of the day.
- September to April It's northern lights season – clear, cold nights with the aurora borealis dancing across the sky.
- End of May to mid-July is midnight sun, approximately 47 days without night. Daylight that never ends.
Three completely different ways to experience the same place. No season here is like another, and that's exactly the kind of contrast I like to lean towards in my own work right now – building something stable, amidst change.
Have a good weekend, wherever you are. I was up here, in the city that moves itself, one day at a time. 🧡