After eight years of planning, an estimated cost of 500m kronor (£39m) and an early morning blessing, a church in northern Sweden began a slow-motion 5km journey to make way for the expansion of Europe’s biggest underground mine. The 672-tonne Kiruna Kyrka, a Swedish Lutheran church inaugurated in 1912, is to be slowly rolled to its new home over two days, at a pace of half-a-kilometre an hour. In a huge multi-decade operation, the whole of the Arctic town is being moved as an iron ore mine operated by the state-owned mining company LKAB weakens the ground, threatening to swallow it.
The ‘big church move’: Swedish town begins to roll historic building 5km
Why a Swedish town is on the move – one building at a time
