Historic Swedish church transported on trailers to avoid being swallowed by mine

A landmark church in Sweden is being relocated intact on a giant trailer to save it from being damaged by the expansion of the world’s largest underground iron ore mine.

The 113-year-old Kiruna Church and its belfry are being moved this week along a 5-kilometre route east to a new home as part of the town's relocation in Sweden's far north.

Kiruna is the nation's northernmost town at 200 kilometres above the Arctic Circle, and is home to about 23,000 inhabitants — including members of the Sami Indigenous people.

The move of its town centre, including the church, has been in the works since 2004.

As the iron ore mine, which dates back to 1910, expanded deeper underground, residents began seeing cracks in buildings and roads.

In order to reach a new depth of 1,365 meters — and to stop Kiruna being swallowed up — officials began moving buildings to a new downtown at a safe distance from the mine. Swedish law prohibits any mining activity from taking place under buildings.

As of July, 25 buildings had been lifted up onto beams and wheeled east. But the church — which is approximately 40 metres wide and weighs 672 tonnes — required extra effort.

Mine operator LKAB had to widen a major road from 9 metres to 24 metres and dismantle a viaduct to make way for a new intersection to enable the church's relocation.

"We've done so much preparation," LBAK's project manager for the move, Stefan Holmblad Johansson, told the BBC. "It's a historic event, a very big and complex operation and we don't have a margin of error. But everything is under control."

Take me to church — or take the church to me?

In the case of the church, a driver using a large control box is piloting the building through the route as it travels roughly 12 hours over Tuesday and Wednesday. It's expected to move at a varying pace between 0.5 and 1.5 kilometres per hour.

This week's move has turned into a two-day highly choreographed media spectacle, run by LKAB and featuring an appearance by Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf as well as a musical performance by KAJ, the country's 2025 Eurovision entry.

Sweden's national broadcaster SVT is livestreaming the move on both days, billing it as "The Great Church Walk" to play off its success with the spring showing of "The Great Moose Migration" that has enthralled millions of viewers annually since 2019.

But not everyone is enthused about the relocation.

Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen, chairman of one of the Sami reindeer herding organisations in Kiruna, said LKAB's plans for a new mine could threaten reindeer migration routes and imperil the livelihood of herders in the area.

LKAB, which is the main employer in Kiruna, is covering the cost of the relocation, which is estimated at more than 10 billion Swedish krona (€898mn euros), local media reported.

In 2001, the Swedish public voted for the Kiruna Church as the "best building of all time, built before 1950" in a poll connected to the culture ministry. Built on a hill so worshippers could overlook the rest of Kiruna, the Swedish Lutheran church was designed to emulate the Sami style as a gift from LKAB.