Kiruna, Sweden

(; ; ; ) is the northernmost city in Sweden, situated in the province of Lapland. It had 17,002 inhabitants in 2016Statistikdatabasen - Folkmängd efter region och vart 5:e år
/ref> and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality (population: 23,167 in 2016) in Norrbotten County. The city was originally built in the 1890s to serve the Kiruna Mine.

The Esrange Space Center was established in Kiruna in the 1960s. Also in Kiruna are the Institute of Space Physics and Luleå University of Technology's Department of Space Science.

History

Origins

Archaeological findings have shown that the region around Kiruna has been inhabited for at least 6,000 years.

Centuries before Kiruna was founded in 1900, the presence of iron ore at Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara had been known by the local Sámi population. In 1696, Samuel Mört, a bookkeeper of the Kengis works, wrote on rumours about the presence of iron in the two hills.Kummu 1997, p. 96. The ore became better known after it was reported by Mangi, a Sámi man, in 1736 to Swedish authorities that had gathered in Jukkasjärvi Church. Soon after the reported finding Swedish senior enforcement officer and cartographer Anders Hackzell mapped the Kiruna area in 1736. He named the mountains ''Fredriks berg'' and ''Berget Ulrika Eleonora'', after the King of Sweden Fredrik I and his wife Ulrika Eleonora, though today the mountains are known only by the names Kirunavaara and Luossavaara which come from Meänkieli.

Despite the findings of large amounts of ore, no mining was initiated because of the remote location and the harsh climate. Some ore was extracted in the 19th century. It was extracted in summer and transported in winter, using sleds drawn by reindeer and horses. However, the costs were high and the quality of the phosphorus ore poor, until, in 1878, the Gilchrist–Thomas process, invented by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and Percy Gilchrist, allowed for the separation of phosphorus from the ore.

In 1884, a concession for a railway from Luleå to Narvik was granted to ''The Northern Europe Railway Company''. The provisional railway between Luleå and Malmberget was finished in 1888 and the first train left Malmberget in March. Around the same time, the English company went bankrupt and had to sell the line to the Swedish state for 8 million Swedish crowns, around half the amount initially invested. After a significant rebuild, the railway to Gällivare could be used again and iron ore was extracted at Malmberget by Aktiebolaget Gellivare Malmfält (AGM).

At the initiative of Robert Schoug, the Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) was founded in 1890. In 1893, Gustaf Broms became CEO of both LKAB and AGM. LKAB pressed for continuing Malmbanan via Luossavaara and Kiirunavaara to the ice-free coast of Norway. The continuation of the railway line to Narvik was controversial, because opponents feared the influence of Russia (then controlling Finland and already connected to Sweden at Haparanda–Tornio) on an international railway line.

The decision to build was finally taken in 1898. The railway came to Kiruna 15 October 1899 and the Swedish and Norwegian sections were joined 15 November 1902. For LKAB, the great expense almost led to bankruptcy in 1901, just after the ore mining at Kiirunavaara had started. King Oscar II only opened the railway line 14 July 1903, preferring summer over winter to travel north.

The architects Per Olof Hallman and Gustaf Wickman were appointed to design the city, to be built at Haukivaara, near both iron ore mines, with then-revolutionary consideration of geographical and climatological circumstances; being built on a hill, winter temperatures are much milder than in other towns, and due to the street plan and the positioning, wind is limited. On 27 April 1900, Hallman's plan was officially accepted.

Gustaf Broms proposed to name the settlements ''Kiruna'', a short and practical name that could also be pronounced by Swedish-speaking inhabitants. The name means rock ptarmigan in Sámi and Finnish. LKAB appointed Hjalmar Lundbohm, who had finished neither high school nor his geology studies, as local manager in Kiruna.

Early history

Before the design for the settlement had been accepted, houses were built in a disorganized manner with illegal slums similar to those in the other mining town, Malmberget, south of Kiruna. Also, provisional buildings served as a church, a school, a hospital, a hotel and a police station. However, official residences were built at a high pace, and when the king opened the railway in 1903, all illegal residences and most other provisional buildings had been demolished and replaced. The very first building, ''B:1'', is preserved and can be seen at ''Hjalmar Lundbohmsgården''. In 1899, 18 people were registered as living in soon-to-be Kiruna. This increased to 222 in 1900, 7,438 in 1910 and 12,884 in 1930.

The residences did not fully keep up with this rapid growth; by 1910, there were 1,877 official rooms and some unrecognised residences, which meant that an average of three to four people lived in a single room; this density decreased steadily during the decades to follow. Kiruna became a municipalsamhälle (a community within a municipality) in 1908. This caused unhappiness in local organisations, such as ''Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Arbetareförening'', that had hoped for status as köping, which would have kept more of the mining income inside the locality. In return, the mining company LKAB paid for a hospital, fire station, sewerage, roads, a church (opened 1912) and the priest's home.

In April 1907, a tram began operation in Kiruna, the northernmost in the world. This meant miners would no longer have to walk several kilometres through the sub-arctic cold, nor would they need to climb a hundred meters up the mining hill. The network consisted of three lines: ''bergbanan'' (funicular), ''stadsspårvägen'' (city tramway) and ''gruvspårvägen'' (mine tramway). The funicular closed in 1955 after a road up the mine was built 1949. The city line had a maximum length of and was unique due to the 1-meter gauge, double-glazed windows and heated wagons. It closed in 1958 after gradually being replaced by buses. Between 1941 and 1964, a tram was used inside the mine, with wagons bought from closed tramlines throughout Sweden.

The iron ore industry was good in the early 20th century. Before the start of the work, Hjalmar Lundbohm worried whether the Kiruna winter would allow for working outside at all, but despite early research into underground mining, mountaintop removal mining was the primary method in the early years. Mechanisation was attempted early using steam powered excavators, but the cold climate led to considerable difficulties and only when electrical machinery became available in the 1910s, significant mechanisation was achieved. The peak of Kiirunavaara, ''Statsrådet'', was above Luossajärvi until it was spectacularly blown off in 1910.

A general strike hit Sweden in 1909 and Kiruna was no exception. Hoping for a better future, thousands of people left Kiruna, including a group of 500 inhabitants emigrating to Brazil. Most of them returned, disappointed that life in Latin America was not what they had hoped it to be. Hjalmar Lundbohm personally lent money for the trip home to some of the emigrants.

During World War I, iron ore production dropped to the lowest level in LKAB's history, and when exports increased again, a successful three-month strike in 1920 led to a 20% increase in salaries for the miners. Production dropped to a minimum in 1922 and a three-day work week was introduced, but during the ''fabulous twenties'', it increased to a record nine million tonnes in 1927.

In 1921, mining started at Kiruna's other hill, Luossavaara. However, the total amount of ore that could be mined in open pit mining here was small compared to Kiirunavaara, and LKAB preferred to concentrate resources in one place. Nevertheless, mining here continued until 1974 and later it became a research mine. While 19th-century mining in Kiruna had focused on Luossavaara the large-scale operation of LKAB focused on the Kiruna ore proper because it was both larger and not subject to legal restrictions that mandate Luossavaara ore to be refined in Sweden.Hansson 2015, p. 212.

During the first decades of Kiruna's existence, no road connected it to the outside world. The only connection was by railway or, as in the time before the railway, by boat (in summer) via the Torne and Kalix rivers to Jukkasjärvi and Håmojåkk and then proceeding by foot. A road from Kiruna was built to Tuolluvaara in 1901, Poikkijärvi in 1909, Alttajärvi in 1913 and connected to Svappavaara in 1926, from where roads already connected via Vittangi to Pajala and via Lappesuando to Gällivare and further south.

The Great Depression led to a 70% drop in ore production, a drop that would turn into a dramatic increase on the eve of World War II.

Although some tourists had already started coming to the area in the 19th century, the completion of the railway line truly made tourism possible. Tourists came for the rivers and the mountains, but also geologists and entire classes of students came to see the mine. Additionally, a yearly winter sports festival was started, which attracted people from a wide area. The Sami population was already a tourist attraction in the early days of Kiruna's existence.

In the early 1920s a movement that became known as "Kirunasvenskarna" (the Kiruna Swedes) decided to emigrate to Soviet Russia, the land where they hoped for better working conditions and higher wages and general standards. They were the last Swedes who emigrated in groups. Most of these emigrants lived in Kiruna prior to their move.

World War II

The municipality of Kiruna shares borders with Norway and Finland and Kiruna is located relatively close to both countries. This led to many soldiers being transported to the area whenever mobilisation was requested; first in September 1939 after the German invasion of Poland, then in November 1939 after the Russian invasion of Finland, but in both cases, Swedish soldiers did not engage in any fighting. In March 1940, Churchill requested permission to transport soldiers from Narvik in Norway to Finland via Kiruna and Haparanda in '' Operation Catherine''. Out of fear that the presence of British soldiers near the Kiruna ore mine would provoke a German attack on Sweden, the request was declined.

After the German invasion of Norway, at least ten soldiers were stationed along every bridge along Malmbanan, to blow up the bridges should the German army invade Sweden. Additionally, foreigners were banned from visiting Kiruna or the iron ore line, and only the Sami, military personnel, locals and people working for the government were permitted to travel between Kiruna and Riksgränsen.

After the battle at Bjørnfjell, 15 April 1940, wounded and fallen Norwegian soldiers were transported to Kiruna.

Despite the conditions for Swedish neutrality

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