Swedish church to be moved 5km to make way for mine
Workers have already jacked up the 600-tonne, 113-year-old church from its foundations and hefted it onto a specially built trailer.
It is part of a 30-year project to relocate thousands of people and buildings from the Lapland city.
Mine operator LKAB has spent the last year widening the road for the journey, which will take the red-painted church, one of Sweden's largest wooden structures, often voted its most beautiful, down a winding route to a brand new Kiruna city centre.
The church is just one small part of the relocation project.
LKAB says around 3000 homes and around 6000 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.
Other buildings are being dismantled and rebuilt around the new city centre.
Hundreds of new homes, shops and a new city hall have also been constructed.
The shift should allow LKAB, which produces 80 per cent of the iron ore mined in Europe, to continue to extend the operation of Kiruna for decades to come.
The state-owned firm has brought up around two billion tonnes of ore since the 1890s, mainly from the Kiruna mine.
Mineral resources are estimated at another six billion tonnes in Kiruna and nearby Svappavaara and Malmberget.
LKAB is now planning the new mine next to the existing Kiruna site.
As well as iron ore, the proposed Per Geijer mine contains significant deposits of rare earth elements, a group of 17 metals critical to products from lasers to iPhones and green technology key to meeting Europe's climate goals.
Europe, and much of the rest of the world, is currently almost completely dependent on China for the supply and processing of rare earths.
In March this year, the EU designated Per Geijer as a strategic project which could help speed up the process of getting the new mine into production.
Down the road, Kiruna's new city centre is also taking shape.
"The church is ... a statement or a symbol for this city transformation," Mayor Mats Taaveniku told Reuters.
"We have 10 years left to move the rest of the city."
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