Expedition Route
Kiruna 
Giron
Location: 67.8° N 20.3° E
Country: Sweden
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The city of Kiruna sits on the large lake 'Luossajärvi' between two mountains. One mountain is named Luossavaara and the other is Kiirunavaara. In the Native language of the Sámi people Luossavaara means 'salmon mountain' and Kiirunavaara means 'ptarmigan mountain.' Kiruna is named after the Kiirunavaara mountain and the Sámi name for the town is Giron, which means 'ptarmigan'!
A ptarmigan is a small chicken-like birds which live year round on the Arctic tundra in the rocks or bushes.
The Kiirunavaara mountain is 2450 feet tall and it is the world's largest ore iron mine.
The mine is some 280 miles (500 km) long and more than half a mile deep (1km) and more than 20 million tons of ore is dug up every year. The ore is refined in the ore refinery on the backside of the mountain. The mining company LKAB is a huge employer in town with a total of about 1,800 employees. Today iron has great value in the production of steel and the mine is doing very well. In 2006, the mining company reported profits of around 6,000 million.
About 90 miles (145 km) north of the Arctic circle, Kiruna is Sweden's most northern city. Ancient remains show that the first people arrived more than 6,000 years ago, after the inland ice cap retreated. This means there were functioning communities in the Kiruna area when Sweden's capital, Stockholm, was still on the seabed! The town of Kiruna was officially established by the Swedish Crown in 1900. Today more than 23,000 people live in Kiruna. 18,000 of those live in the town center whereas the remaining 5000-some people are spread out in an area (19,447 square kilometers) twice the size of New Jersey or the size of the Netherlands.
Kiruna enjoys midnight sun for 50 days every summer: from the end of May to the middle of July the sun never sinks below the horizon. From mid December to end of December it is polar light when the sun never come above the horizon.
A place of extremes it is said that in Kiruna "the light is lighter, the cold is colder, the peaks are higher, the spaces bigger and the location further north than anywhere else in Sweden." It is also a place of 'loud cracks.' This is because of the huge iron mine. The mining company LKAB is extracting iron ore deeper and deeper below the surface, and the ore body is inclined downwards and inwards towards the centre of Kiruna. This is causing the ground to crack above the extraction area, and the cracks are now approaching the built-up area of the town centre. By 2033 3,000 people in Kiruna must move to new homes outside the cracking zone, according to LKAB's current forecast.
The railway, which today runs between the town and the mine mountain Kiirunavaara, needs to be moved by 2012 and the National Rail Administration is working intensively in preparation for construction start in 2009. The town's main sewage pipe runs parallel with the railway. Construction of a new one began in autumn 2007. This year alone, it is estimated that the moving of the town had a cost of 350-400 million kronor (40-45 mill. euro).
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