How do you move a beloved Swedish church down the road? With prayer, engineering and some Eurovision
Kiruna, Sweden (AP) – How do you move one of Sweden’s most popular wooden churches on the road? With a little engineering, a lot of prayer – and a little Eurovision for good luck.
The Kiruna church – called Kiruna Kyrka in Swedish – and its belfry are moved this week along a 5 -kilometer (3 miles) road to the east to a new city center as part of the relocation of the city. This happens because the world’s largest underground mine in the world threatens to swallow the city.
This week, thousands of visitors went down to Kiruna, the most northern city in Sweden at 200 kilometers (124 miles) above the Arctic Circle. It houses around 23,000 inhabitants, including members of the Aboriginal Sami, spread over nearly 19,500 square kilometers (7,528 square feet).
Lena Tjärnberg, vicar of the church, is expected to launch the move with a blessing on Tuesday morning. The trip is expected to end on Wednesday afternoon.
The church was a gift from mining society
In 2001, the Swedish people voted at the wooden church the “best building of all time, built before 1950” in a survey linked to the Ministry of Culture. Built on a hill so that the faithful can ignore the rest of Kiruna, the Swedish Lutheran church was designed to imitate the Sami style as a gift from LKAB, the state -owned mining society.
The Kiruna mine itself dates back to 1910 and the church was completed in 1912. Its neo-Gothic exterior was considered the most distinctive building in the city and tourists regularly traveled before being closed a year ago to prepare for relocation. It is ready to reopen in the new location at the end of 2026.
Tjärnberg said the final service in the old place was soft to be.
“The last day you go down the stairs and close the church door, you know that it will be several years before you can open it-and in a new place,” she said. “We don’t know what it will feel to open the door.”
The show
This week’s move has become a very choreographed media show of two days, managed by LKAB and with an appearance of the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. Musical performances will include a set of Kaj, the entry into Eurovision in Sweden in 2025 which was the favorite of the bookmakers to win the competition for this year, but lost against the counter -class classical JJ of Austria.
The SVT, the national broadcaster of Sweden, capitalizes on the window and will be in difficulty the moving on two days, billing it as “The Great Church Walk” to play its success with the projection of the spring of “The Great Moose Migration” which has captivated millions of viewers every year since 2019.
Known for the midnight sun and the northern lights, Kiruna and the surroundings are a major draw all year round for visitors to Swedish Lapland. The region also includes the Aurora Sky station, the highest mountain in the Nordic country.
British tourists Anita and Don Haymes had already traveled Kiruna twice before this year’s trip. When they heard of the church movement, they changed their itinerary to make sure they would be there for it. They took photos of it supported on beams and wheels this week before the move.
“It’s an incredible feat they do,” said Anita Haymes on Sunday. “It will be interesting to see him moving, incredible.”
But not everyone is delighted with the extravagance of LKAB. Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen, president of one of Renne Sami’s herd organizations in Kiruna, said that LKAB’s plans for a new mine could threaten the reindeer migration routes and jeopardize the means of subsistence of breeders in the region.
Mechanics behind movement
The move of downtown Kiruna, including the church, has been in preparation since 2004. While the mine extended deeper, residents began to see cracks in buildings and roads. In order to reach a new depth of 1,365 meters (4,478 feet) – and to prevent Kiruna from being swallowed – those responsible have started to move buildings to a new city center at a mine safety distance.
In July, 25 buildings were raised on beams and rolled to the east. Sixteen, including the church, remain.
About 40 meters (131 feet) wide with a weight of 672 metric tonnes (741 tonnes), the church required additional effort. The engineers widened a major route from 9 meters to 24 meters (30 to 79 feet) and dismantled a viaduct to make way for a new intersection.
A driver, using a large control box, will pilot the church by the route while it travels around 12 hours in Tuesday and Wednesday – with a break every day for Fika, the traditional Swedish coffee break. It should move at a variable rate between 0.5 and 1.5 kilometers per hour (0.31 and 0.93 miles per hour).
Stefan Holmblad Johansson, LKAB project manager for the move, would not say how much he cost the mining company.
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The journalist of Associated Press Pietro from Cristofaro in Kiruna, Sweden, contributed to this report.
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