Kiruna

The Sámi knew of the iron in the hills of Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara long before there was a town, and in 1736 a Sámi man named Mangi reported the ore to Swedish officials gathered at Jukkasjärvi Church. High costs and the phosphorus-rich ore kept mining small until the Gilchrist–Thomas process of 1878 allowed the phosphorus to be separated. LKAB was founded in 1890, the railway arrived on 15 October 1899 and was joined to the Norwegian line to Narvik in 1902, and the town plan by Per Olof Hallman and Gustaf Wickman, accepted in 1900, placed the settlement on the Haukivaara hill. The mining manager Hjalmar Lundbohm, regarded as the town's founder, oversaw its growth from 18 registered residents in 1899 to more than 7,000 by 1910.

The early decades were turbulent: a general strike in 1909, a slump in the First World War, a successful miners' strike in 1920, and in the 1920s a group known as the Kiruna Swedes emigrating to Soviet Russia. During the Second World War, Kiruna ore was transported to Germany, German troops and equipment crossed the area by rail, and up to 2,000 refugees from 20 countries were held in the town. Kiruna gained city rights in 1948, rebuilt much of its centre from 1953, and diversified into space research, with the Kiruna Geophysical Observatory, now the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, founded in 1957, and Esrange in the 1960s.

In 2004 it was decided that the centre had to move to escape subsidence from the mine. The railway station moved out of the centre in 2013, the move itself began in 2014 under a plan stretching to 2100, the new town hall opened in 2018, and in August 2025 the church was carried in one piece to its new site.

Kiruna is a town of several languages and traditions. Its Sámi name is Giron, its Finnish name Kiiruna and its Meänkieli name Kieruna, and the name itself means rock ptarmigan in Sámi and Finnish. The Giron Sámi Teáhter is a professional theatre built on Sámi culture and identity, working to promote the Sámi languages, and the Sami were part of the town's appeal to visitors from its earliest days.

The town has also made a name for art and architecture, and Hjalmar Lundbohm himself was a patron of the arts and a connoisseur. The old town hall by Artur von Schmalensee was named Sweden's most beautiful building in 1964, and Kiruna Church has been voted both Sweden's most beautiful church and its best-loved building. Today the new town hall keeps an art collection and hosts exhibitions.

Winter shapes the calendar. The Snow Festival, first held in 1986, is held in January; there are winter and autumn markets, a summer music and culture festival and a film festival in November. Ice hockey is played by the club Kiruna IF, and the town counts the hockey player Börje Salming and the biathletes Hanna and Elvira Öberg among its notable residents. Outdoor life is central: cross-country and alpine skiing and dog-sledding in winter, and hiking and river rafting in summer.

About 17,000 people lived in the town in 2023, and a little over 23,000 in the whole municipality in 2016, which stretches across a huge, almost empty area of mountains and forest to the Norwegian and Finnish borders. The mine remains the town's main source of income: in 2018 it produced 26.9 million tonnes of ore, and its main haulage level lies more than 1,300 metres below the original surface. In May 2020 a magnitude 4.9 earthquake was triggered by mining activity.

Beyond the mine, Kiruna has a cluster of space research around Esrange, the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Luleå University of Technology's space science department, and a large tourism business built on the northern lights, winter sports and the ice-building tradition at Jukkasjärvi.

The town's move dominates local life. Buildings in the old centre are being moved or demolished, roads close at times for relocations, and a park is planned as a buffer between the mine and the new centre. Daylight sets the year's rhythm: about 50 days of midnight sun in summer, about three weeks without sunrise in December, and snow on the ground for most of the year.

Reindeer is the local speciality and appears on menus in many forms, from simple kebabs and sandwiches to elaborate restaurant dishes. The best-known traditional preparation is sautéed reindeer, renskav in Swedish and báistebiđus in Northern Sami, perhaps the best-known traditional meal of Sápmi: steak or back meat is sliced thinly, usually while still frozen so that it cuts easily, fried in fat — traditionally reindeer fat, more often butter or oil today — and seasoned with salt and black pepper. It is served with mashed potatoes and lingonberry preserve, or more traditionally with raw lingonberries mashed with sugar.

Salmon and other fish, moose and other game from the surrounding wilderness are the other local specialities. Most of the town's restaurants and pubs sit in the centre, several on Föreningsgatan, and reindeer in some form can be found in almost any diner in town. Menus also lean on the wild food of the north: fish from the rivers and lakes and game from the forests. Sunday is quiet, with fewer places open.