After eight years of planning, an estimated cost of 500 million kronor (£39m) and an early morning blessing, a church in northern Sweden began a slow-motion 5km journey on Tuesday to make way for the expansion of Europe’s biggest underground mine.
The 672-tonne Kiruna Kyrka, a Swedish Lutheran church inaugurated in 1912, is to be slowly rolled to its new home over two days, at a pace of half-a-kilometre an hour.
In a huge multi-decade operation, the whole of the Arctic town is being moved as an iron ore mine operated by the state-owned mining company LKAB weakens the ground, threatening to swallow the town.
More than 10,000 people, including the Swedish king, Carl XVI Gustaf, are expected to line the streets – which have been widened especially to accommodate the moving church – to see the move of the red wooden building.
The operation was successfully tested on a 30-metre stretch over the weekend.
In the latest version of “slow TV”, dozens of cameras have been set up along the route to enable people across Sweden and the world to watch what is being billed by the broadcaster SVT as “Den stora kyrkflytten” (the big church move).
The church, designed by Gustaf Wickman, is one of Sweden’s most loved older buildings. It is known for its architecture that resembles a lávvu (a Sámi hut).
On Wednesday, a church service and coffee event will be held in an attempt to break the world record for church coffee. There will also be musical entertainment, including a concert with the singer Carola.
The church is expected to reopen at its new location at the end of next year, but the city’s entire relocation is not expected to be completed until 2035.
The church is one of 23 cultural buildings being relocated in what LKAB has described as “a unique event in world history”. The mine’s operator gave residents the option to either financially compensate those affected by the town’s relocation or rebuild homes or buildings.
The expansion has attracted criticism, including from some Sámi people who fear that fragmentation of the land will make reindeer herding more difficult.
“When it came to the church, we decided it was best to move it in one piece. We saw the value in that,” the LKAB project manager Stefan Holmblad Johansson told AFP. “It is with great reverence we have undertaken this project. This is not just any building, it’s a church.”
The altarpiece, a pastel landscape by the late Swedish Prince Eugen, and the more than 2,000-pipe organ have been carefully wrapped for the journey, and the ground around the church’s former location dug out so that beams could be placed underneath.
“The church is sitting on a beam system, then two rows of trailers were brought in,” Holmblad Johansson said. These were slid underneath the beams.
The belltower, which is a separate structure, will be moved next week.
