Why 12,000 People Are Moving Their Town for Iron Ore

In the far north of Sweden there is a town that is being taken apart and rebuilt two miles to the east, because the ground it stands on is being deliberately collapsed. That word matters. Kiruna is not sinking because of an accident or a miscalculation. The mine underneath it uses a method called sublevel caving, which works by blasting out the ore and allowing the rock above to fall into the empty space. The collapse travels upward until it reaches the surface. LKAB, the state-owned company that runs the mine, keeps all of its own infrastructure on the safe side of the orebody. The town was built on the other side. For twenty-one years the plan affected about six thousand people. In August 2025 that number doubled. We look at how a town gets moved, what a house is worth when a mining company has to buy it, what happened when they wheeled a hundred-and-fifteen-year-old church down the road at walking pace, and who is being asked to give up ground that cannot be replaced.