🇸🇪 Sweden · Dalarna and Swedish Lapland
Kiruna is the end of the Swedish world, and one of the most fascinating. It is the northernmost city in Sweden, planted deep in Arctic Lapland, 145 km above the Arctic Circle, in a landscape of tundra, bare mountains and nights that in winter light up with the northern lights. It was born a little over a century ago for one reason alone: beneath it lies the largest underground iron mine in the world, that of the Kiirunavaara mountain, which is still the city's engine and, at the same time, its great threat.
Because Kiruna is living through a phenomenon unique on the planet: it is moving. The mine, as it digs ever deeper, is deforming the ground beneath the historic centre, which is in danger of collapsing. So an astonishing decision was taken: to move the entire city a few kilometres east. A new centre opened in 2022, and emblematic buildings — including Kiruna's beloved wooden church, weighing more than 600 tonnes — are being physically moved, whole, to their new location. It is one of the most incredible urban stories of our time.
This guide covers Kiruna with a practical and warm eye: how to get there (including the legendary night train from Stockholm), when to go depending on what you are after — auroras and the ice hotel in winter, the midnight sun in summer — how to visit the famous Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi, how to hunt auroras, how to approach Sami culture with respect, and what everything costs (a lot: this is a premium experiences destination). The gateway to the Swedish Arctic, with Abisko a step away.
Kiruna is a young city with an intense history. The area was for centuries the territory of the Sami people, indigenous to northern Scandinavia, who herded reindeer and lived off the Arctic land. Everything changed at the end of the nineteenth century, when the railway (the Malmbanan, 'ore line', completed in 1902) made it possible to work the enormous iron reserves of the Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara mountains. The state company LKAB founded Kiruna in 1900 as a model mining town, planned with modern ideas of social urban design. Kiruna iron fed European industry throughout the twentieth century — including, controversially, Nazi Germany during the Second World War — and remains today one of the pillars of the Swedish economy. In the twenty-first century, the mine, as it went deeper, began to deform the ground beneath the city, which forced the historic decision to move the town centre eastwards; the new centre opened in 2022 and the process will continue until around 2035. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓From the free farmers of Dalarna — cradle of Gustav Vasa, of Falun copper and of the painted horse that is a symbol of Sweden — to the Arctic Lapland of the Sami people, the iron of Kiruna and the auroras of Abisko: two hearts of the country, one folk, one polar.
Read the history of Dalarna and Swedish Lapland →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Kiruna existed, long before the engineers, the miners and the railway arrived, these Arctic lands already had owners: the Sami people, indigenous to northern Scandinavia, whose presence in the region goes back thousands of years. The Kiruna area is part of Sápmi, the ancestral Sami territory that stretches across northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Kola peninsula.
The Sami developed a culture deeply adapted to the Arctic. Many specialised in reindeer herding, following the herds on their migrations between winter and summer pastures, in a semi-nomadic way of life that made wise use of the resources of the tundra and the mountains. Others lived from fishing and hunting. They had their own languages — several related Sami languages — their dress (the colourful gákti), their traditional song, the joik, and a worldview tied to nature and to the cycles of the Arctic.
The city's very name has indigenous roots: 'Kiruna' probably derives from the Sami 'Giron', meaning 'ptarmigan', the Arctic bird. The place names of the whole region — Kiirunavaara, Luossavaara, Jukkasjärvi, Kebnekaise — have their roots in the Sami and Finnish languages, and are a reminder that this landscape was named and inhabited for centuries by its original peoples.
Like so many indigenous peoples, the Sami later suffered the pressure of colonisation and of the state: the arrival of mining and the city transformed their territory, and for generations they were subject to assimilation policies that damaged their language and their culture. Recognition came late: Sweden established a Sami Parliament (Sametinget) in 1993, based in Kiruna, and claims over land, reindeer pastures and cultural rights are still under way today. Reindeer herding remains a living Sami activity in the region, at times in tension with mining and industry.
The existence of enormous iron deposits in the mountains of this part of the Arctic had been known for a long time, but working them was impossible: they lay in the middle of nowhere, with no roads or way of getting the ore out. Everything changed at the end of the nineteenth century with a colossal piece of work: the ore railway, the Malmbanan, which would link the deposits with the ports. The line, completed in 1902, connected Kiruna with Narvik, on the Norwegian coast (a port that does not freeze in winter thanks to the Gulf Stream), and with Luleå, on the Gulf of Bothnia. At last the iron could be extracted and exported.
Kiruna's iron was exceptional: the mountains of Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara held gigantic deposits of very high-quality magnetite. The company that would work them, LKAB (Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag), founded in 1890, would become one of the largest iron miners in the world and the engine of the whole region.
To house the workers, the town of Kiruna was formally founded in the year 1900. And here is something notable: Kiruna was not a chaotic mining camp but a town planned with modern, socially minded ideas for the time. LKAB's director, Hjalmar Lundbohm — considered the 'father of Kiruna' — wanted to create a model town, a dignified one, with good housing for the workers, services, schools and culture, in contrast with the misery of so many industrial towns. Prestigious architects and planners were hired; the layout was adapted to the terrain and the Arctic climate to give shelter from the wind and the cold, and emblematic buildings went up such as Kiruna's beautiful wooden church (opened in 1912), inspired by Sami tents and considered one of the best-loved buildings in Sweden.
So, in barely a few years and deep in the Arctic, an entire town devoted to iron was born, which within a few decades grew into the northernmost in the country and a symbol of Sweden's industrial modernisation.
Throughout the twentieth century, Kiruna iron was one of the pillars of the Swedish economy and an important piece of European industry. The ore taken from its mountains fed the continent's steelworks, and the town prospered to the rhythm of the mine. But that iron also played a dark and controversial part in the most dramatic moment of the century: the Second World War.
Sweden stayed officially neutral during the war, but its iron was strategic for the powers in conflict, and especially for Nazi Germany. The German arms industry depended heavily on high-quality Swedish iron ore, much of which came out of Kiruna and travelled by railway to the Norwegian port of Narvik and from there to Germany. Control of those exports was a military objective of the first order.
Indeed, one of the reasons for the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 was precisely to secure the Swedish iron route through Narvik, and the battle of Narvik in 1940 — one of the first major engagements of the war in the west — had a great deal to do with that ore. The Allies, for their part, considered plans to cut off the supply of Swedish iron to Germany. Swedish neutrality, which allowed that trade to continue through much of the war, remains today the subject of historical and moral debate in the country.
After the war, Kiruna iron kept flowing towards the reconstruction and development of Europe. The mine was modernised, moving from open-cast to underground working, and the town continued its life bound entirely to LKAB. Kiruna was, and still is, a company town in the most literal sense: a town that exists by and for its mine, whose fortunes are inseparably tied to those of the iron extracted beneath its feet.
In the twenty-first century, Kiruna is at the centre of one of the most astonishing urban stories on the planet: the whole city is moving. The cause is, once again, the mine. As the iron working at Kiirunavaara advances downwards and eastwards, following the seam beneath the city, it causes deformations and cracks in the ground at the surface. Geological studies determined that, over time, the subsoil beneath Kiruna's historic centre would become unstable and the area could subside. The city was, literally, running out of firm ground.
Faced with that threat, and with the choice between closing the mine — unthinkable for the economy of the city and of the country — or moving the city, an unprecedented decision was taken: to move Kiruna's town centre a few kilometres east, to a safe area. The project, agreed in the first decades of the century, is one of the largest urban relocation operations in history, financed by LKAB, which bears the costs as the cause of the problem (estimated in billions of krona).
The move is not only about building a new centre, but about relocating thousands of people, homes, businesses and services, and — most spectacularly — physically moving some emblematic historic buildings, transporting them whole to their new location instead of demolishing them. Kiruna's new centre, with its town hall (the 'Kristallen'), its square, its hotel and its shops, opened in 2022, marking the start of a new era for the city.
The most impressive and moving moment came in August 2025, when Kiruna's beloved wooden church — weighing more than 600 tonnes and some 40 metres wide, one of the best-loved buildings in Sweden — was transported whole, on special platforms, over some five kilometres to its new site, in a two-day operation followed by media all over the world. The move was scheduled during the midnight sun, to have daylight 24 hours a day. The full process of the 'stadsomvandling' (transformation of the city) will continue until around 2035.
Contemporary Kiruna is a singular city, combining its industrial soul with a booming Arctic tourism and with the historic process of its own relocation. It is still, above all, a mining town: the LKAB mine is the heart of its economy and its identity, and much of its population works directly or indirectly for it. The iron that comes out of Kiruna still travels by railway to Narvik and Luleå, feeding industry, and the company is also pushing new projects, such as the extraction of rare earths, minerals key to technology and the energy transition.
But in recent decades, Kiruna has also become one of the great gateways to the Swedish Arctic for travellers from all over the world. The trigger was, to a large extent, the Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi, which since 1989 — when the first ice hotel in the world was built on the banks of the Torne river — put the region on the international tourism map. From there a whole range of Arctic experiences flourished: hunting the northern lights, dog and reindeer sledding, snowmobile safaris, Sami camps, and in summer the midnight sun and hiking.
The closeness of extraordinary places reinforces that appeal: less than 1.5 hours away is Abisko, with its national park and its famous Aurora Sky Station, considered one of the best spots in the world to see the aurora; and from the region you can reach Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Sweden, and the Kungsleden, the great long-distance trail. The night train from Stockholm and Kiruna airport bring the Arctic within reach of any traveller.
So Kiruna today is a place of fascinating contrasts: a city that is moving so as not to be swallowed by its own mine, where the hard industrial life of iron, the thousand-year-old culture of the Sami people and a tourism that seeks the magic of ice, snow and the northern lights live side by side. A corner of the far north of the world where history, industry and nature cross paths as in few places on the planet.