Kristallkyrkan kiruna
Kiruna kyrka är en kyrkobyggnad i Kiruna uppförd mellan och , ritad av arkitekten Gustaf Wickman. Den är församlingskyrka i Jukkasjärvi församling i Luleå stift. Kyrkan, vars unika utseende inspirerats av de norska stavkyrkorna, står i en naturpark nära Kiruna centrum. Kiruna Swedish: [ˈkǐːrʉna] ; [ 2 ] Northern Sami : Giron [ˈkiron] ; Finnish : Kiiruna [ˈkiːrunɑ] ; Meänkieli : Kieruna is the northernmost city in Sweden , situated in the province of Lapland.
It had 17, inhabitants in [ 3 ] and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality population: 23, in [ 4 ] in Norrbotten County. The city was originally built in the s to serve the Kiruna Mine. The Esrange Space Center was established in Kiruna in the s. Archaeological findings have shown that the region around Kiruna has been inhabited for at least 6, years. Centuries before Kiruna was founded in , the presence of iron ore at Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara had been known by the local Sámi population.
Kiruna Town Hall - The Crystal
In , Samuel Mört, a bookkeeper of the Kengis works, wrote on rumours about the presence of iron in the two hills. He gave the mountains of the area their Swedish language names Fredriks berg original Finnish name still in use as well: Kiirunavaara and Berget Ulrika Eleonora original Finnish name still in use as well: Luossavaara , after the King of Sweden Fredrik I and his wife Ulrika Eleonora. Despite the findings of large amounts of ore, no mining was initiated because of the remote location and the harsh climate.
Some ore was extracted in the 19th century. It was extracted in summer and transported in winter, using sleds drawn by reindeer and horses. However, the costs were high and the quality of the phosphorus ore poor, until, in , the Gilchrist—Thomas process , invented by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and Percy Gilchrist , allowed for the separation of phosphorus from the ore. The provisional railway between Luleå and Malmberget was finished in and the first train left Malmberget in March.
Around the same time, the English company went bankrupt and had to sell the line to the Swedish state for 8 million Swedish crowns , around half the amount initially invested. After a significant rebuild, the railway to Gällivare could be used again and iron ore was extracted at Malmberget by Aktiebolaget Gellivare Malmfält AGM. The continuation of the railway line to Narvik was controversial, because opponents feared the influence of Russia then controlling Finland and already connected to Sweden at Haparanda — Tornio on an international railway line.
The decision to build was finally taken in The railway came to Kiruna 15 October and the Swedish and Norwegian sections were joined 15 November For LKAB, the great expense almost led to bankruptcy in , just after the ore mining at Kiirunavaara had started. King Oscar II only opened the railway line 14 July , preferring summer over winter to travel north. The architects Per Olof Hallman and Gustaf Wickman were appointed to design the city, to be built at Haukivaara, near both iron ore mines, with then-revolutionary consideration of geographical and climatological circumstances; being built on a hill, winter temperatures are much milder than in other towns, and due to the street plan and the positioning, wind is limited.
On 27 April , Hallman's plan was officially accepted. Gustaf Broms proposed to name the settlements Kiruna , a short and practical name that could also be pronounced by Swedish-speaking inhabitants. The name means rock ptarmigan in Sámi and Finnish. LKAB appointed Hjalmar Lundbohm , who had finished neither high school nor his geology studies, as local manager in Kiruna. Before the design for the settlement had been accepted, houses were built in a disorganized manner with illegal slums similar to those in the other mining town, Malmberget , 80 kilometres 50 mi south of Kiruna.
Also, provisional buildings served as a church, a school, a hospital, a hotel and a police station. However, official residences were built at a high pace, and when the king opened the railway in , all illegal residences and most other provisional buildings had been demolished and replaced. The very first building, B:1 , is preserved and can be seen at Hjalmar Lundbohmsgården. In , 18 people were registered as living in soon-to-be Kiruna.
This increased to in , 7, in and 12, in The residences did not fully keep up with this rapid growth; by , there were 1, official rooms and some unrecognised residences, which meant that an average of three to four people lived in a single room; this density decreased steadily during the decades to follow. Kiruna became a municipalsamhälle a community within a municipality in This caused unhappiness in local organisations, such as Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Arbetareförening , that had hoped for status as köping , which would have kept more of the mining income inside the locality.
The Crystal - Kiruna Town Hall / Henning Larsen
In return, the mining company LKAB paid for a hospital, fire station, sewerage, roads, a church opened and the priest's home. In April , a tram began operation in Kiruna, the northernmost in the world. This meant miners would no longer have to walk several kilometres through the sub-arctic cold, nor would they need to climb a hundred meters up the mining hill. The network consisted of three lines: bergbanan funicular , stadsspårvägen city tramway and gruvspårvägen mine tramway.
The funicular closed in after a road up the mine was built The city line had a maximum length of 8 kilometres 5. It closed in after gradually being replaced by buses. Between and , a tram was used inside the mine, with wagons bought from closed tramlines throughout Sweden. The iron ore industry was good in the early 20th century. Before the start of the work, Hjalmar Lundbohm worried whether the Kiruna winter would allow for working outside at all, but despite early research into underground mining, mountaintop removal mining was the primary method in the early years.