Kiruna, Sweden is home to the largest iron mine in the world.  That could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on where you live.  And I don’t mean what part of the world you live, I mean what part of town you live.

You see, when the iron is mined, it’s blasted with explosives 4 km underground and the rubble is hauled away by train.  Eventually the ground above becomes unstable and collapses, as seen by the giant scar that’s developed near town.

The blasting happens from the hours of 1-3:00 AM and we were privy to this experience last night with several hours of boom-boom-boom that sounded like our neighbors were slamming their doors.

Recently, a large deposit was discovered under roughly 1/3 of the existing town, and the mine company has decided that it makes sense to move the town a few kilometers down the road.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the train station, church, city hall or one of the hundreds of houses that have stood for decades.  Sucks if you really like you’re home but it’s not one of the historic buildings slated to be up and moved.

The mine company has vowed to pay for the land it claims, and reaction to the project has ranged from outrage to wholesale embrace.  Deputy mayor Niklas Siren says, “It’s only 35 percent of the town’s total area.”  A brochure from our hotel reads, “This is not at all strange.  Adapting to nature’s rhythm is actually a part of our culture.  The aboriginal Sami have always done this.  Here we always strive to see beyond the horizon.”

As for Married to Adventure, we fail to see how mining for iron has anything to do with nature’s rhythm or anything natural for that matter.

Click HERE to read an interesting article about the project: