The magnificent Red wood church Kiruna, in northern Sweden, began on Tuesday, August 19 in the morning its migration to its new location, a symbolic stage of the city movement to allow the expansion of an iron mine.
Responsible in a special convoy: beams and two rows of towing, Kiruna Kyrka, a Lutheran church inaugurated in 1912 and considered one of the most beautiful buildings of Sweden, moves very slowly, between 500 meters and 1 km/h for 8 hours in France.
His trip was blessed for the first time by Bishop åsa Nyström and priest Lena Tjärnberg, pastor of Kiruna.
After a road of approximately five kilometers, the Church must reach its destination on Wednesday after an important logistics operation, in the eyes of more than 10,000 expected people, in addition to the 18,000 inhabitants of the city, massage behind the safety barriers under a blue sky.
King Carl XVI Gustaf will be among the spectators according to the trip. With thirty cameras installed along the route, SUVT Swedish television broadcasts the entire trip in this version of Télescargot Live.
The entire Kiruna center is being relocated due to the exploitation of an immense iron mineral deposit by the LKAB group.
A “unique event in world history”
As mining activities have spread, the objective is to deepen more, the company extracted today at 1,365 meters deep: the stability of the low Kiruna has weakened, which increases the risk of collapse in certain areas.
The site began almost twenty years ago, and should continue at least until 2035.
The new city center was inaugurated in September 2022. The Church movement, fully financed by LKAB, should cost 500 million crowns (44.8 million euros).
40 meters wide and with a weight of 672 tons, the imposing church, designed by Swedish architect Gustaf Wickman, combines different architectural influences. Sami inspiration reasons, aboriginal people in the region, adorn banks.
Its singular silhouette is distinguished by a red neo -Gothic exterior, where the roofs with pronounced slopes descend to the floor, large windows arranged to each side.
The dark interior has national romantic style elements, as well as a new art painted by Prince Eugène de Sweden (1865-1947), which represents a landscape with pastel colors, inspired by its travels to Tuscany and in southwest Sweden.
Among the twenty -three cultural monuments already moved, the Church of Kiruna will be the most imposing, explains Lkab that qualifies the trip “a unique event in world history.”
This architectural jewel “has been meticulously studied in the perspective of its displacement so that cultural values are retained in the best possible way, in particular by ensuring that the altarpiece and the organ move carefully,” says the industrialist.
A set of 1,200 tons
The routes on the trip have extended and level to guarantee a soft transfer, a process that took a year according to LKAB.
The company proposed financially compensating all the people assigned by the relocation of the city or rebuilding their homes or buildings.
“As for the church, we decided that it was better to move it in one piece,” Stefan Holmblad Johasson, project manager, told AFP, who claims to have undertaken the project with “great reverence,” he told AFP.
“It is not an ordinary building, it is an church,” he insisted.
The floor was dug around the current location of the church, which allowed the installation of large beams below to raise it and then place it in two ranks of towing.
When he begins for his trip in an atmosphere of the village festival searched by the municipality and the company, the crew will weigh 1,200 tons, according to LKAB.
The bell tower, which is separate next to the church, will move next week.
Source: BFM TV
