happy

Moving a town down the road requires a huge amount of money and incredible engineering expertise, but not losing the community in the process might be even more complex

One sunny day last August, a 713-tonne, 113-year-old church was lifted off the ground and placed onto a specialised 224-wheel transporter to begin its journey five kilometres down the road.

The Gothic revival Kiruna Church is a beloved building, once named the most beautiful in Sweden. It would’ve stood where it did to the west of the Arctic town for many decades more, had the ground not threatened to swallow it up.

A great cheer went up as the church arrived at its new home, traffic lights, lamp posts and even a bridge having been demolished to make way for the timber structure. Among the spectators was Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and children who clambered onto roofs for a better look. The widely publicised event made headlines across the world and the typically capable Swedish engineering team earned many metaphorical slaps on the back.

And then, a week later, everything changed.

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OPINION

Milo Boyd

“They smashed us in the head,” says Kjell Törmä, a local journalist and lifelong resident. The 67-year-old has chronicled the town’s move since 2004, when mining company Luossavaara Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag, (LKAB) first told the population what its digging had done.

A century of going down into the 2km iron ore deposit had caused fissures to spread from the mine to the town centre, roughly 2km away.

It was decided that the town must be moved, or else its foundations would collapse. At first, 4,700 residents would be moved to the safer east of the town – their homes bought and then demolished by LKAB, which is legally required to fund the estimated £737m relocation effort. Twenty buildings, including the church and iconic town hall, would be driven to safety.

“Almost everyone in Kiruna accepts this change, but many of us don’t like it. It is tragic in many ways. We have to accept it or accept that we will lose our jobs,” Kjell told the Mirror.

“In my family, my mother and father worked for LKAB for 75 years together, one of my brothers worked there for 20 years. I have done a lot of jobs for the mine as a freelancer. Almost every family depends on LKAB.”

As reluctantly accepting of the town’s move as locals may have been before, what came after the church relocation has caused far more disquiet. Eight days later, once the world’s press had left the town, 6,000 more locals were told their homes would be demolished.

“The mining company is the enemy. A lot of people are taking the money and leaving,” former Kiruna resident Hannes told me on the night train to the town.

The young dad was returning north, having swapped his hometown for Malmo in the far south several years ago. “I find it depressing to go back now,” he said, in between marshalling his sociable toddler as she made her way down the carriage.

Hannes’ parents have also left and soon, so will his cousin Kjell. “When they told us we had to move, I was in shock and sad for a week. Then my wife and I decided we would turn a page in our lives,” Kjell explained.

As technically remarkable as the great shift east is, and as deep as LKAB’s pockets seem to be when it comes to paying over the odds to homeowners, moving a town is complex.

Kjell is losing a home he’s spent 35 years building. Each day, he can hear machines working away in the distance.

“Many people who have moved from Kiruna and come back say it’s not my town anymore. I have always answered, ‘no it’s not the town for us elders, but for the kids. They grew up with this, it will be their town.’ But, a lot of memories are disappearing all the time.”

Exploring the old and new sides of town, their distinct personalities are immediately obvious. When city planner Per Olof Hallman drew up the blueprint a century ago, he selected the best location in terms of climate, placing the traditional Swedish timber home on a south-facing slope, close to the mines and with a favourable aspect and microclimate. Streets followed the terrain to avoid wind tunnelling and to maintain beautiful views for the residents.

In the new town, tall modern blocks of flats have been built in a dip, which blocks the view south and, according to a University of Gothenburg study, can be 10C colder than the old town.

The slightly ramshackle feeling of a community that has grown organically over the years is replaced with something a little more familiar.

“It looks like anywhere else in Sweden now,” Hannes says.

This is not to say that the move has not been attempted with great care, attention or love by those in charge. Indeed, Kjell says LKAB have managed it “very well” on the whole.

But it is undeniably difficult to transport a place that isn’t just physical buildings, but memories.

Göran Cars, the current urban planner for the Kiruna municipality, acknowledges the challenge. “I was stupid coming up here, because I assumed that the way to maintain identity and preserve history was to move physical buildings,” he told Dezeen.

“We are moving the church. When I speak to people they say: ‘Yes I know that, but what about a grave? How about the birches?’ I didn’t understand that. They are small trees! But they are 100 years old – as old as the church. I get the question time and time again: ‘What about the birches?’ So now we are moving the birches.”

The complexity of the challenge is sobering. This is, after all, Sweden, where the structures of local democracy are strong, the engineering sector is world-leading, and the concerns of nomadic reindeer herding Sami are increasingly heard. It’s also a project backed by one of the world’s biggest iron ore mines.

These are advantages other places won’t enjoy. And there will be many more such places.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that the predicted 1.5 centigrade increase in global temperatures will lead to an average sea-level rise of between 26 and 77 centimetres by the end of the century. With 2C of warming – which looks increasingly likely – the Greenland ice shelf could melt, triggering a rise of up to seven metres.

The world’s largest cities Miami and Mumbai are under threat and the Maldives will likely be uninhabitable by 2100. Not just 10,500 as in Kiruna’s case, but millions of people will have to move.

LKAB and Kiruna Council were approached for comment.

IT’S difficult to improve on looking out over the stunning Yorkshire Dales.

Unless, of course, you’re sitting in an outdoor hot tub, drink in hand, looking out at over 1,000 acres of pure idyllic scenery.

Half-term breaks can be difficult. Like most, we want sun but can’t necessarily afford it. So we loaded up the car with walking boots, big coats and footballs.

We left Manchester and, to the delight of our boys, who hate long journeys, travelled exactly one hour and ten minutes to Skipton.

The town’s castle is a must-see, so we headed there and wandered around the 900-year-old medieval building, threatening to lock the kids in the dungeon.

Given its location on the high street, we easily found a cafe, had some lunch and fuelled up on sweets at a pick-and-mix shop.

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Lemon sherbets tucked in our pockets, we wandered up a path to Skipton Woods, a lovely 45-minute stroll along the River Aire.

A historical building, sweets and a family walk completed, we jumped back into the car and 15 minutes later checked into the Coniston Hotel & Spa.

Our family suite was spacious and well-equipped, with two Z-beds for the boys in a connecting room.

But the jewel in the crown was the balcony and its view over the hotel’s 1,000 acres.

After logging onto the wifi, we left the kids in the room and walked to the adults-only Nadarra Spa, spending a couple of hours swimming, sweating and swigging as sheep trotted around a neighbouring field.

The spa is well-equipped with a 15-metre pool, three saunas, a bubble pool and two piping hot infinity pools. When we visited it was 4C outside, so once you’re in the outdoor pools, you’re unlikely to get back out, especially if the staff keep topping up your glass.

But with dinner booked, we dragged ourselves back to the room to get ready before going for a drink in Macleod’s Bar.

We then went to The View restaurant, where we demolished steak supplied by a local butcher.

The next day, we took advantage of the family swim (9am-10am), then had a leisurely walk around the hotel estate, taking in the lake and the endless fields before navigating a field full of bemused sheep.

After lunch, while my wife enjoyed a Sothys Organics Face And Body Ritual, the boys and I took part in a Land Rover Young Off-Roader Experience.

The next hour was great fun as both kids drove a Land Rover Discovery up and down some very big hills and into almost a metre of water, under the watchful eye of a calm instructor.

For the last night, we enjoyed lovely crab and chicken dishes washed down with Yorkshire tea.

So we didn’t get the sun, and we might still have sheep droppings on our boots, but we did have a lovely couple of days in Yorkshire.

Heavy social media use has contributed to ‘worrying decline’ in wellbeing in Western countries, World Happiness Report says.

Social media has played a large role in declining happiness among young people in Western countries, a United Nations-backed report has found.

Heavy social media use partly explains a “worrying decline” in the wellbeing of young people in the West, the latest edition of the annual World Happiness Report said on Wednesday.

In total, 15 Western countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, saw significant declines in youth wellbeing over the past two decades, according to the report.

The trend was not observed globally, with young people in regions covering 90 percent of the world’s population reporting higher life satisfaction than before.

“The trends are caused by many factors, which differ between continents. However, the evidence in this report does suggest that heavy social media use, especially in some countries, provides an important part of the explanation,” researchers John F Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara B Aknin, and Shun Wang said in an executive summary of the report.

“Outside the English-speaking world and Western Europe, the links between social media use and wellbeing are more positive, and they vary between platforms,” the researchers added.

The report, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, cited data from sources including the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and research by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Despite the decline in youth wellbeing, Western countries, particularly in Scandinavia, dominated the overall happiness rankings across age groups.

Finland ranked as the world’s happiest nation for the ninth consecutive year, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica, Sweden and Norway.

The Netherlands, Israel and Switzerland also made the top 10.

Middle Eastern and African countries had the lowest happiness scores.

Afghanistan reported the lowest life satisfaction, with Zimbabwe, Malawi, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon also ranking among the bottom 10 countries.

Social media use among young people has been a growing concern for governments amid reports linking platforms to bullying, sexual exploitation and worsening mental health.

Australia last year introduced the world’s first social media ban for under 16s, with plans for similar restrictions under way in Indonesia, France and Greece.