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Kiruna
The town that was my home for a time.
http://kiruna.se/
Cold facts on a hot topic
Kiruna is a place of contrasts, where the summer sun shines for
almost two full months without setting, while the polar night
lowers its dark blue blanket over the area for the last three weeks
of December. The contrasts are seen also in other ways, for here we
find the ancient Saami (Lappish) crafts and ways existing side by
side with the high-tech that has made Kiruna a unique European
research centre.
LKAB excavates iron ore one kilometre down inside the mountain,
while the work area of the space scientists reaches right up to the
sun. This is a special place also because Kiruna is a cultural and
social experiment like no other. Kiruna was built as a ”model
society” in line with ideals that had evolved in Great
Britain, and it became one of the biggest Scandinavian social
projects of all time. Town planning, housing construction,
transportation and education were adapted to the climate and to the
needs of the people, on a scale never before attempted. The
construction of Kiruna became one of the century’s great
social innovations, and something which still permeates the whole
community and makes it a site of considerable socio-historical
interest. The pioneers founded many societies and associations, and
that tradition is very much alive to this day. Indeed Kiruna, with
about 24,000 inhabitants, today has about 400 registered
associations.
Kiruna Municipality is the northernmost municipality in Sweden and
the largest by area. The municipality is half as large as
Switzerland, covering 20,000 square kilometres. At one time, the
geography books had Kiruna as the world’s biggest town, but a
reform in the 1970s abolished the term town in Sweden and Kiruna is
now a municipality. From our ”town mountain”
Kebnekaise, 2,117 metres above sea level, (Sweden’s highest
mountain), we see 1/11th of Sweden. Half a dozen summits in the
municipality exceed 2,000 metres above sea level. There are more
than 6,000 lakes in Kiruna. Torneträsk, the largest, is more
than 70 kilometres long. Within the municipal borders, there are
seven large unspoilt rivers. These are the Kalix, Torne, Lainio,
Rautas, Vittangi, Könkämä and Muonio. The area is
vast and since 85% of the municipality’s population live in
Kiruna community, it is extremely sparsely populated. In other
words, this is what is often termed ”the last wilderness in
Europe”.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vafvqr, ba tebhaq, haqre fgbar.