Sweden: 'Memory park' pays tribute to relocating town

Artists use demolition rubble to pay homage to a town as it is being swallowed up by an iron ore mine

A new sculpture park in Sweden recreates the outlines of buildings which are being demolished because a whole a town is relocating.

Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost town, is in the process of moving due to risks posed by more than a century of iron ore mining. There are concerns that underground cavities are a threat to parts of Kiruna, which are either being knocked down or moved 3km (1.86 miles) east, The Local website reports.

While the town's residents are happy to move to a safe area, some told The Local earlier that they would miss the streets they had grown up on. Now, three Swedish artists - Sofia Sundberg, Karl Tuikkanen and Ingo Vetter - are using rubble from the demolished houses to recreate their foundations. A ghost town has sprung up on Kiruna's western fringes as the trio are putting crushed bricks and concrete into steel cages that follow the shape of buildings which are there no more.

The project, known as Mining City Park, is curated and part-funded by the government's Public Art Agency, which teamed up with the town's authorities and the mining company LKAB to offer an artistic interpretation of the abandoned area.

Honouring local residents' feeling of nostalgia is also important, the agency's director Magdalena Malm tells the BBC. ''Memory park' is also a very fitting description," she says.

The Kiruna municipality says the park will also act as a buffer zone between the expanding mine and residential areas, "so that nobody has to live next door to a mine". The relocation will take up to 25 years to complete, affecting some 6,000 people.

Sweden's northernmost town has long known it must relocate or sink into cracks shooting toward its centre from a century-old iron mine

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