Off the Beaten Track: My Kiruna Tour

Two options for Kirunatopia came forward through my experience and perspective as a tour guide:

The city currently functions almost exclusively as a hub for a kind of tourism that does not apply to Kiruna itself: it provides the airport, the hotels and the booking centers for trips and stays in the mountains, for seeing the northern lights, the ice hotel, the space station, the reindeer and so on. I think the city of Kiruna possesses more besides all these “satellites” and has its own exciting urban landscape. The view from Luossavaara looking over the hills, valleys and the city extending towards the canyon of the mine is one of the greatest urban panoramas I know. I walked around the Kirunavaara one day until shortly before reaching the exit of LKAB . There I was “accompanied” by the guard for the last portion of the journey. It was a fascinating walk!

When approaching Kiruna by plane over the ice and fields of snow, the southern slopes of the districts of Triangeln and Bolaget appear almost Italian. This isn’t a part of the day-to-day experience or vista seen by an airline passenger. I could continue making a list of the highlights of Kiruna itself, but a tourism guide that warmly recommends the experience of these beautiful sights to visitors of the city is nowhere to be found. I would like to submit a proposal to the city of Kiruna for the creation of a Kiruna tour that could be included in the standard tourist program.

This tour could, for example, consist of picking up the passengers at the airport and taking them over frozen lakes and swamps to Lombolo. It could then approach the foot of the Kirunavaara mountain and circle it clockwise providing spectacular views through the canyon onto the city. The tour would then go into the tunnels of LKAB on the west side of the mountain and reappear out of the mountain on its east side facing the city. The tour would exit the LKAB area through the main entrance to reach the city center. There the tour would get a view over Sandstenberget into the never-ending woods and mount to the crest of the Luossavaara on its eastern side. From the top of Luossavaara, one can see everything that has been crossed so far in the tour and get a spectacular view of the city, which is at one’s feet and which one now understands so well.

Continue reading to get to know more about the second option...