The nearly 1,200-metre bridge is said to be the longest bridge in the world that will exclusively serve pedestrians, cyclists and trams.
The nearly 1,200-metre bridge is said to be the longest bridge in the world that will exclusively serve pedestrians, cyclists and trams.
This tickled me, because here in Sweden we moved a church last year.
The church isn’t that old, having been built in the early 1900s, but it’s very emblematic of the town it belongs to; Kiruna. Kiruna is named for the nearby mountain, Giron/Kirunavaara, where they extract iron ore by way of underground mining. It’s the world’s largest underground iron ore mine. The business is very profitable and is the sole reason the town exists.
However, when they established the mining operation, they didn’t know quite how the ore vein was positioned. Science has progressed significantly since then, and while we’re still mapping the vein, we at least know that it stretches in under the town.
The way we’re extracting the ore is by essentially collapsing previous drifts in a diamond pattern, meaning that the mine is methodically collapsing in on itself, leading to the reason why the church, and indeed the entire town is moving; the mine collapsing means that the ground around the mine is also slowly sliding into it. Buildings crack and get destroyed, so the entire town is moving eastward.
The moving of the church was a big deal last year. The entire thing was streamed live by state television, and by the end of it there was a fanfare to celebrate the building’s big move.
It was possibly the greatest fanfare of all time.
That’s seriously incredible. Thank you for sharing.
I think what tops it off for me is someone nearby commenting “härligt!” at the end. Meaning roughly “lovely” or “wonderful.”