What Would the High North be Without the Iron Ore Line?

Just before I make camp for the night, I encounter the first ore train on its way from the mines in Kiruna in the Swedish Arctic to the port in Narvik, Northern Norway.

The answer is discouraging

As always in such encounters, I find myself thinking about what the High North would have been without the Iron Ore Line, or the Ofoten Line as it is called on the Norwegian side, where it cuts through Swedish and Norwegian wilderness.

The answer is rather discouraging. The railway is a mainstay of Norwegian-Swedish industrial cooperation and crucial to towns such as Narvik on the Norwegian side and Kiruna in Sweden.

Now I am back. Once again.

The road I am following starts at Rombaken fjord, some distance north of Narvik, and climbs majestically up to Bjørnfjell before continuing into Sweden parallel to the railway track. The line was built with navvy muscle and opened as far back as 1902.

It would be another 80 years before it became possible to drive the same route.

Three trains an hour

There is little traffic on the road on this August autumn day. Some berry pickers have parked on the roadside. At a couple of the many lakes along the route, others are trying their luck at fishing. At a bus stop, backpackers who have been hiking in the mountains are waiting for transport back to more urban areas.

By contrast, rail traffic is hectic. In just under an hour, I encounter three ore trains before I manage to park for the night near Björkliden. I do not have time to count, but this must mean that nearly 200 wagons carrying iron ore pellets or iron ore concentrate are transported during that hour.

Or 2.2 kilometres of train per hour, if you like.

The landscape changes as the border is crossed, but so does the language. On the map, that is.

It is no longer called Bjørnfjell, Nedre Jernvatn or Fiskelausvatnet, as they are written in Norwegian.

The map changes

On the Swedish side, the Sami language takes over. It is called Katterjåkk (Gátterjohka), Abisko, Vássejárvi or Loktajávri.

I once learned that -járvi means a lake, while -johka is a river or stream.

Mountains often end in -várri.

For example, the mountain from which Kiruna takes its name, Gironvárri, Ptarmigan Mountain. Since 1949, Kiruna's coat of arms has featured a ptarmigan combined with the symbol for iron. A strong emphasis on the fact that industry and nature coexist in the north.

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Mountain peaks often have names ending in -čohkka, such as the 1,491-metre-high Vássečohkka, Mist Mountain.

Once again, a train rumbles past, but I only hear it and cannot tell whether it is empty wagons returning from Narvik to Kiruna, or another ore load heading for the port in Narvik.

I pitch camp beside one of Sweden's largest lakes, Torneträsk. At the very northern end of what is the Nordic region's largest mountain lake. A young boy patiently tries his luck at fishing. I am high in the mountains beside a lake that is frozen for half the year, surrounded by almost untouched wilderness.

A new train of thought

Except for a railway that has quite literally brought the High North into the world.

I do not see the train because I am entering a new train of thought. One that is also familiar. Being alone in the mountains is about finding a sustainable justification for these constant journeys in the north. This time, I know that I will turn around in Kirkenes and head south again, after meeting the LO International Committee.

A gathering of international agenda-setters whose focus is normally directed towards Africa, Asia, Europe or Latin America.

At the same time, they must have understood something of the High North's international significance. To learn more, they have boarded a plane that, for once, is heading north. They have understood that policy instruments and political solutions are best found in meetings with the people who live in these areas.

This journey therefore has a kind of destination, a turning point back to the High North News newsroom.

Because I do not fly but drive, I am on the road most of the time.

Opera Mountain

A podcast eventually appears on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's playlist and becomes, without this being intended in any way, a kind of explanation for the restlessness that year after year, preferably in winter, drives me northwards through the Nordic Arctic regions.

 The podcast is about the plane crash on the Opera Mountain in Svalbard 30 years ago. On 29 August 1996, 141 Russians and Ukrainians lost their lives when the Tupolev crashed into the 968-metre-high mountain.

The accident triggered a dramatic and highly demanding rescue operation amidst the kind of weather conditions typical of the Arctic. Added to this was the drama surrounding a Russian aircraft on Norwegian soil, with its associated geopolitical complications.

Some members of the press—journalists who rushed to Longyearbyen—created the impression, both among the Russian community in Barentsburg and among Members of Parliament in Oslo, that the rescue workers were failing to do their job; that there were survivors who were not being brought down from the summit of Opera Mountain.

That it could not be true that bad weather was complicating a rescue operation that, in any case, would have been the most demanding and complex one the experienced investigators and members of the local rescue teams had ever taken part in.

Exhausted after days among torn body parts in freezing cold, many of them broke down when they came down and were met with national criticism.

A wholehearted tribute

As for me, I left the cozy warmth of the hotel bar and reception and began walking into Adventdalen towards the mountain, to experience a climate I had long since become familiar with through many years and journeys. Back at the hotel, I wrote perhaps the most important piece I have ever written.

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The commentary was called "Cheers, Svalbard", and was a wholehearted tribute to the rescue personnel and the local authorities.

I was a journalist at Dagbladet at the time, and feared for my job after describing a reality entirely different from what had so far been reported from 78 degrees north down to the capital.

Perhaps it changed the mood, and I had confirmed what I hoped for, but did not always believe, when I chose journalism as a profession:

That knowledge and presence matter.

That is why I continue to travel in the North.

The gaps in knowledge are like volcanic craters. And we must fill them ourselves, with our own words.

Truck convoys

Leaving Kiruna the following day, along a section of the E10 known as the ‘Road of Death’, I encounter convoys of large lorries. It surprises me, as the railway is the preferred and safest way to transport ore.

There are two reasons for this.

Demand for iron ore in wartime is at a record high, with good prices. This means that the Swedish mining company LKAB is currently unable to produce enough ore at its mine in Kiruna. Reserves are therefore being taken from another mine, Mertainen, 30 kilometres south of Kiruna, and then transported by lorry to the pellet plant in Kiruna.

The railway capacity is simply fully stretched.

For the next 18 months, LKAB has been granted permission to operate 80 lorries per day. Two winters in a row on a stretch that is already highly prone to accidents.  

"Now the road is becoming more dangerous again", notes the local newspaper Norrländska Socialdemokraten.

"We would of course prefer to use the railway. But when we have no alternative, we have to do it this way", LKAB’s head of logistics, Linda Bjurholt, tells the same local newspaper.

Capacity on the Iron Ore Line has been overstretched for decades. Not only for LKAB, but also in relation to the Armed Forces’ need to transport personnel and equipment in the event of war and during exercises, among other things. Poor maintenance also means that the line often has to close down completely.

Double track

The demand for double track along the Ofoten Line and the Iron Ore Line has been repeated in the north for years, without anything happening.

During this journey, I will repeatedly find that critical infrastructure is addressed differently in the north and the south.

With the biggest difference being that it is addressed in the south.