We had several reasons for staying in Kiruna. First, it was close to the famous Ice Hotel. Second, it is a town that will be moved, because it is sinking from mining. Third, it is a popular place to see the northern lights. Finally, it had a mine tour of one of Sweden’s largest iron-ore mines.
We stayed in another hostel in Kiruna. It was similar to the one we stayed at in Abisko, just not as nice. We had a private bunkbed sleeping room, with community bathroom, showers, and kitchen. On the first night, we gave it go to try to see Northern Lights, but the sky was cloudy, so no luck. Chris was very good at researching the conditions, so he had us get up around 2:00 AM to go out again. Well it was again cloudy, so we decided not to get the girls up and wait a little while to see if the sky would clear. Chris was up again looking out our window around 3:00 AM, this time he saw the Northern Lights move across the sky. He was very excited, he immediately woke us up.
This is one of the most excited times I have seen Chris get. The sky was clear, we could see stars, and Chris believed he had seen the lights, so we got dressed up in our warm clothes. Outside the hostel had a lot of man-made light, so we started walking to an area that was not polluted by lights. As we got closer to our destination, the city lights were fading and we all began to see the lights. It was amazing. I don’t know how long we stayed out, but we were all in awe from the light show. As the clouds moved in the lights slowly faded, so we headed back to the hostel. Along the way, we would stop and look up at the sky, because Chris and I did not want to miss anything. Not far along our way back, we saw another streak come across the sky, not only was it the beautiful green we had seen, but a rainbow of colors like you see in pictures. It took us a long time to walk back, but it was worth it. We later found out that night was one of the biggest light shows the Northern Lights put on in years.
The next morning, we slept in a bit, but we still got up before noon. We had plans to do a mine tour. We got on a bus that took us close to a kilometer underground. Once underground we received a tour that Kaleigh just loved, she was right up front the entire time. We got to see how Sweden mines iron-ore, climb on the equipment used, and explore a history of mining in the area. It was recently determined the mining had started to go under Kiruna creating unstable ground below the city. They now have an entire plan to move the town just over a kilometer up the road. The process will take several decades, but they have started. Currently, the actual mining was another ½ kilometer deeper than where we toured.
After the mine tour, we head back to the room to rest and pack-up, the next day we were moving on to the Ice Hotel.
