page_title: Kiruna
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: Kiruna / History / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: Stylish building in Kiruna centrum, Lappland, Norrland, Sweden.
context_page_description: Kiruna is the northernmost town in Sweden, situated in the province of Lapland. It had 17,002 inhabitants in 2016 and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality in Norrbotten County.
  Esrange Space Center was established in Kiruna in the 1960s. Also in Kiruna are the Institute of Space Physics and Luleå University of Technology's Department of Space Science.
context_section_description: In 1948, Kiruna gained city rights and started to receive large amounts of money from the mine. The city centre was renovated starting in 1953; most buildings built before 1920 were demolished and replaced, and many of the current buildings were built in the following period. The town grew and new neighborhoods were built, as well as new apartment buildings and villas in existing neighborhoods. The area is currently known as Lombolo was built in the 1960s.
  After World War II, the economy of Kiruna started to diversify. Initially, the mechanisation of the mining industry led to more mechanical workshops developing machinery for the mine, still dependent on the mining, but individual companies with spinoffs that could be sold to other areas than the Kiruna mine alone. In the 1950s, a fund, Norrlandsfonden was established, in which profits from LKAB would be invested in order to diversify the local economy. The municipality started to lend money to starting companies against very beneficial rates, a scheme that lasted until 1959 because the banks, that insisted this was false competition, had established more relaxed rules for lending out money. The industrial area east of the city was built in the 1950s to separate industry from neighborhoods.
  On 10 November 1960, Kiruna Airport opened to separate civilian air traffic from the military airplanes that had landed at Kalixfors airport and at Luossajärvi since World War I. A road to Nikkaluokta was opened in 1971 and to Riksgränsen and Narvik in 1984. The latter had been debated heavily, for alternative plans existed to build the road to Norway on the northern side of Torneträsk, via Laimo, Kattuvuoma, Salmi to Innset and Bardu in Norway. This road was never built, but a 25 km long track between Laimo and Salmi was built at the initiatives of the locals and finished in 1962; however, this track, called Talmavägen, is not connected to any other road.
  Increased communications were also beneficial for tourism. Swedish Railways had already run special trains before World War II, but started a special Dollar train in the summer months between Gothenburg and Kiruna, connecting to cruise ships from the United States. The canoe club Kiruna Långfärdspaddlare was founded in 1972 and rafting for tourists restarted after it had been discontinued for 20 years due to the drowning of Valfrid Johansson. Until the 1980s, tourism had been mainly a summer business, but touristic exploitation of dog sledging was started in 1983 in Jukkasjärvi. In 1990, the first Icehotel was built in Jukkasjärvi and advertised as the world's largest igloo. It had been built using techniques from the building of Malmbanan 90 years before and was also inspired by the Snow Festival, that had started in 1986 to celebrate the Swedish Viking satellite. Since 1998, a special tourist area exists in the mine and since 1999, tourists can visit the various areas of research going on in Kiruna.
  In 1957, the Kiruna Geophysical Observatory (KGO) (now the Swedish Institute of Space Physics) was founded and established by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Esrange Space Centre is established in 1966. Here, rocket operations and ground-based observations are carried out since 1966, balloon operations since 1974, satellite operations since 1978 and testing operations since 2000 (with the Swedish Defence Material Administration). ESA has operated a satellite station at Salmajärvi, near Esrange, since 1989. In 1987, Umeå University started a space engineering program in Kiruna, and GIS education was started by Luleå University of Technology in 1991. In 1993, The Umeå space engineers moved to the same building housing IRF and a year later another Luleå University programme, civil engineering with specialisation in space technology, started at the same location. Since 2006, the Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Space Science and Technology has started with at least one semester spent at LTU. In 2007, education along IRV was split and only the Department of Space Science, belonging to Luleå University of Technology, remained, while t
caption: An old mansion near Kiruna centrum
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