Malmberget ("The Ore Mountain", Finnish and Meänkieli: Malmivaara) was a locality and mining town in Gällivare Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 5,590 inhabitants in 2010. It was situated 5 kilometres from the municipal seat Gällivare.

The entire Malmberget town had to be moved in 2020/2021 due to the mining activities in the area.

Malmberget is known as a major site for the extraction of iron ore (magnetite and hematite) from deep mines by the major Swedish mining company LKAB. The iron ore mining started in 1741 at the Illuvaara mountain, later known as Gällivare Malmberg and eventually just Malmberget. The first train which transported iron ore was loaded in 1888 — this was the beginning of the great iron ore rush which would change the entire area of Northern Lapland. In Malmberget there was plentiful employment, but no dwellings — a striking resemblance to the conditions during some of the gold rushes in North America. During the first years, workers lived in shacks built from scrapped dynamite crates.

Right down the centre of Malmberget, the deep mine has reached daylight and thus created a huge hole called Kaptensgropen ("The Captain's Pit"). In March 2012, Kaptensgropen was joined with a new pit resulting from the 'Fabian'-deposit caving in as planned and has grown southwards as the deep mining continues, thus dividing the town while making the old town centre uninhabitable and forcing many institutions (e.g. the two existing cinemas and the church) to move to the western part of Malmberget or, even more commonly, to the neighbouring town of Gällivare.

Today Kaptensgropen is being filled up with stone which is dug up as a by-product from the underground mines. Kaptensgropen will eventually be filled in, but the uninhabitable area is continually growing as underground mining undermines the area and seismic events caused by the mining regularly shake the remaining parts of Malmberget. The future of Malmberget was for a long time uncertain, but prospecting by the mining company LKAB indicated that even more of Malmberget may have to be moved in the future. The moving of several large residential houses owned by the mining company, as well as private villas, has been a major issue locally for the past few years.

The iron ore extracted from Malmberget is mainly transported by rail southeast to the port of Luleå.

Numerous mines exist around the town of Malmberget: Johan, Välkomman, Linné, Baron, Hermelin, Skåne, Josefin, Uppland, Lars, Vulkan, Tingvallskulle (northernmost), Alliansen, Dennewitz, Vitåfors, Riddarstolpe, Koskullskulle (easternmost), Parta, Fredrika, Fabian, Kapten (southernmost), Kungen.

See the geological map & sublocalities.

Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmberget
Wikidata ID:	Q83718

Localities in this Region

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References