World News for Students of English

26-08-2025 07:00

In northern Sweden, the town of Kiruna is moving a famous church called Kiruna Kyrka. The church is very old, and it looks like a Sámi hut. People built it in 1912, and it weighs 672 tonnes.

The church will travel 5km to a new home. The reason is that the land under the town is not safe, because a very large iron ore mine is making the ground weaker. The move of the church is part of a big plan to move most of the town. Many people are interested in this event. The Swedish king and thousands of others will watch the church travel slowly, half a kilometre each hour. People across the country can also watch the move on TV.

The project costs more than 44 million euros. Some Sámi people are not happy. They say the mine and the town’s move hurt their culture and make it harder to keep reindeer.

Difficult words: hut (a small, simple house), ore (a natural material in the ground from which people get metal), mine (a place where people take stone or metal from the ground).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.