<b>Kiirunavaara</b> (<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Northern_Sami&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="Northern Sami (page does not exist)">Northern Sami</a>: <i>Gironvárri</i>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me%C3%A4nkieli_dialects" class="extiw" title="w:Meänkieli dialects">Meänkieli</a>: <i>Kierunavaara</i>) is a mountain situated in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna_Municipality" class="extiw" title="w:Kiruna Municipality">w:Kiruna Municipality</a> in  Norrbotten County, Sweden. It contains one of the largest and richest bodies of <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iron_ore&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="Iron ore (page does not exist)">iron ore</a> in the world. The presence of iron in the area was known already in the mid-17th century, but at this early time communication lines to this northerly region were quite insufficient to permit any major exploitation. Only with the construction of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line" class="extiw" title="en:Iron Ore Line">Iron Ore Line</a> railway at the end of the 19th century, which connected the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Narvik" class="extiw" title="en:Port of Narvik">ports of Narvik</a>  on the North Sea and Luleå on the Baltic Sea, did commercial mining become a realistic proposition. The Swedish mining company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKAB" class="extiw" title="en:LKAB">LKAB</a> (<i>Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag</i>) has been mining the mountain since the beginning of the 20th century.
<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ArildV" title="User:ArildV">Arild Vågen</a>
<span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>