Sapmi or "Lapland " in the Arctic Circle
is home to huge expanses of pristine nature.
And also to deposits of rare earths:
precious raw materials that have seen a rapid growth in demand
from industrialized nations.
Drilling teams at a range of locations are collecting rock samples
from the ground down below.
The operation is being funded by Swedish mining company LKAB,
which anticipates a new “gold rush”.
The team here is currently still busy identifying and
analyzing the potential sites, before those deposits are mined
sometime in the future.
The client’s spokesman is also on hand to inspect proceedings.
"We are still drilling and cannot see where it ends.
We have drilled deeper than 2,000 meters
from the surface, and we have found
more than 700 million tons of
iron ore and some 1.3 million tons
of rare earth oxide.
So it's a very good deposit and we think that we have explored perhaps
a quarter of it."
So far, they’ve literally found no end to the rare earths deposits.
Today they’re taking a sample from a depth of some 900 meters down.
The operation has made international headlines,
due to the discovery of the first known rare earth deposits in Europe.
This device records the depth of the relevant site to
within a centimeter.
In total, the teams are taking several thousand samples,
which are catalogued by depth.
Geologist Sean Géhin takes away the samples for further analysis in the lab.
He’s one of a five-strong team working there on shift.
The geologists hail from a variety of countries.
Sean Géhin himself is French.
The sample analysis stage conducted prior to the development of
the site will cost the mining company many millions of euros.
"I can go and scratch the rocks.
And this part is really hard.
I need to press harder.
And this here is softer.
It gives me information of what kind of mineral it could be."
The material samples are actually 50% iron ore,
and have a rare earths content of just 0.2%.
They also contain significant levels of phosphate,
which will later be sold to fertilizer producers.
"So this is a bonus we get
when mining the iron ore.
That's the main idea of our operations.
But we get these critical raw materials as a byproduct,
as a bonus.
China is dominating the market.
But this Per Geijer deposit is the biggest reported rare earth deposit in Europe.
So it has very big importance for the
EU's self-sufficiency in critical raw materials."
The rare earths would then be extracted from material mined from
newly created tunnels belonging to the neighboring mine.
Without rare earths we’d have no screens or displays, no magnets for wind turbines,
no electric cars and no green energy transition.
But the plans certainly have their critics too.
Every year the indigenous Sami people
drive their reindeer several hundred kilometers
from east to west and back again.
In addition to the pollution, the mine would block the animals' trails,
says one reindeer farmer.
"They want to open up more mines
and that will totally destroy
the reindeer herding in this area,
in this Sami village.
And we can't move to the south,
we can't move to the north.
We are stuck in this area."
A spokeswoman for the Sami community association
points out those obstacles:
from craters and a new copper mine
to lakes full of mine water, railroad tracks, and highways.
The traditional grazing areas for each Sami clan measure
around 80x100 kilometers.
The new mine – right in the middle –
would block all of the animals’ routes.
"It would be the end to traditional
reindeer herding in my community,
in the community of Gabna.
And it would have a deep impact
on our culture and our future."
So what does the spokesman for the mining company have to say?
"It is quite narrow for reindeer herders
to bring the reindeers past Kiruna:
from the mountain areas where they are during the summers
down to the forest areas in the winter time.
We want to find them solutions in dialogue with the Sami village."
The rare earths beneath those migration routes
amount to at least eight times
annual global consumption.
And mining the resources so close
to home would reduce Europe’s
dependency on China and Russia for supplies:
amid growing global tensions.