Progress Not Popular In Tiny Lapp Town

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27794, 20 October 1955, Page 6

Progress Not Popular In Tiny Lapp Town

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

A proposed seven-storey “skyscraper” is causing bitter disputes in this small and normally peaceable town in Swedish Lapland. If the plan goes through, the new building will be the highest inside the Arctic Circle. Even Lulea, the provincial capital, south of the Circle can boast of nothing nearly as high as that. Almost all the inhabitants in this half Swedish, half Lapp town, famous as the centre of one of the big annual Lapp fairs, would be proud to be able to say: “Jokkmokk has the only skyscraper in the Arctic Circle.” But many see in the plan a threat to the established way of life here. For under the present proposals, the building would not only provide administrative headquarters for the regional hydro-electrical authority, for whose use it is primarily intended, and flats for its workers. It would also include such amenities as a post office, an assembly hall and various community rooms designed to make it the centre of local society activity. Like the inhabitants of many other remote towns, the people of Jokkmokk are conservative. Many of them do not want more social amenities. For years, they say, they have had a flourishing community centre in the hotel which serves at once as accommodation for various visitors and local “pub” to the inhabitants. Its two jovial hosts, the twin brothers Akerlund, not only join in the singing, dancing or bridge-playing proposed by their guests, but actually initiate it themselves. They are, in fact, the life and soul of any party held in Jokkmokk.

Those against the skyscraper argue; what more could you want than their modern restaurant complete with platform for the band, and excellent dance floor and pleasant, if somewhat futuristic, decoration. Moreover, thiscentre is situated just where a community centre should be—near the station and in the residential area of the town where most of the Swedish inhabitants of Jokkmokk live.

For special occasions there is a charming ski hut on the top of what is known as “The Midnight Sun Mountain” which can be hired for private parties. The primary purpose of the hut is, of course, to provide refreshment for skiers using the slopes below it for the favourite winter sport.

But gay Christmas parties are held there in a white Christmas setting with plenty of snow and fir trees sparkling with hoar frost. At midsummer, Sweden’s greatest holiday of the year after Christmas, the whole town repairs to this hut to celebrate with all-night dancing and feasting this festival of the sun—which by that time does not set upon the town or the vast valley spread out below.

Those in favour of the buildifig, while not discontented with what they have, argue that tradition should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress, even if the seat of that progress is a building situated way up the hill at the other end of the town. For the present, the battle of words remains undecided.

The hydro-electric authority, leaving the townsmen to their debates, is busy with plans for four new hydro-electric projects which are to be built round Jokkmokk in the next few years. One of the first will harness yet another of Sweden’s waterfalls. Essential as is the power to the life of the country, visitors who have stood on the road and watched the gushing water cannot but feel some' pang of regret that such grandeur will be lost.

Even the mighty Harspranget, once one of Sweden’s biggest and most famous waterfalls, is today reduced to a trickle in the normal way. Sometimes, in the late summer and autumn, its bed is even quite dry. At Porjus, they are still telling the story of a sunny Sunday last summer when some unwary visitors climbed into the dry bed of the torrent to sunbathe, sheltered from the wind. All was well until the power station, having more water than it could use to fulfil the power demand on a Sunday, opened some of the sluice gates and sent a torrent tumbling down the rocks with a mighty rush. The sunbathers managed to scramble to safety on a rock standing up from the bed of the falls. Only one managed to get ashore. But he was able to warn the power station officials of what had happened. The sluice gates had to be shut and the river drained before the rest of the party could be rescued. This year, there are notices at all approaches warning people that sluices are liable to be opened at any time without previous warning.