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Etsko Schuitema discusses a trip to the mining town of Kiruna in Sweden
This article celebrates Hjalmar Lindbohm’s leadership in founding Kiruna as an enduring, human-centred community. His care-infused vision combined culture, infrastructure, and moral development, offering a timeless example of benevolent, quietly transformative leadership.
A Moral Legacy in the Far North
On a recent visit to the LKAB mine in Kiruna, I found myself unexpectedly moved. In that distant northern town, shaped by rock and snow, I encountered the living legacy of a very admirable man: Hjalmar Lundbohm. As I walked through streets he helped design and stood in spaces cultivated under his direction, I saw mirrored, in brick and ethos, the principles I have spent a lifetime advocating.
Lundbohm was not simply the first managing director of LKAB, nor merely the founder of Kiruna. He was a leader who grasped something most never do: that to build something enduring, one must act not for gain, but for the sake of the people and the place. This is not romanticism. It is the pragmatic morality of Care and Growth.
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When Lundbohm arrived in 1898—a geologist elevated to the role of director—he refused to see Kiruna as a temporary settlement, a functional camp for extractive labour. Instead, he imagined and enacted a vision of permanence and dignity. Working with Gustaf Wickman and Per-Olof Hallman, he crafted a city that acknowledged the landscape and responded to the harsh climate. Streets were laid not for efficiency but for beauty. Houses were oriented toward light. Public spaces were created for gathering and for grace.
Leadership, I have often argued, is not about imposing order—it is about weaving wellbeing. Lundbohm understood this. He led not with force, but with foresight, embedding care into the very design of the town.
But his vision did not stop with infrastructure. He brought music, literature, and education to the Arctic Circle. In 1912, he introduced Music Week in Lappland, not as a diversion from mining life but as a vital part of it. He believed that an industrial town should be rich in culture, not as ornamentation, but as its inner purpose. He planted in the soil of a mine town something far rarer than ore: humanity.
I do not write this to portray him as flawless. Lundbohm, like all of us, was a child of his time. He supported Johan Turi, the first Sami author, while simultaneously operating within racial assumptions and systems that we now rightly reject. His legacy, then, is not without shadow. But if we demand perfection, we will find no one worth following. The standard, rather, is intent. Was his leadership animated by benevolence? Did he learn, did he strive, did he care? I believe he did.
A story I encountered during my visit captures this spirit precisely. In early 20th-century Kiruna, teenage boys were employed during the summer. They tended gardens, maintained public spaces, and served the town in small but meaningful ways. This was not exploitation—it was initiation. And the brilliance lay in how they were paid: one third of their wages was given to them directly, affirming their responsibility; another third went to their parents, recognising the family’s role; the final third was deposited in an interest-bearing account for the boy’s future.
That simple gesture was an education in trust, stewardship, and long-term thinking. It taught discipline without harshness and responsibility without reward-chasing. The work itself was real, and so too was the care with which it was structured. It was not just a summer job. It was a moral apprenticeship.
This, I contend, is what leadership at its best looks like. It is not about dramatic speeches or charismatic dominance. It is the quiet embedding of virtue into the structures of daily life. It is choosing to design a world where even the smallest engagement—be it a wage, a walkway, or a workday—becomes a tool for growth.
Today, Kiruna is transforming again. The mine shifts, the town relocates. Heritage buildings are being moved, stone by stone, with a care that honours Lundbohm’s original spirit. What struck me is not nostalgia, but continuity. The blueprint he laid is not frozen in history. It is alive. It still guides. Not as dogma, but as moral orientation.
In our time, we too face questions of development, progress, and the price of prosperity. The temptation remains to treat people as means, to view towns as temporary, to sacrifice long-term meaning for short-term gain. But Hjalmar Lundbohm’s legacy reminds us that another way is possible: one where power is used not to extract, but to serve; where growth is not for its own sake, but to uplift.
So I ask those who lead today—as I ask myself—are we building places of dignity, or simply of utility? Are we structuring work and recognition in ways that prepare others to give more than they take? Are we crafting our enterprises, our towns, our teams, as moral ecosystems?
Leadership of this kind is not easy. It is quiet, deliberate, and often unacknowledged. But it lasts.
And that is the point.
—Etsko Schuitema