d 12,884 in 1930. The residences did not fully keep up with this rapid growth; by 1910 there were 1,877 official rooms and some unrecognised residences, which meant that an average of three to four people lived in a single room; this density decreased steadily during the decades to follow. Kiruna became a municipalsamh�lle (a community within a municipality) in 1908. This caused unhappiness in local organisations, such as Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Arbeteraf�rening, that had hoped for a status as k�ping, which would have kept more of the mining income inside the locality. In return, the mining company LKAB paid for a hospital, fire station, sewage, roads, a church (opened 1912) and the priest's home.
In April 1907, a tram began operation in Kiruna, the northernmost in the world. This meant miners would no longer have to walk several kilometers through the sub-arctic cold, nor would they need to climb a hundred meters up the mining hill. The network consisted of three lines: bergbanan (mountain line), stadssp�rv�gen (city tram) and gruvsp�rv�gen (mine tram). The mountain line closed in 1955 after a road up the mine had been built 1949. The city line had a total length of 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) at longest and was unique due to the 1-meter gauge, double windows and heated wagons. It closed in 1958 after gradually being replaced by buses. Between 1941 and 1964, a tram was used inside the mine, with wagons bought from closed down tramlines from all over Sweden.
The economy for iron ore was good in the early 20th century. Before the start of the work, Hjalmar Lundbohm had been worried about whether the Kiruna winter would allow for working outside at all, but despite early research into underground mining,mountaintop removal mining was the primary method in the early years. Mechanisation was attempted early using steam powered excavators, but the cold climate led to considerable difficulties and only when electrical machinery became available in the 1910s,
