Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that the ground beneath your house sits on one of the largest treasure troves of minerals the modern world desperately needs. Not gold, not diamonds – but the dull-sounding “rare earth elements that power everything from your phone to fighter jets and wind turbines.
That’s exactly what happened to the residents of a small Norwegian town and an Arctic city in Sweden. And suddenly, sleepy corners of Scandinavia find themselves at the center of a new geopolitical gold rush – except this time the prize is mineral independence from China.
Europe’s Great Rare Earths Wake-Up Call
For decades Europe has been almost completely dependent on China for rare earth elements. Beijing controls roughly 70% of global mining and an astonishing 90% of processing. When China flexed its muscles in 2010 and cut exports to Japan, the West got a frightening glimpse of how fragile the supply chain really is.
Fast-forward to 2025 and the mood has completely shifted. Electric vehicles, defense systems, renewable energy – everything the green and digital transition depends on – needs magnets made from neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Europe finally realized that importing 98% of these metals is no longer just expensive. It’s dangerous.
Enter two blockbuster discoveries that could change the game.
The “Invisible Mine” Under a Norwegian Village
In June 2024 a small company called Rare Earths Norway dropped a bombshell: the Fen Carbonatite Complex near the tiny town of Ulefoss contains 8.8 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides – the largest known deposit in continental Europe. Even better, around 1.5 million tonnes of those are the high-value magnet rare earths the industry is starving for.
Here’s the crazy part: the richest part of the deposit sits directly beneath the village itself. About 300 homes, a school, and a historic industrial area are literally sitting on the treasure.
Most mining companies would start talking about buying out residents or open-pit destruction. Not these guys.
“We don’t want to become another Kiruna where you have to move an entire city. We want an invisible mine.”
Alf Reistad, CEO of Rare Earths Norway
Their plan is wild but elegant: drill a long, diagonal tunnel from several kilometers away, go underneath the village at a safe depth, extract the ore, and immediately backfill the voids with processed waste. From the surface you would barely notice anything except a discreet industrial building on the outskirts.
Think of it like a Kinder Surprise egg, Reistad laughs – all the good stuff is inside, but the chocolate shell stays perfectly intact.
Early surveys show surprisingly strong local support. People understand that jobs, tax income, and national security are on the table. The main worries? Ground stability and where the waste will end up. Fair concerns, but so far the dialogue has been remarkably constructive.
Kiruna: The City That Packs Up and Moves
Four hundred kilometers above the Arctic Circle, the Swedish state-owned giant LKAB is taking the opposite approach – and writing mining history in the process.
In 2023 they announced the Per Geijer deposit: another monster rare earth find sitting right next to the world’s largest underground iron-ore mine. The irony? The rare earths were discovered because the company was expanding the iron mine – and that expansion is slowly eating the city of Kiruna from below.
The solution? Move the entire city.
I’m not exaggerating. Since 2004 Kiruna has been gradually relocating 6,000 residents and hundreds of buildings to a new site three kilometers away. In August 2025 the world watched breathlessly as a 113-year-old wooden church weighing 672 tons was loaded onto a giant platform and driven down the road like the slowest parade float ever.
Cost of the whole transformation? Roughly $2.4 billion – and counting.
“We already bring the rock to surface for iron ore. The rare earths are basically a bonus in the same material. Still, it’s far from a no-brainer to make it profitable.”
Niklas Johansson, LKAB communications director
Both companies are painfully aware that having minerals in the ground is one thing – getting them out profitably under strict European environmental rules is another.
The 2030 Targets: Ambitious or Delusional?
Brussels has drawn a line in the sand. Under the Critical Raw Materials Act, by 2030 the EU wants to:
- Mine 10% of its annual rare earth consumption domestically
- Process 40% inside the bloc
- Recycle 25%
- Never depend on a single foreign supplier for more than 65%
Right now those numbers are close to 0%, 5%, 1% and 98% (China). You do the math.
In private, many industry insiders call the targets heroic fantasy. Permitting alone in Europe can take 15 years. China can do it in two. Add sky-high energy prices, rigorous environmental standards, and community veto rights – and you understand why investors usually look elsewhere.
Yet both Norwegian and Swedish projects insist they can deliver first metal in the early 2030s if – and only if – policymakers create a level playing field.
What Would Actually Help?
The wishlist isn’t complicated, but it’s politically explosive:
- Fast-track permitting (5–7 years max)
- Price floor mechanisms or off-take guarantees
- Subsidies for downstream separation plants (the really dirty part)
- Strategic stockpile purchases by governments
Reistad in Norway doesn’t mince words: “China and the U.S. are playing the Enhanced Games – they dope their industries with subsidies and speed. If Europe keeps both hands tied behind its back, we lose before we even start.”
Why This Time Feels Different
I’ve been watching the rare earths story since the 2010 crisis, and something has genuinely changed. Governments are no longer treating this as an annoying commodity issue. They treat it as existential.
When the EU starts talking about “mineral sovereignty” in the same breath as energy sovereignty, you know minds have shifted. When state-owned Swedish companies and tiny Norwegian juniors both say they’re in advanced talks with Brussels about de-risking investments, you listen.
Perhaps most telling: local communities aren’t automatically saying no. After decades of environmental scandals, Europeans have learned to be skeptical – yet in both Ulefoss and Kiruna the projects enjoy majority support. That’s new. And it matters more than any subsidy.
The Bottom Line
Europe has finally found the rocks it needs. Now comes the hard part – turning geological luck into industrial reality before the 2030 deadline slips away.
If Norway’s invisible mine and Sweden’s moving city succeed, they could become templates for the rest of the continent. If they fail, we’ll be having the same conversation again in 2035 – only with even less leverage against Beijing.
Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic. For the first time in my career covering this space, the stars feel aligned: massive deposits, willing communities, scared governments, and a war in Ukraine that reminded everyone what real supply risk looks like.
The race is on. And this time Europe might actually show up to run it.
