Introduction

Two of the most wealthy municipalities in Sweden are Kiruna and Gallivare although there has been some controversial talks about this statement with the argument that somethings are not going as well as they ought to. Mining is a major activity in these areas and income is higher in this industry compared to others. They have some iron deposits in the Northern part of the city. Operation has been ongoing now for over 100 years yet still very profitable. The Southern part has deposits of silver, lead and gold which is problematic from an environmental point of view when it is compared to iron ore deposits in the North.

Dr Olof Stjernstrom made use of data gotten by comparing income development between the year 2004- 2014. The salaries of people working in the mine was much higher when compared to those working in other professions. So he came to the conclusion that income definitely affects the economy based on mineral deposits. Also according to him, one of the probably most important findings is that this violates the image of the solidaric wage- system.

According to Dr Olof, social scientist are always trying to find out something that is a problem. They also like to categorize everything to find out whether something for instance is tall or short? Another deduction he made was that categorization increases the risk for stigmatization of one thing from the other.  The idea of sustainability is built on three pillars: Ecological Sustainability (which is measured by setting up limits), Social Sustainability (measuring what is good or bad in human landscape) and Economic Sustainability.  In his opinion, social sustainability is neglected in size.

In all scientific subjects (not only social science), the language is our major tool. Being able to communicate our results helps to make us participate in our society ( of course other tools such as statistics, GIS are necessary) and is about POWER! AS WELL AS GEOGRAPHY in the end….

LANGUAGE IS IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE!

He made some references to some heavy metals which is related to my research topic. He answered most of the questions he was asked and i particularly would not say i had any question for him.