Svalbard

So, on July 21:st I phoned my usual travel agency, Äventyrsresor in Stockholm, and asked if they had any trips to Svalbard the coming week. And they did, so ordered one.

July 26:th

Longyearbyen

When it's almost time already to wake up, and there's full daylight which won't go away for weeks, it's not easy for me to sleep well, but I managed to get a few hours anyway.

July 27:th

After breakfast, we got to walk around in Longyearbyen for a guided tour. Since there's permafrost in the ground, most utility pipes and so on were laid on raised, covered platforms, but some pipes were made of another kind of plastic which doesn't break, so some are buried nowadays.

One of the sights was "the world's only kindergarten with a polar bear proof fence". It didn't look polar bear proof, but it certainly would keep all children in. Polar bears do come into the settlements, but not often.

Longyearbyen is the capital of Svalbard and has 1262 permanent inhabitants. Svalbard as a whole has 2982 permanent inhabitants.

The aerial tramways from the coal mines to the harbour are no longer used, all coal goes by truck. What surprised me was that they were built of wood, which at first doesn't seem logical, as there are no trees at all on Svalbard. (They say there are a few birch, all of 3 cm tall, at some place.) But wood is actually plentyful: The rotating polar ice ensures that much timber which flows out of Siberia on the rivers sooner or later end up on the shores of Svalbard. People have even managed to make money by coming to Svalbard and bringing it to the continent.

Our ship, which was to take us to all the places were we landed, was about 500 tons and can take a little more than 40 passengers overnight.

Barentsburg

The Russians outnumber the Norwegians on Svalbard, with 983 in Barentsburg and 679 in Pyramiden. (Other Norwegian settlements apart from Longyearbyen are Ny-Ålesund: 25; Björnön: 11; Svea: 6; Hornsund: 9; Hopen: 4; and Isfjord Radio: 3. The hunters are registered at Longyearbyen.)

The original signatories of the Svalbard treaty were Norway, USSR, UK and Sweden, but nowadays there are about 40 nations in all who've signed it. The treaty grants the governing of the archipelago to Norway, but full rights for any citizen of all signatories to settle and use the natural resources of Svalbard. The coal mining is no longer profitable, so only Norwegian and Russian mines are still operating.

We were met by a guide in Barentsburg who showed us around. Since it was practically midnight, I wasn't all that alert, but some interesting things I remember.

In Barentsburg, about 500 persons work in the mine (which they travel a few kilometer to with an underground railway) and extract 300.000 tons of coal per year (150.000 per year in Pyramiden).

They do have some 40 cows and a bull, which all go out for a walk every day, even in winter. But the hothouse were they grew fresh vegetables was abandoned in 1994, as it was too expensive to run.

Barentsburg is different from the Norwegian settlements, where almost all buildings are made of wood, in that none are (two look like they are, but that's just to make them look like a style used in Russia), most are made of bricks.

Well, there's one wooden building, but that's just a museum showing how a typical Russian hunters' cabin used to look in the 17:th - 20:th centuries.

They also have a whole museum, mostly documenting the early hunters, the Pomors, life. If you get there, don't miss it.

On to Magdalenafjorden