The fence around the primary school has paintings of famous fairy tales. They grew their own cucumbers and tomatoes in greenhouses that got heat from a power plant fueled with coal mined by the workers. Supposed to be a self-sufficient Soviet society, Pyramiden had its own cowshed with pigs, hens and chickens, even milk-cows. The main (and only) avenue is named after the 60th anniversary of the October revolution. (Thomas Nilsen / The Independent Barents Observer) Pyramiden takes its name from the shape of the nearest mountain. In between is Billefjorden, the northeastern appendix fjord to Isfjorden coming in west from the Greenland Sea. The panorama to the south is filled the with massive Nordenskiöld glacier and other mountain peaks. The town is located in a valley in between steep mountain backdrops. The beauty of the surrounding Arctic landscape in autumn colors makes an impression. Despite privileges like cultural palace and sport facilities, life up here, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole could be hard in mid-winter when there was no daylight at all and freezing cold wind. Many came from coal mining areas in Eastern Ukraine and Southwestern Siberia. In fact, most things in Pyramiden are the world’s northernmost the ballet studio, theater, cinema, beer pub, hospital and so on.Īt the height in the late 1980s, more than 1,000 people lived in Pyramiden. Like the Palace of Culture and the swimming pool. Many of the monumental buildings here at 79 degrees north were erected in the late 1980s. Moscow’s Arctic dream was mirrored in Pyramiden. A year after the 27th Congress, in 1987, the General Secretary gave his famous Murmansk speech where he highlighted huge potentials in the Arctic. But he sure had ambitions to conquer the Arctic with extraction of natural resources, industry and shipping. Gorbachev never got a chance to visit Pyramiden. That was the first congress presided over by Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Central Committee. A book with the transcripts from the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union lays on a desk. Hammer and Sickle ornaments and the Soviet star are used as decoration around the town. In a remote room inside the Palace of Culture are a few empty bottles of the cheap domestic Rossiya- and Priviet vodka. The smell of papirosa, likely the strongest cigarette ever made, stains on the indoor walls. Best of all, it’s not an artificial scenery aimed for some kind of movie-production. Walking Pyramiden today gives one a glimpse into the Soviet-style nostalgia, outdoor as well as indoor. The town is still state-owned and maintained by the Russian mining company Arktikugol Trust. The northernmost bust of Lenin has a great panorama view over Pyramiden with the Nordenskiold glacier in the background. With that, only Norwegian and Soviet communities remained on the archipelago. The same year, a Norwegian state-owned company bought Svea coalmine from the Swedes. The Soviet Union bought Pyramiden in 1927 from the Swedes, just like its state company Arktikugol (Arctic coal) bought Barentsburg coal mine further southwest in Isfjorden from the Dutch in 1934. In the 1920s, onshore, that meant coal mining. The 1920 Svalbard Treaty recognizes the sovereignty of Norway over the archipelago, but all signatories were given equal rights to engage in commercial activities on the islands. What could be taken out from beneath the permafrost inside the steep mountain was just a tiny fraction of the coal extracted in the Kuzbass region in southwestern Siberia.ĭigging for coal gave the Soviet Union a foothold on Svalbard. This is a Soviet ghost town on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago that once was inhabited by Russian and Ukrainian coal miners and their families.Īlthough not stated publicly, Kremlin’s main idea with the settlement was not primarily to get coal. High above the coal mines, the towering top of the mountain looks truly like a pyramid. Even more correct would be Пирамида. The inspiration to the name of the town is easy to understand when looking up. Welcome to Pyramiden, or the Pyramid if translated to English. It’s inside your own head the lyrics of Back in the U.S.S.R. plays. No, there ain’t any hidden loudspeakers playing the Beatles. Abandoned twenty years ago, Pyramiden coal-mining town on the northern edge of the world is a preserved display of what the Soviet Union wanted to offer in the Arctic if communism worked. This was once upon a time the world’s northernmost kindergarten and primary school.
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