![]() ![]() Located some 650 miles from the North Pole, Svalbard is a place of long, dark winters. Last month, in honour of George Murrays new book, Glimpse, we asked readers to submit their best. High above Norway, in the cold depths of the Arctic Ocean, lies the Svalbard archipelago. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, investment, like the population, dwindled. Glimpse contest winners, as selected by George Murray. ![]() Everything was free for the workers, there was full employment and no hierarchy. The Russian Arctic Coal Trust has been mining there since 1932, and Barentsburg in its heyday “embodied the Soviet ideal,” according to Delafontaine. The town sits on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago commercially open to other countries. He’s spent the last two years documenting the isolated town the world seems to have forgotten for Arktikugol. The famous ghost town can be accessed via a four-mile hike through the forest, starting at the Barlow Pass Trailhead. The photographer has long been interested in small places with unusual histories. Frozen in time: Spooky snaps of Arctic ghost town offer glimpse back to Soviet-era Russia The town of Pyramiden was abandoned in 1998, but a theatre, hotel, playground and bust of Soviet Union. There are more polar bears than people, and very little to do.Īll of which made it a place Léo Delafontaine wanted to visit. During the winter there is no sunlight and the temperature hovers around zero. It’s part of Norway but occupied by Russia and mined by Ukrainians. David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka: Soviet monotowns are urban settlements erected around single industries in the hinterlands of the former USSRsome thriving, others struggling to survive, still. The once grand mining town sits on an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, midway between Scandinavia and the North Pole. are proud of their location less than 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. A sign and buildings in the abandoned Russian mining settlement of Pyramiden, on the Norwegian Arctic Svalbard archipelago A man in a chapka hat and black coat, rifle slung over a shoulder. Upstairs a few children's books have been left in the library while in another smaller room a piano, drum-kit and accordion are accumulating dust.īut the 90s were killer years for Pyramiden with the Soviet Union starting to come apart at the seams, the mine becoming less profitable and Moscow unable at times to pay the wages.Barentsburg is a strange place. As a result, this leg of the trip went by too fast, and we were in town. Alexander Romanovskiy, better known as Sasha, is the guardian of the mining town abandoned in 1998 but still owned by a Russian firm, Arktikugol, though it is located on a fjord on Norway's Spitzberg island in the. The 300-seat cinema almost looks as if it were used yesterday, as does the basketball court, still clearly outlined. A man in a chapka hat and black coat, rifle slung over a shoulder, idles on the pontoon as a group of tourists sail in to visit Arctic oddity, Pyramiden, a Soviet-era ghost town. Giving a glimpse of life as it typically was in the Soviet Union is a bust of Lenin placed outside the sports and cultural centre.īlack-and-white photos of football and hockey matches and chess tournaments hang in the entrance hall, taking visitors back in time. Some 1,200 Russians then lived in Pyramiden, which boasted several four-storey buildings, a hospital, schools, a football ground, and even a farm with cows and chickens. Sasha, working his fourth season here hundreds of kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, says the residents thrived in the 70s and 80s before the USSR began to unravel. The rails used by the funicular to ferry miners up to the entrance on the mountain face, and by trailers to haul the coal down, are still visible, while the wharf remains littered with ageing piles of bricks, gravel and rusted metal parts. Hidden away on the northern edge of the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle, Pyramiden is a former Soviet mining town that in. so mining really began in earnest in 1956,' in the Cold War years when Nikita Khrushchev ran the Soviet empire, he added. The remains of a Soviet ghost town Hidden away on the northern edge of the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle, Pyramiden is a former Soviet mining town that. Glimpses soviet ghost town arctic norwegian Winebottler for mac catalina Search by typing & pressing enter. 'The first settlers came in 1936 but were evacuated by British forces at the beginning of the Second World War. The Soviets bought the then-small coalmine in 1927 from Swedes, says the guardian whose hammer-and-sickle engraved chapka smacks of the now defunct Communist-era USSR. ![]()
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