Barentsburg: what is it like to live in an arctic village

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On a polar day, local residents seal the windows with foil, at a temperature of +12, they smear them with sunscreen and hide the cats from the local authorities.

“Many people say: here, there are three unfortunate people living here, they are attacked by polar bears, and they cannot leave the house. All this is nonsense, says Timofey Rogozhin, head of the Grumant Arctic Tourism Center.

This is how he speaks of life in Barentsburg and Pyramid - Russian villages in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean. Since the 30s of the XX century, the land in these parts was bought by the company "Arktikugol" for the extraction of minerals. Today, in addition to coal mining, local residents are engaged in the study of the Arctic and the development of tourism - people come here to see the northern lights and the real Arctic nature.

In the 1980s, 2,400 citizens of the USSR lived on the archipelago, but with the onset of the 1990s, the villages were empty, many returned to the mainland, and the Pyramid began to be called a "ghost town".

Today in Barentsburg there are 400-450 people, in Pyramid - no more than 50, mostly there are people who are engaged in the restoration of the village. Most Russians fly to Svalbard to work under a contract. A standard contract lasts no more than 3-4 years, but some people are trying to extend it, and have been living in Barentsburg for more than 10-20 years, Rogozhin says.

There are practically no roads in Barentsburg and Pyramid, so in winter locals mostly travel by snowmobiles, and in summer by boats, small yachts, and sometimes such motorcycles.

“Unlike Murmansk and Norilsk, our polar night lasts 24 hours for 120 days, the only sources of light are lanterns and the moon. But we still somehow have fun, we don't drink, we go to the local museum,”says Rogozhin.

On a polar day (also lasting 120 days) it is also light 24 hours a day, therefore, in order to fall asleep, local residents seal the windows with foil and cover them with blankets.

“At +10 we already wear T-shirts (the average temperature in summer is 5-7 degrees Celsius - ed.), And at +12 we begin to smear with sunscreen, since the sun is very intense here, even at this temperature it is easy to burn out”, - explains Rogozhin.

In Barentsburg and Pyramid there is a kindergarten, a school, a clinic and a small chapel.

There is also a small bar in Pyramida, where both locals and tourists relax.

There is a "ghost village" and a cafe on the site of the former library.

“It is located in the local cultural and sports complex Pyramids, there used to be a real library, but now there are not many residents, so it is not needed. This cafe became the first heated room in the entire building,”says Aleksey Kargashin, employee of the Arctic Tourism Center.

In addition, a film cinema was restored in the Pyramid, about 1,500 films remained in the film storage from the Soviet era.

In the archipelago, it is forbidden to breed pets for environmental reasons, but the Russians still breed cats, one of the most famous is the cat Kesha.

“In fact, Kesha is not the only one, there are much more cats in the village, but the owners try not to let them out of their apartments so that they are not caught by the Norwegian administration - they are afraid that the cats may simply be killed,” said a local resident Lilia.

New buildings in Russian settlements often contrast with buildings of the last century.

So, for example, the former house of a meteorologist looks like.

“The settlement was built from 1946 to the early 1990s. In 1998 it was mothballed, now it is gradually being restored, there are plans for a decade ahead,”says Kargashin.

Many buildings are planned for restoration, some are already impossible to restore, but they will not be demolished anyway - they will remain on the archipelago as a historical monument.

Svalbard, and, accordingly, Russian villages, remains the only place on Earth where not a single case of Covid-19 has been recorded, Kargashin claims.

Nevertheless, since spring, all restaurants and bars have been following the same safety rules as everyone else - in each institution every two hours they sanitize the entire premises, guests and employees wear masks, and there are antiseptics on every table. Today, Norwegians and people who have undergone 10-day quarantine on the territory of mainland Norway can enter the archipelago.