HOME.
June 14, 2024 - In-Svalbard
I don’t have any planned activities for the morning, so I sleep in a bit and then respond to a few emails over coffee. I’m eventually picked up by another company for an afternoon trip up to Gruve 3, an old mine that’s been decommissioned. My guide for today, Marie, works for Store Norske. She chats with me and several other individuals in the van on the way up to the mine. We pass the Seed Vault again, going much further up into the mountains above the airport. At the end of the road sits a small complex of buildings built into the side of the slope. A couple of other vehicles are sitting up here, and as I climb out of the car I see Reina and her friends who are getting married. They’re all dressed up and shooting wedding photos with incredible views of Adventfjorden stretching off into the horizon in the background. We wave at each other and I’m ushered inside Gruve 3 by Marie.
Inside, I follow twisting hallways past a couple of control booths and anterooms to a small gathering space with metal chairs and a large TV screen. Here Marie gives a brief history lecture on Svalbard, starting with pangea-era geological formations and ending with the current push from Norwegian Parliament to end mining activity on Svalbard. She mentions that this land was once home to the first and oldest forest on earth when the island belonged to a much different climate region. She mentions the purity of the coal here (97% carbon) and this is the first time I learn about German occupation of the island during WW2, during which old Longyearbyen was burned to the ground and the first mine set ablaze (an inferno that burned for 19 years until it exhausted the coal vein accessed by that shaft). Marie mentions that every Norwegian mine on Svalbard is shut down now except Gruve 7, which lies on the opposite side of Adventdalen from our current location. Mine 7 was supposed to shut down this year, but due to increased profitability of the coal’s use in stainless steel production its operation has been extended to 2025. When Gruve 7 shuts down, Norway will have zero remaining active coal mines. Even with the date pushed off, the shutdown looms on the horizon for many people in Longyearbyen who have consistently worked in the mining industry here - this includes Marie, who mentions that her fiance is a well-paid machine operator at Gruve 7. Both of them work for the same company, Store Norske - it’s interesting to see the nuance of this company’s industry transition. Store Norske clearly has a trajectory established for the future given their aforementioned housing stock ownership as well as the fact that my guide is standing here leading a tour for individuals interested in the history of this place. Still, the sentiment I felt yesterday talking to Jonas is ever the more present here; it feels as though a top-down order is being imposed from afar. Marie makes it very clear with no minced words, as far as the shutdown of the mines is concerned, “we are against it”.
We are shown models of Gruve 3’s structure, including a scale model of Plataberget’s mountainside mounted to the wall and hinged so as to allow you to open up a plan-section and peek inside the earth. Another model to the rear of the room illustrates the methodology of mining and extraction used here, including a three part process involving interchanging 8-hour work shifts running around the clock to empty Spitsbergen’s coal seam as efficiently as possible. The work is dangerous, and we are shown a historical documentary by Norway’s NRK media outlet called “en bra plass” that features miners in Longyearbyen in the 80’s.
We’re led out of the presentation room and into one of the antechambers we passed on the way in. Here we don mining coveralls and helmets before climbing through a door and into the surface-house for mining operation at Gruve 3. This area includes rail cart staging, a maintenance and repair workshop, a few offices, and a display of the handheld auger that miners used to extract coal. The space isn’t conditioned and never was. We are told that if at any point after leaving the surface-house and descending into the mine we feel uncomfortable, we are welcome to exit the shaft and return to the original presentation room. She takes us down into the actual mine at this point, with the temperature dropping slowly the further into the earth we descend. After walking for about three minutes along the mine cart rails, we stop at a bend and off to the side of the tunnel is a small offshoot terminating in massive steel doors. This is the Arctic World Archive, an independent company that stores data on piqlFilm and stashes it here in the recesses of Gruve 3 where it can theoretically be preserved forever. Many clients store data here with AWA, including the Norwegian government; some of them have stowed away humanity’s ‘most important’ texts and messages for inhabitants of the deep future. A list of clients is suspended on a banner by the vault doors.
Marie explains that the company pays a fee to Store Norske in order to use this space in the mine, and it is Store Norske’s responsibility to maintain security for the vault. A camera is mounted above the door, wired to detect motion even in the pitch black of the mine - Marie indulges us with stories of the sensor being triggered here late at night when no such alarm had been set off up at the entrance of the mine. With regards to AWA itself, she is indifferent at best, asserting she “doesn’t believe in it” and that it seems like a silly effort to preserve data this deep in the mountain for aliens or some post-human intelligence to find and decipher in a thousand years. All the same, it’s another source of revenue for Store Norske in a shifting economy. It should be noted that I intend to submit some form of this fellowship/project to AWA, though I can see where Marie is coming from with her critique - the language on AWA’s site is at times bombastic, and there’s a data preservation payment tier you can select for the service that stores your content “for eternity”. I’m obviously going to be selecting that option.
We return to the main tunnel and continue even further down the mine. It’s quite cold now, and I can see my breath in front of me. Eventually the tunnel curves gently off to the right, and there’s another offshoot. This time it leads a bit further back, to a dip in the ceiling and another vault door. This is the original Norwegian Seed Vault, the inspiration for the Global Seed Vault I visited yesterday. This version retrofitted the mineshaft and stored seeds in glass vials within crates. This project was eventually terminated when the new vault up at the surface was built, but the two chambers’ proximity to each other is no coincidence - one is simply the continuation of the other. We cannot enter this vault, as it allegedly hasn’t been properly shored up against collapse. Instead, we return to the main tunnel again and continue even further down. We finally reach the stopping point: a latticework of timbers supporting ladders up to a platform where we wriggle into a 2’ tall coal vein that was intentionally left in Gruve 3 for this purpose. We’re allowed to crawl 20’ back into the low tunnel atop loose coal before turning around.
Back up in the presentation room after ascending to the surface, I meet another Gruve 3 guide named Anders. I corresponded a bit with him a few weeks ago about visiting the mine, but I doubt he remembers that now. We are given a chance to ask any final questions once everyone has returned the helmet and coveralls. I ask about a completely separate archive that is allegedly housed here: SNSK’s lidar scan and photodocumentation of Sveagruva, an old mining town sitting on the shores of a different fjord just south of here. Store Norske decommissioned this town and its mine in 2020 and proceeded to completely disassemble every building, rehabilitating the land that it previously occupied. Before doing so, a group of researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) scanned the town in its entirety. Info on the project from NIKU’s site suggests this now exists in the form of digital archive that one might interact with as a 3D model here inside Gruve 3. When I ask, Anders nods his head and admits he knows exactly what I’m talking about, but unfortunately the effort to package that content into something that can be interacted with has barely begun. He tells me they have a few disassembled structures from Svea out in Gruve 3’s storage yard, waiting to be reassembled here as part of an installation. He tells me these things move very slowly here, on a ‘get to it when you can’ basis, and that he’s not entirely sure whose wheelhouse the formatting of the digital archive is even in, SNSK or NIKU. At any rate, he assures me I haven’t come right before access to this material is opened to the public - it won’t be ready any time soon.
On the ride back down to Longyearbyen, one of the guests in the van asks Marie a few questions about Norwegian politics - she starts off on a rant about the current party system, where everyone makes a ton of promises but always plays the middle ground without challenging the status quo. She says it eventually begins to feel like you’ve got no vote at all, which is amplified all the more here in Svalbard. She tells us that “no one feels heard in the North”, referring not only to Svalbard but also to Troms and Finnmark counties in the northern mainland. Marie emphasizes that Svalbard has zero representation in Parliament, and she feels as though decisions are made by the mainland without even consulting the advisory council here. “Democracy doesn’t work when it operates that way”, she tells us. “I hate to be talking about it that way but it just doesn’t work.” To illustrate her point, she brings up the Norwegian “Green Plan”, which in addition to shutting down the coal mines also mandates a transition of all energy systems to diesel engines, requiring the fuel to be shipped up to Longyearbyen - “how sustainable is that” she wonders aloud. The transition to diesel has also been a disaster, as she explains it. The systems were tested out this past winter, and failed miserably, completely unable to generate the amount of power Longyearbyen needed to get through the cold, months-long darkness. Apparently the Norwegian government had to request UN resources to airdrop a backup diesel generator because half the original units broke and officials were considering evacuating the town altogether. Marie is skeptical of the government’s heavy involvement in the island’s affairs over the past couple of years. “Some people have been here for twenty five, thirty plus years without seeing much change - [but] at some point it became important to the Norwegian State to make this a family place”.
We’re passing the port now, and I see a large vessel with ‘National Geographic’ emblazoned in vivid yellow atop a dark green hull. The continued talk of politics inevitably circles back to America, and being the only American in the car I’m suddenly grilled on why a certain candidate is even allowed in the upcoming election. “Why would they vote for him, do you know”, one of the passengers harshly interjects. Marie cuts back in as she pulls up to my hotel, “I just don’t understand how it’s possible a criminal, like that much of a criminal, is allowed be the president, the leader.” I assure her, and everyone in the car, I do not know. An older gentleman in the back of the van makes eye contact with me as I’m getting ready to shut the door - “vote correct for us, will you?” I let them know I will.
After a quick nap and coordinating a few itinerary changes (one of my guided trips was cancelled next week) I head into town to meet up with Sander and his friends, several of whom work for Avinor at the airport. The original restaurant we wanted to go to is closed for some reason related to the ongoing Euro Championship - we end up back at Svalbar for what is my third consecutive night at the restaurant. Over the course of dinner, we discuss where I’ve been so far in my trip and what brought me to Svalbard; they’re interested, like many people have been, in the Fellowship and what it entails. I answer all of their questions candidly, and the conversation eventually turns to discussion of logistics and the tourism industry. These people are pessimistic about the future - the cargo planes that bring groceries from the mainland have been limited from four times a week to just twice a week, sometimes less. Mail and postage is slow, and many companies won’t ship to Svalbard without exorbitant fees that exceed the price of the item. Whatever can’t fit on the two cargo plane shipments must come to the island in the passenger cabins of regularly scheduled Norwegian Airlines and SAS flights; when tourists fill these flights up, there is a direct impact on the amount of produce available at the Co-op market. As Avinor employees (two of them serving as air traffic controllers), they are acutely aware of the frequency and flow of people and goods into Longyearbyen.
We also discuss cruiseships, which seem to be the bane of everyone’s existence in this town. The ships arrive at port and release a flood of tourists into the streets - these tourists are frequently lost, wandering in the middle of the street, stopping to take photos in more private areas of town, and occasionally get too close to the wildlife. They also contribute nothing, as put by one of the Avinor employees, because they often are coming into town for just a few hours before returning to an all-inclusive cruise package - they don’t spend any money with local shops or restaurants, offering all of the inconvenience of tourism with none of the benefits. “We sound like we’re ungrateful,” laughs Sander, fully acknowledging that tourism is going to be an increasingly necessary aspect of Longyearbyen’s economic activity moving forward. Some restrictions on cruise ships have actually been imposed recently, limiting the number of guests to <2000 on any ship coming to port. “And the drones,” Sander laughs and shakes his head wearily, “don’t get me started on the drones.”
it’s difficult not to question my own role here on the island after this conversation. I part ways with Sander and his friends after dinner, headed back to my hotel in silence. On the way back to my room I stop by the ‘game room’, a lounge with billiards and fuseball at Mary Ann’s that only opens up on weekends. I’m almost certain at this point that there are even more trees out in the courtyard, and now tables and benches have cropped up in between some of them as I shuffle through to another building. Inside the game room it’s completely silent. I turn the corner and see a dimly lit lounge with wood paneling on the walls. A bar sits unattended, and rows of low couches and plush armchairs are scattered throughout the room. Three jade ceiling lamps hang over a single pool table at the far end of the room, and a disco ball turns slowly over a dj booth set up on a 6” platform off to one side. Looking around confused, I feel like I’m in an episode of Twin Peaks. I quickly about-face and exit the premise to find a dog out on the porch tied to a post; at this point I decide to head immediately back to my room, and I spend the rest of the afternoon flipping through my copy of the Svalbardposten I’d bought the day before. The entire issue is pretty much dedicated to the Svalbardmelding, decrying the subversive policies and clear agendas of the document. The entire issue is in Norwegian, so I take my time scanning each page and reading through the translated text.
After a while, I swing back by the game room to see if anything changed. It’s now pretty lively and full of people. I see the two Americans I met late yesterday, and say hello to them again. One is from North Carolina, the other from California. We chat for a while and play a couple of games of fuseball. They have a big day tomorrow, a kayak-hike combination to summit one of the mountains across the fjord from Longyearbyen. They head off to bed, and just as soon as they’ve gone literally everyone else in the room decides it’s also time for them to vacate. Now alone once again in this strange, dimly lit lounge, I take it as a sign it’s officially time to call it quits for the night.
location: Longyearbyen (SJ)
ext air temp: -- F
relative humidity: --%
dew point: -- F
wet bulb: -- F
ground temp: --