PYRAMIDEN
The soviet Arctic dream where Russians projected a self-sufficient community. From sports facilities to cultural venues, there wasn’t much one couldn’t do under the attentive sight of the northernmost Lenin on the planet.
Dawn breaks over Billefjord, lighting up the iconic monument that announces you have arrived in the proud town of Pyramiden. Placed by the shore, the ghost town becomes locked in sea ice for several months a year. In the distance, Nordenskiöldbreen glacier (named after the Swedish explorer and promoter of science in the Arctic) staggers the horizon in tiers towards the sea, giving the abandoned town a theatrical air, no matter summer or winter.
Pyramiden was originally a Swedish mining settlement. The Soviet Union’s state company, Arktikugol, acquired it in 1926 due to the presence of coal and the potential for its extraction.
It happens that the Russians projected something well beyond an ordinary mining town: they wanted to build the northernmost self-sufficient mining community. Like other settlements in Svalbard, it represented an instrument of national presence and propaganda in the archipelago. Only this nation was the Soviet Union.
In the heyday of the settlement during the 80’s, Pyramiden had more population than Longyearbyen! With well beyond 1000 people….
There were barracks and multi-family houses, bars, a thermal power plant, a post office, a port, and of course a school. They even equipped the town with swimming pool, cultural centre, a greenhouse and even its own brick factory, producing the characteristic-coloured bricks that soviet settlements of Svalbard were built on.
After the dissolution of the USSR, the settlement plunged into a deep crisis. There were efforts done to keep the settlement inhabited and operative. A final attempt to relaunch the settlement was to be completed with more professional workers and their families moving to Pyramiden in 1996. The plane they were traveling on tragically crashed at Operafjellet (nearby Longyearbyen), leaving 141 dead. This remains the largest aviation accident in Norwegian history. Following that disaster, efforts to relaunch the settlement were definitively left behind, and Pyramiden was abandoned in 1998.
In recent years, there has been a small crew of people working to run the hotel and receive visitors first during the summer, and more recently, year-round. This is probably one of the most striking places I have ever visited, and the combination of raw nature in the surroundings with such a thrilling history has the capacity to leave a mark on the people who ever visit the place.
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