{"id":477,"date":"2017-03-29T15:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticincontext.com\/?p=477"},"modified":"2021-07-30T23:04:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T23:04:50","slug":"cold-storage-photographing-the-abandoned-soviet-town-pyramiden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/2017\/03\/29\/cold-storage-photographing-the-abandoned-soviet-town-pyramiden\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold Storage: Photographing the Abandoned Soviet Town Pyramiden"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Natasha Bluth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nestled in an inlet of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, the Soviet mining town of Pyramiden lies quiet and deserted. First founded by Sweden in 1910, the Soviet Union bought Pyramiden in 1927. The state-owned mining company Arktikugol Trust<\/a> acquired ownership of the town and began operations three years later. A few months after the last coal was extracted on March 31, 1998, approximately 1000 residents and miners trickled out, leaving Pyramiden abandoned and more or less frozen in time. In fact, as the History Channel\u2019s \u201cA Life After People\u201d predicted<\/a>, Pyramiden\u2019s Arctic climate will preserve the now discarded buildings and belongings just as they were left for the next 500 years.<\/p>\n

When photojournalist Christopher Michel visited the town in August 2016, he captured<\/a> the leftover desks, withered houseplants, and ceramic dishes coated in dust abandoned by those who called Pyramiden home up until 19 years ago. His images give the onlooker an otherworldly sensation\u2014Pyramiden evokes apocalypse.<\/p>\n

At its northernmost point of the town sits a bust of Vladimir Lenin. Wrote Michel of his experience:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt\u2019s freezing cold and I\u2019m standing eye to eye with Lenin. Well, not actually Lenin, but a bust of Lenin overlooking the main square of the abandoned Soviet mining town of Pyramiden in Svalbard, just 800 miles from the North Pole. On this remote site, the Soviet Union built an entire mining town for 1,000 miners and their families. The last coal was removed in 1998, and since then, the town has remained in \u201ccold storage\u201d\u2014a snapshot of Soviet life left as it was during the fall of the Soviet Union. The high school has school projects on display, the desks are full of office supplies, and the movie theater still has a film on the projector. It\u2019s also the site of the most northerly swimming pool and grand piano in the world, both eerie and wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Cold<\/p>\n

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More than 10 years after the mines closed, tourism returned to Pyramiden in 2007. A hotel and museum open in the summer months, but visitors typically\u00a0trek north<\/a>\u00a0from Longyearbyen, the closest town and the island\u2019s capital, located about 30 miles to the south. Traveling to the town by boat is possible from May to October, when the route is ice-free. \u201cIf you go,\u201d Michel writes, \u201cbe sure to bring a flashlight and nerves of steel.\u201d<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Christopher Michel is an accomplished photojournalist whose work has been featured in\u00a0<\/em>National\u00a0Geographic, the <\/em>Smithsonian, the <\/em>New York Times, the <\/em>BBC, and <\/em>Outside Magazine, among other newspapers and magazines. His collection includes photographs from extreme locations like the North & South Poles, Everest,\u00a0Papua New Guinea, DR Congo and at the edge of space (aboard a U-2 Spy\u00a0Plane). Michel is also the editor at <\/em>Explorers, a site dedicated to adventure travel, and the photo editor-at-large for the<\/em> Bold Italic.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

To see more of Christopher Michel\u2019s work, visit his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Photos courtesy of Christopher Michel<\/a>]<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on the World Policy Institute website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Natasha Bluth Nestled in an inlet of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, the Soviet mining town of Pyramiden lies quiet and deserted. First founded by Sweden in 1910, the Soviet Union bought Pyramiden in 1927. The state-owned mining company Arktikugol Trust acquired ownership of the town and began operations three years<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,9,7],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture-society","tag-energy-and-mining","tag-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}