A snowmobile journey across the Norwegian island of Svalbard leads a traveller to the Arctic mining town of Barentsburg, where she avoids polar bears and meets the local Russian population in this strange post-Soviet microcosm hidden within Europe’s remote, snowy lands.
I had read about mining towns from the comfort of an office chair, analysing the ESG credentials of companies for an investment bank. One company in particular, Norilsk Nickel, piqued my interest for its infamous “closed cities,” which house miners and their families in remote lands. Information on these livelihoods is scarce, bar a few YouTube videos depicting days defined by snow piles, grey skies, and tall Soviet-style apartment blocks. I thought of this video as I imagined Barrentsburg, or Баренцбург, the second-largest settlement on the Arctic island of Svalbard (also known as Spitsbergen).
“Yeah, we could definitely go there, but we’d have to stay, it’s a 120km round trip by snowmobile,” said my friend as she poured us coffee in her Welsh home nestled in the Eryri National Park. I had dreamed of visiting Russia as a teen, in all its mystique and legend, but visiting one of its mining towns in the dead of Arctic winter, while they were ravaged by a lethal war, I was on the fence.
The friend in question had just qualified as a guide for the island of Svalbard, a Norwegian territory, infamous for its strange laws, as citizens live under the watchful eye of ‘the Governor’. Visitors to Svalbard are not allowed to leave its small capital, Longyearbyen, due to the dangers: polar bears, avalanches, and temperatures as low as -40°, to name a few. Without her, my trip would be confined to the limits of expensive tour groups. She was keen to enable as many of her friends as possible to venture into this arctic dreamscape, and so a team was assembled, along with a huge kit list: avalanche beacons, balaclavas, flare guns, rope… The activity list was also full, and ‘extreme’ enough to make getting insurance a nightmare. My friend’s fiancé seemed to think that if you got into any trouble, it would be fine: “The governor will just come and get you.” So in that case, I didn’t bother.
Fast forward a few months, and I was hurtling at full speed into this Russian mining town on the back of a snowmobile, following strict instructions to ‘LEAN, LEAN, LEAN!’, else we would lose traction and slide off the slope. Trouble is, one hand was already preoccupied with a rifle, the other (in three layers of gloves) was steadily slipping off the back seat handle. Four fingers should give me enough grip, I reasoned. “LEAN MORE”. Ok, three fingers, “MORE,” two…one.
Russia brought the mine back from the Dutch in 1932, and it’s been operational ever since, with curious visitors since the early 2000s as ‘Arctic tourism’ started to take off. However, Barrentsburg’s tourism relations with its Nordic hosts splintered in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. A month before, an underwater telecommunications cable connecting Svalbard to mainland Norway, and therefore Europe, was damaged. A Russian trawler was pulled in for questioning, but the investigation was inconclusive. Later that year, Soviet and Russian navy flags were seen flying on small vessels to celebrate the Russian Naval accomplishments on their national holiday. While before the Norwegians had tried to remain politically indifferent, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the strange happenings in this Russian microcosm.
Today, tourist companies operating out of the island’s capital, Longyearbyen, choose whether to continue running trips to Barrentsberg and the other Russian territory, Pyramiden. One Russian-owned tourist company has been accused of being an “arm of the Russian State,” still trying to attract visitors, come snow or sun. The population of Barrentsburg itself is vulnerable to choice, if you can call it that. Many Ukrainians left in 2014, during the annexation of Crimea, and this departure trend obviously peaked again in 2022. Although the 1920 treaty agreed that all citizens of signatory nations are entitled to equal rights, the invisible frontiers do not prevent a frosty body politic in this corner of the Arctic.
Stopping at the town’s gates to take a register, I breathed a sigh of relief. Although watching my friend remove the bullets from the rifle, I kept wondering whether we should have come. Clearly, the polar bears don’t. Would Barrentsberg be an adequate rest stop for the weary Arctic traveler? My sense of vulnerability was heightened, but I was heavily prone to bias and exacerbated by an overactive imagination. I had grown up at the cinema where every fifth movie seemed to have a runaway plot at the hands of an evil Russian mastermind. I also grew up in London, where the lines separating fact from fiction also blurred, with real-life poisonings happening on the streets of Russian dissidents and critics of the government. I tried to stay neutral. We were only staying one night. I told my friends I was probably going to try not to spend any money so as not to help fund a war I was deeply opposed to. After all, the entire town was operated by the Russian state-owned Trust Arktikugol.
We pressed on into the bleak whiteout ahead, passing a few abandoned buildings. A few lights from the mine offered some distance perception, as did a red-and-white-painted chimney belching grey smoke. The snow came down heavily, and I was glad to leave behind the cautionary polar bear signs. My team of friends and I had already been on the island for four nights, and my nightmare-per-night rate was 100%, all of them revolving around the white furry beasts.
We parked up between two soviet style buildings. One beamed ‘Hotel Barrentsburg’, and the other said something in Russian. My friend pointed at the non-obvious accommodation option out of the two: “That’s where we are staying, but we must check in at the Hotel first.” I let them go ahead while I read about the world’s northernmost radio broadcast. My friend told me to get used to that, at 78° north, everything is the ‘northernmost.’
Waiting for my friends, the heavy snowfall softened, and the eerie silence took over. The neon lettering on the buildings allured me. I wanted to enter each brutally architectured soviet bloc. I wanted to go wandering, questioning, voyeuring, despite it all. I would get to do all of this in time, but Hostel Pomor was the first stop. Large and modest, we had the run of the place. There was really no one around, not even a receptionist. To quench my thirst for people watching, I convinced a few friends to go for a walk.
Treading carefully down the steps from Hostel Pomor, the snow build was taller than our heads. I felt grateful to whoever was tasked with slicing out a pathway of steps. In a very real sense, we were descending into the centre of a geopolitical grey area. We passed a red building with a luminescent logo, a polar bear with a red star, and the company name, Arktikugol, in Cyrillic. Two men stepped outside and smiled at us. They kept pace with us for a while, maintaining a courteous distance. We wondered whether we should take any more photos or switch our phones off, as Longyearbyen residents suggest.
Apparently, there was a shop to be found. While there was still no one on the streets, apart from our new friends behind us, we saw a huge statue of Lenin and figured signs of life couldn’t be too far away. A multicolored apartment block appealed to our senses, our eyes now extra sensitive to color after hours of seeing nothing but white. Behind Lenin, giant Cyrillic letters. One of my friends had learned a bit of Russian in school, “What does that say?” But she didn’t know–”Our goal is Communism“–no wonder.
Inside the apartment block, we were met with a mountain of sliders. It felt right to put them on, coming in from the cold. Opposite us, a door. Not obviously a shop, but I felt that this was a place where nothing was obvious. We knocked, but there was no reply. Naturally, we let ourselves in and marvelled at Russian sweets and neatly wrapped chocolates protected behind glass cabinets. There was beer, crisps, and lots of frozen goods, an Arctic diet. Suddenly, the door swung open by what felt like half the town, all arriving together. Feeling a little out of place, my friends got some beers and chocolate, paid in roubles, and left.
Waiting on the steps for my friends to put their layers back on, I watched more men enter the block, presumably to pick up groceries after a long day at work or to access some of the flats above. Everybody smiled at me and wished me a good evening. I replied with one of my few Russian words, “привет” (“hello”). I was curious about the life people live here, in a home away from home. I also wondered how much of the Western world’s view of Russia has influenced their worldviews and tolerance for other cultures, including how many Russians feel free to speak out for what they believe in. If these men weren’t here, would they be dragged into someone else’s war?
Later that night, my friends visited the ‘northernmost’ bar, and I, of course, had the best ‘northernmost’ vodka I’d ever had (my only exception to the spending money rule). Again, there was nobody there, but the staff seemed glad to have us and forgave our lack of Russian and Norwegian. The following morning, we looked out to the sea ice where the hammer and sickle was flying. It was truly the strangest night away, but nothing good comes of the ordinary.
All photos by Louis James.
