Text 11382, 179 rader
Skriven 2008-02-21 10:35:00 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Kommentar till en text av Roy Witt
Ärende: Svalbard
================
RW>RW>> According to the Norwegians, it's a Norwegian administered
RW>RW>> territory. According to their neighbors on the island, it's a
RW>RW>> Russian administered territory.
RW>WD> Having been there I would go for the Norwegian version.
RW> Since there are two major settlements there, one Norwegian and one
RW> Russian, why would you need to choose?
Quality of life?
I was in both.
When you are in Longyearbyen you are in the main Norwegian settlement. You feel
you're in a very modern western world small town. Every modern comfort is there
... and I really mean "every" ... small shopping mall, restaurants, bars (at
least 5), a 5-star hotel (it was the former US Olympic team's building during
the 1994 winter Olympics in Lillehammer), an airport with all modern NAV-AIDS
(no commercial refueling), car rental (there are as good as no roads ...),
cell-phone, broadband internet, cable-TV (via satellite), the full
school-system through the last year of high-school, there is a division of the
university of Oslo but only for some 300 glaciology students, there's a main
sports arena, there's a heated indoor 50 meter olympic sized swimming pool, a
small hospital, a main satellite tracking station
Have a look at GoogleEarth, Longyearbyen is shown in high resolution:
A 78-14-46-83N 15-27-44-18E Airport
B 78-13-46-52N 15-23-50-34E NASA Satellite tracking station
C 78-13-21-23N 15-39-06-58E University building, dorm and messhall
D 78-13-15-68N 15-38-51-48E Hotel & bar
E 78-12-26-46N 15-35-26-49E "Huset" Restaurant
F 78-13-06-45N 15-38-23-45E Swimming pool and sports arena
G 78-13-09-18N 15-38-32-90E School
H 78-13-04-68N 15-38-26-81E Mall
I 78-13-09-38N 15-37-00-65E Cemetary
J 78-13-05-60N 15-37-21-23E Coal transport system (defunct)
K 78-13.01-77N 15-37-19-20E " " " "
L 78-13-33-87N 15-37-27-26E Supply warehouses and shipyard
M 78-14-18-91N 15-31-28-11E Polution
The airport (A) is used by SAS and Braathens for commercial flights from
Tromso. There is no refueling for commercial planes (just search and rescue).
Everybody landing there and not on a government mission must bring their own
fuel for the flight back. Boeing has tested both its 777 and 737NG there with
non-stop flights from Seattle, landing, backtrack the length of the runway,
take-off and fly back to the North American continent. Sounds exotic, but via a
polar route the distance is feasable.
The approach is always from the NW as there are mountains on the SE. Departure
is nearly always to the NW expect in times of extreme weather.
Interesting approach over the sea ice when I got there. We saw belugas. Later
flying back when the job was done we had to take-off towards the SE due to bad
wind. So the captain gets on the intercom, explains the odd take-off procedure
and says "Upon lifting-off we will make a snappy turn to the left ... ehr ...
to the right ... no, to the left ...". Passengers in the cabin could laugh with
it. And snappy it was. Plane was an SAS MD80 and we had the sensation of a
fighter-jet. I sat on the right, we turned already when still above the airport
and didn't get to see Longyearbyen, on GoogleEarth you can see how close it is.
The Norwegians don't mine there anymore for coal, it's not worth the effort,
too high sulphur content and money-losing operation. But you can still see
where there used to be a cable-car airborne coal-transportation system (J+K).
But there's coal dust everywhere from the moment you deplane or get off the
boat, especially in the neighbourhood of defunct coalmines (M). As a result in
the packing list the item "Slippers" is marked. Every house and private venue
(hotel, bar, restaurant, ...) expects you to take-off your shoes and put on
slippers to keep the black dust out. There're always spare slippers outside as
well.
The satellite tracker station (B) is mainly used for sensing-operations. The
staff is NASA's but they're all Norwegians so I don't expect them to handle
sensitive information. The station is on Svalbard because the visibility window
there is larger than e.g. on the equator. I think they have a minute or so
extra time for downloading imagery.
The university (C) is a small operation. 300 students only in glaciology. When
we were there they had a student from Bermuda. A black guy and he was
continuously freezing his ass off. A parka zipped-up to his nose. They have
several stations up and around the Longyearbyen Glacier further down the
valley. We could go down there and through holes descended below the glacier
and walked on the gravel-bed with 30 meter of ice above you. Very impressive.
It was still wintery so no run-off water. Just ice. One of the people in the
party panicked because of claustrophobia and had to be evacuated from below the
ice.
The cemetary (I) is interesting. Nearly no-one dies at Longyearbyen. Only young
people live there, the whole town, everybuilding except the hotel, is
government owned. Licences to build are not given so if you are living there,
it means you are needed there. There are no people near the pension age and
certainly not retired, you are required to leave. Pregnant females have to
leave in their 6th month because the hospital may not be able to deal with an
emergency. Youngsters beyond highschool must leave to continue studying and
cannot stay there when unemployed because the cost to keep the settlement open
is too high.
When someone dies, the remains are shipped back to the mainland. The reason is
that it is very difficult to bury someone there. Decomposition is very very
slow (100-200 years), graves are dug-up by scavenging wildlife and what has
happened is that during the extreme cold winters corpses just freeze out of the
ground the same way that rocks freeze-up out of the ground. I don't think there
are 10 graves. On a lot of locations throughout the archipelago one will find
freeze dried human remains which are of no interest for scavengers. One is
supposed to leave these corpses undisturbed, some are hundreds of years old.
A fascinating place.
Unfortunately there's nothig to be shown for the main Russian settlement:
Barentzburg. It is about at 78-04-56-59N and 14-13-19-60E but at Google Earth
that is very very low resolution.
We rented the icebreaker of the Governor of Svalbard and went there. That was
another experience.
There are old wooden houses with beautiful woodcarvings but most of the living
quarters are old-style communist-era housing blocks with little comfort. The
streets of Barentzburg are dirty and lined with piles of coaldust.
The single Russian coalmine is still operational but a money loser. In the late
90-ies there was a serious mining incident with massive loss of life. Just
before that a Russian airliner en route from Moscow to Longyearbyen made its
approach from the SE but was some 3 miles of course when on final and slammed
into a mountain. The incident is broadly documented on the internet.
Barentzburg also has a 50m heated swimming pool and the statues of Lenin are
everywhere ... and left there as a time-piece.
There is a hotel which is sleazier than the sleaziest motel I ever saw. They
have a small interesting museum. Someone needed to go to the loo overthere, saw
the kind of toilets they had there and the lady pressed her knees together and
ran to the icebreaker for relief.
There are some souvenirshops with interesting trinckets. The postoffice is
Norwegian, the single phone-booth is Norwegian. There is no cellphone coverage
and no direct-dial phones to the outside world except that single phone booth.
All mine-workers get a phonecard every month to call home from that booth.
Wages are paid in Rubbles but in a bank in Moscow. They stay there for the
whole 36 months that their "tour of duty" lasts. Due to devaluation of the
currency, when they get back home the actual value of what they have is
significantly less than what they had at the actual moment when they signed up.
The interesting part of Barentzburg however is their farm. They grow all their
vegetable requirements indoor in giant primitive greenhouses. They have at any
given moment 300 pigs in about the cleanest animal farm operation which I ever
saw. They have a herd of cows, most of the year kept indoor, and 3 bulls for
breeding.
People there say "Longyearbyen is cleaner, but we have day-fresh vegetables and
meat".
Wewere invited into the VIP-restaurants ... several tables, not one the same.
Nog a single same chair. Flowerpots were cans from vegetables hung up on the
roof with the wrappers not even removed. Serving staff were extremely uggly out
of proportion very unfriendly communist-era women. Food was very greasy,
probably required because of the climate, based on pork-meats.
People at that time said they were very fortunate to be there in comparison to
other remote areas in Russia. I believe it. They boasted to have 2 TV-channels
there ... one a Russian general-purpose station, the other was EuroSport. We
said "wowww" and though about the 40+ stations we had at Longyearbuyen, they
thought we were impressed ... nobody commented further and left these good
people in their blissfull ignorance.
One last detail. During WW2 there were British troops in Longyearbyen and
Russian soldiers at Barentzburg. The German battleship Tirpitz went there from
its hiding place in Norway and shelled both settlements. That was about its
only operational sortie before the Brits bombed it to the bottom of a fjord.
The Russians have an unexploded shell on display in their museum.
Interesting? Need to know more? Just ask questions...
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