Three days by car to Oslo, three hours by plane to Svalbard, Norway, five hours by an Arctic ship with a romantic name “Polar Girl” and you find yourself in the northernmost abandoned city: you are in Pyramiden.
Today nobody lives here. Not a single citizen. The last people left the city more than fifteen years ago. It’s only 1000 km from here to the north Pole. It makes the city inaccessible for looters. So Pyramiden looks almost untouched and it is inhabited by white bears only.
The city was a Soviet enclave in the west, they built only houses of good quality according to Soviet standards.
Those metal boxes on the windows are fridges.
Traditional fridges are not needed. In June temperature is not higher than 3-5 C (37-41F) above zero.
Only moss grows on Svalbard but people have specially brought here two barges of hardy grass that is able to strike root on the cold land. But it has not sprouted yet.
It’s the place where the northenmost monument to Lenin is located. He is looking at the age old glacier.
Most of the things have been untouched.
Those flowers haven’t been watered for fifteen years.
The poster says “To the West!”
People took only the most necessary things which they could transport by plane.
Nobody swims in the northernmost pool of the world anymore.
And nobody trains in the northernmost gym…
Wooden structures are slowly decaying.
It’s the old washing machine.
The nature is wild and untouched.
Maybe it’s how the world would like after a nuclear war?
via boyarinoff
Metal playground equipment on a 41F June day, fun!
So what was the reason to build a city there in the first place?
Why not?
I wish there were a link to Google Maps.
78° 40′ 45″ N, 16° 23′ 43″ E
78.679167°, 16.395278°
Search google maps for: “Pyramiden, Svalbard and Jan Mayen” and you will find the most probable spot on Svalbard. Matches Lenin’s view, but have very bad satellite imagecoverage.
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=78.679713,16.400528&spn=0.140041,0.837021&t=m&z=11&lci=com.panoramio.all
For what you will ne willing to live in this town?
This place was not for the mining. It was established to make a presence in the northern area of the West. Soviets were allowed by treaty to maintain economic presence only, so the mining was the pretense. Cold war politics. Nonsense, all of it.
In Canada it’s a town which has a zinc and gold mine: also in the town a few shops and houses enough for a 100 of people; also to drive can’t be done in the winter, because to much snow. Normal a small airplane would go there an any time of the year. When the zinc was so cheap close the mine. Then the Government sold for a dollar to somebody to dig for the minerals. And start to function again many people went there for so long again. The reason mention: because the Government of Russia could do the same, even renting cheap to somebody with money to start the mine again. I think could be very nice in the summer: everything is there just maintain again. Only to Russian citizens, and small planes could take people there, inclusive many people could like to be there in the summer, and a few stay there during the winter. The problem Russia to big; but places like that just about with everything, a rich person could go just before summer to make everything working again. Russia need to have people there or any place that far; to make sure distribute the population around. 18/10/12! By A.Oscar
I would like to go there and take all the copper wiring!
haha can i help you?
Do not be silly. All copper ore was used for ammunition production in Ostblock. The wiring will be aluminium.
amazing
Like all of mans creations they all end in rust or eaten by moths.
Looks pretty good conserved to me, regarding that the settlement has been abandoned for 15 years now. Probably due to the cold. No bacteria there, chemical processes pass off super slow…
This town was established way before the Cold War, in fact in 1910 by Sweden. They sold the town to the Soviet Union in 1927. Alas the town was established before the Soviet Union, and it has always been about mining. Sveagruva is among Europes biggest underground coal mines.
The town is not as hard to visit as the article claims, in fact it is only 50km from the main settelment Longyearbyen and 100km from the Russian Barentsburg
It is not entirely abandoned, there are still russian dismantling equipment and transfering this to Barentsburg. And the have plans to accomodate turist here.
This city is situated at Svalvard archipelago, it belongs to Norway.The city was sold to the Soviet Union.
And the reason everybody left is…?
A couple of reasons: first, the Cold War was over, and the Russians started to feel the cost of running such a thing in THIS place (it’s pitch dark for 4 months in the winter, with an average temperature between -15 C and – 10 C). Second, there was a severe plane crash in Longyearbyen in 1996, when a Russian charter flight crashed into a hill when approaching the airport, and about 150 people died. Half of those dead were officials from Pyramiden… So, in 1998, they called it a day, and left.
I would go there with say 100 Russian girls and NEVER want to return to [not] normal life again
Any girls interested??
Unless you’re Superman, a 100 girls is too uch for you to handle, and all be will bored within two days and leave you.
Nice dream though.
they did have coal mines there, thats why they were there…. And Norway didt sell the town, sweden did sell it to the sovjet…
That “washer Machine” seems more like Pizza Oven