By: Arin
In early June I spent over three weeks living in Longyearbyen, the furthest north town in the world with a permanent population of over 1,000 people at 78˚ latitude (For comparison: Utqiagvik, Alaska is 71˚). We were studying thick-billed murres (Brünnich’s guillemot in Europe), little auks, Atlantic puffins, and black-legged kittiwakes. The kittiwakes were a small species of gull with red rimmed eyes, black legs, and black tipped gray wings. Left to the wilds, they nest on high cliffs in little ledges and small caves, hundreds of meters over the tundra and ocean. Despite its isolation and harsh conditions though, Svalbard was not untouched. The rise of the coal mining industry and its subsequent fall (among other events) has led to collections of abandoned buildings in the remote archipelago, left to the mercy of the high arctic winters.
These crumbling old concrete and brick ruins harbor a melancholy about them left from the memories of the people who lived there decades ago. Grumant hosted a small collection of these abandoned buildings that we visited frequently during field work. The inside of the buildings were painted a lovely sky blue, though the paint had almost completely peeled away. A graveyard stood above the small collection of buildings and children must have played on the grass near the cliff edge where only a few feet from the front door, the ocean spread out and away to the gathering of glaciers on the far opposite shore.
Opposing the melancholy is the jubilant calls of the arctic wildlife that have made the dilapidated buildings their home. Kittiwakes have built dozens of nests on the window ledges of the houses, imitating cliff sides. There are some three or six to a window with more where the walls have fallen away. Glaucous gulls have built nests on the roof and the calls of snow bunting chicks can be heard from holes in the brick wall. A small herd of stocky Svalbard reindeer, still white from winter, wander close by. A rotted wooden staircase houses an arctic fox den and kits have been seen in the late summer, making their way across the old wooden platforms and stairs, now overgrown with moss and lichens. Grumant is a small place though with only three or four buildings still standing. The real ghost town is an old Russian coal mining community a three-hour boat ride North at almost 79˚ latitude, Pyramiden.
Pyramiden was built in 1910 when the coal mining industry was on the rise. At its height in the 1980's some 1,000 people lived there, families and coal miners. There was a swimming pool, a library, a school house, playgrounds, and roads. In 1996 though, 141 of the inhabitants were flying in to Longyearbyen and the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. In an instant Pyramiden lost a lot of its population and with the unprofitable coal mine as well, the rest soon left the town to return to Russia, Pyramiden was abandoned to the winters in 1998.
Almost two decades later there remains one inhabited building, the Pyramiden hotel which was renovated and reopened to tourists. The building across from the hotel, one of the tallest structures that used to house the children, was taken over by a large colony of kittiwakes. They built nests on every window ledge, concrete block, vent, and collapsed wall. Their nests were built high and strong with grass, feathers, seaweed, and mud. Over 1,000 of them live in the old building now with almost 900 active nests in Pyramiden, more than 2,000 birds.
We went to Pyramiden in late June to update our population counts on the kittiwakes, we were banding the new birds to test survival and collecting DNA samples for study. We were also running personality tests on the birds, a fun exercise where we used an extendable pole to perch a dopey looking plastic blue penguin toy on the edge of their nests, a novel object they wouldn’t have seen. The birds reacted in different ways, some ignored it, some pecked curiously or angrily at it and some simply flew away. These reactions were consistent with the same bird from year to year and illustrated the individuality of the birds as well as served to predict how they would adapt to the changing climate.
The screaming calls of the kittiwakes followed you almost everywhere in Pyramiden. The few Russian employees that ran the hotel and lead tours through the ghost town were the only other inhabitants, though few stayed for the winter. Polar bears were not infrequent visitors. On the boat ride there, our ship passed right in front of the glacier that marks the end of the fjord (Nordenskiöldbreen) and a large polar bear was asleep on the rocks in front of some massive ice caves. As we watched the large predator wandered down the rocks and slipped into the sea, his large black nose the only thing distinguishing him from the surrounding chunks of floating ice. Flocks of pale indigo and gray fulmars populated the area just under the glacier as well, searching for invertebrates in the melting ice and perching on icebergs to watch our boat move past
While mesmerizing to watch from the safety of a boat, a polar bear in Pyramiden while we worked would have been incredibly dangerous. We carried a bolt-action rifle and flare gun with us at all times, both were always within a few steps reach of either me or my partner. Polar bears are notoriously unpredictable and incredibly accomplished ambush predators. Walking outside the city limits of Longyearbyen without a rifle was risky and signs marked where you were not allowed to venture past without weapons.
Despite these dangers, Pyramiden was a very interesting and oftentimes beautiful place to work. The massive glacier was always visible from the town, over 3,000 years old and constantly changing in the light from facets of gray and white and blue. The Pyramiden mountain whose odd shape gave the town its name loomed above us, its front partially hollowed out by the elements and bleeding iron red rubble. Its peak was dusted in snow a few times, and small streams of snow from the past winter still clung to its dips and gullies. Old railroad tracks followed wooden tunnels on the edge of town and an abundance of rusted swing sets could be found about our study site and in the town center, creaking eerily. The town had been abandoned promptly and in the case of those who died, without knowledge of leaving. Therefore, many rooms were still fully furnished, potted plants still in their place, possessions till strewn across floors and tables. There were the remains of a football field and playground, the marks of a paintbrush could still be seen in the bright yellow spots painted on a children’s playhouse.
Pyramiden was a strange place, a relatively new ghost town partially allowed to be overtaken by the Arctic. Reindeer grazed outside the town square, polar bears crept around the glaciated edges, arctic fox prowled the sidewalks, and almost every window ledge was filled with kittiwake nests, screaming through the midnight sun. Most of the nests I saw hosted at least one or two eggs, and as the glacier out front slowly melts away from the ocean I really hope the next generation of seabirds manages to weather the changing world.
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