A Soviet "ghost town" frozen in the Arctic Circle in the past

My guide Sergei Cernikov has a gun on his shoulder in case we meet a polar bear or it meets us.

We are standing on the humble pier of Piramidon, a ghost town in Svalbard Islands, a high-latitude Arctic region in Norway. It is said that in 1998, the Russian government tricked 1000 residents of this town into going to the mainland for a holiday in order to close the mine and prohibit them from returning. It is said that this small town in the polar region of the world has been abandoned and frozen in the past since then. Is it true?/You don't say. /You don't say. I asked.

Before I finished asking, Sergei began to shake his head.

Sergei said that this is not the case. The explanation he gave was not as evil as rumored: due to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the town was abandoned-mainly for economic reasons. It's no use getting rid of the residents like that.

He denied all kinds of rumors surrounding this place. "They also said we built it," he said, pointing to this unique mountain peak, after which the ancient coal city was named. Several layers of concentric rocks gradually extend into the cold sky, like a pyramid-shaped mountain, which looks strange. However, in this extreme latitude area, almost everything is unfamiliar.

According to the Treaty of Svalbard 1920, Norway has sovereignty over Svalbard. However, the two most attractive tourist attractions in the archipelago-Barents mining town, which is still in operation, and Piramidon, which is already empty, are Russian settlements.

This is because the Svalbard Treaty granted the right to use the natural resources of the islands to all parties including Russia. In the end, Russian state-owned coal company Trust Arktikugol acquired the ownership of Piramidon and Barents Fort.

Piramidon continued to exist after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and finally gradually closed in the months of 1998. In fact, this place has been in a state of rapid decline for many years. Mine disaster, Russian financial turmoil, 1996, a chartered plane crashed, 14 1 people were killed, which decided its fate.

Above 78 degrees north latitude, Pirami has an extreme climate and many of the best in the world. In late June of 65438+ 10 every year, the sun disappears below the horizon and does not appear again until mid-February of the following year. In summer, the sun doesn't set for three months.

However, walking around with Sergei always feels that the last days are spent in a hurry. The instructions are open and there are several bottles of vodka on the windowsill. There are also some sporadic diaries, a man's beard in a photo is impressive, a typewriter-even an old basketball with a crack.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that children's toys are scattered in places that used to be schools.

At its peak, Piramidon provided urban facilities and a high standard of living for 65,438+0,000 residents. Facilities provided by the town include schools, libraries, ice hockey halls, gymnasiums, dance and music studios, radio stations, cinemas that double as theaters and a cat cemetery.

Everything that exists in Piramidon may be the northernmost place in the world. This settlement is 500 miles further north than Utgwick, Alaska, the northernmost community in the United States. )

The old cultural center may have the northernmost grand piano and gymnasium in the world. Nearby, Sergey and I walked around an empty swimming pool-it used to be a heated swimming pool, which made the residents of Langille, a much larger Norwegian settlement in the south, envious.

On the pedestal outside this striking building stands a huge statue of Lenin. His cold head stared sternly at the town, and he was the only witness left by the abandoned pirates.

There are also some beautiful things: there is a shining arctic fox living under the hotel; The nearby Norden Kald Glacier shines like a sapphire blue torch; The low-level sunlight shines on the broken window of the restaurant, and colorful light dances on the ground; Sunrise and sunset dyed this unusual mountain pink and golden yellow.

The whole town is basically dormant and slowly decaying, but the Piramidon Hotel-of course, it may be the northernmost hotel in the world-and the cultural center have been reborn in recent years.

They are the only buildings in town that are still in frequent use. Some wooden buildings have been surrounded by frozen soil, but these two places still stand proudly.

This hotel is a place where small communities in Russia and Ukraine live and work, where they entertain one-day tourists and adventure tourists who plan to spend the night.

Dina Barcaro was on duty at the bar when I went. "I usually live in Barents Castle," she said. "But I didn't work in a bar when I was in Russia-I was actually an opera singer." She told me that when she was free, she would ask the residents here to accompany her with guns to the abandoned oil drums at the pier (no one dares to go out without guns in the mountains where bears haunt). She will practice her voice against rusty metal.

I was wandering around Svalbard earlier that summer. When I heard about this place, I just wanted to see if there was anything so strange. But it's not as weird as I thought-the people here are gentle and proud of the history of the town, just like other places.

Russians and Ukrainians who have returned here in recent years do not expect to get the whole town of Piramidon back to work. In fact, they told me that they wanted to preserve the almost disappeared remains.

They said that although the building was deserted, at least it was not completely deserted.