Warning: This post features a visit to a Russian territory. While I am a fiercely political person this isn’t the forum for politics, so can I ask that we keep any comments about the explore.
“The sound of the Russian flags fluttering on the abandoned crane above me were broken by the voice of the p*ssed off guard making affirmative orders in Russian. I didn’t understand a word he was saying, but it was clear from the gesturing of his rifle barrel towards me that he was ordering me to get off the boat. Alone and 4,000 miles from home, I couldn’t help wonder if I should have taken up a different hobby” - UrbanX
Context:
Throughout the early 2010’s I was obsessed with Chernobyl and Pripyat. For six years I visited several times a year on extended stays and spent more time walking the abandoned streets of Pripyat than I did my home city. Back in the early days they used to only issue 16 permits to Pripyat per day - For my 30th birthday I bought all 16 tickets just so my partner and I could have the whole city to ourselves for a day. Then in late 2014 they removed the 16 person cap and the zone was flooded with up to 1,500 people per day. I stopped going.
For the next 8 years I obsessed over my new mistress: Pyramiden – An abandoned Russian mining town, some 1,350Km North of the Arctic Circle. The problem was it was six flights and two days on an icebreaker away from my house. So it always remained a pipe dream until last year when Mrs UrbanX innocently asked “So where are you holding your 40th birthday then?”
The journey here could fill a book, (well a report at least) itself. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The week after I booked my flights, Russia invaded my beautiful Ukraine. The couple of operators who would usually sail to Pyramiden were now refusing to dock at the Russian town. The week before I was due to fly covid numbers rocketed and threatened the trip. Then the day before, a pilot strike threatened the trip (The pilots union decided to postponed while I was literally in the air on my way).
Arriving in thick freezing fog, the pilot warned that it often took him two attempts at a landing here and not to panic. I didn’t die, so made my way, alone, to the 108-year-old miners’ cabin that would be my new home. That night I feasted on a roast seal (sorry vegetarians) before getting some sleep and heading to the port to look for an icebreaker.
Icebreaker:
This is not an easy place to get to. There are no roads in and out of the town (there’s no cars either). You can snowmobile across the sea during the winter, but it is pitch black 24 hours a day. It is only accessible by ship in a very short window each year – Although we’re in a high category icebreaker, if we tried to dock during thick ice we’d smash the timber landing stage.
So with my flights booked for a very specific period, I was confident I could make it. Then around 4 months before my trip Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone quite rightly started boycotting anything Russian. Including all of the Norwegian icebreaker owners. My heart sank and I cried a little bit. Through my tear stained face, I stayed up night after night trawling the net, looking for someone who owned an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to the Russian territory.
Most of my Google searches ended with the Foreign Office webpage that warned me in big bold letters “We advise against all travel to any Russian occupied territory due to the volatility of the current situation. All travel insurance is invalid, so if you do travel, please ensure you have sufficient funds to repatriate your body in the event of death”.
Then one night came a reply from one of the hundreds of people I’d contacted “I see these people as my neighbours. We both celebrate the same sun rising. To visit them is not supporting Moscow”. He claimed to have an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to Pyramiden and Barentsberg. He gave me his bank details before signing off “С уважением” (Kind Regards in Russian) “Stig”
So I done what anyone else would have done, and emptied my bank account into his and crossed my fingers that he was genuine. A few months later I’m standing on the floating pontoon at Longyearbyen harbour, looking out across the foggy Adventfjorden. Cometh the hour, cometh the Stig. Our ship could hold 100 people, but there were only about 15 on the planet who fancied visiting Pyramiden this week. I loved the icebreaker life; wildlife, BBQs on deck against the glacial landscape, and occasionally scooping up some 3,000-year-old ice to drop into my Jagermeister.
Eventually the silhouette of Pyramidens landing stage loomed onto the horizon.
As we got closer the Russian flags fluttered in the wind and I took a gulp; for the last few months the only representation of this flag has been entirely associated with death and destruction of the land I love. A serious looking man holding a rifle approaches the boat and gestured a few us off with the barrel. Knowing my social media is mainly populated with photos of me in Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, and the now annexed Crimea, I was glad that I’d kept my plans of this trip entirely to my immediate family.
Pyramiden:
You see this town isn’t entirely abandoned...
The protocol of the ecologically sensitive arctic is that if you abandon buildings, you must remove them and restore the land to its natural form, including removing the foundations. Which for a town of 1,000 homes is extremely expensive. So the Russians said “Ah, but if one person lives there, it’s not abandoned is it…” With that, a single young man called Sascha was given a rifle, an acoustic guitar and a bottle of vodka and sent on the same journey that I’ve just undertaken. He lived here alone in this town for a good decade before he was relieved.
He was replaced by Igor:
Igor
Igor & Pyramiden sign
So, under the Svalbard Treaty, any of the signatories can live and work on the Arctic archipelago without discrimination. If you wanted to go and mine it tomorrow you could, no paperwork or visa required. So that’s what most of us done in the 1910s (including Britain). In 1927 Russia bought this set of mines from Sweden and named it after the pyramid shaped mountain adjacent to the town.
I shit you not, this is the airport & control tower. Where’s the duty free?
The Russian state-owned company Arktikugol mined here for 53 years, making a token number of Rubles from the coal each year, but keeping a nice foothold halfway across the shortcut to America....
In 1998 the coal production was almost down to zero, then a plane attempting the same landing that I took yesterday crashed into the side of the mountain, instantly killing all 141 Arkitikugol employee passengers. Russian mining ceased and the town was abandoned.
The abandoned mines
After 15 years of nothingness, they decided to open it to tourists, probably to cover Sacha’s vodka bill. They even decked out a couple of rooms of one of the buildings as a ‘hotel’ for a few nights of the year. (I did try and stay, but there was no returning icebreaker for quite some time, and you can’t just go and explore without a guide and a gun due to the polar bear risk. There’s also no TVs or internet signal).
I drank up the soviet architecture and appreciated the way it was a clean slate to create a perfect utopian town, much like Pripyat. They even had a greenhouse and an inside farm in an attempt of some independence.
The old farm
There’s the obligatory bust of Lenin who looks out over the town and across to the bay to the Nordenskiöldbreen glacier.
I went in mid-summer in the short window when there wasn’t snow on the ground, and you could see the grass which was imported from Siberia. Igor was quick to scream at me not to walk on the grass “Oh yeah, radiation” I replied out of habit. “Niet, Niet… The reindeers like it”
While Igor lives here almost entirely alone (there’s a skeleton staff of around 2-5 now to help out when scientific missions arrive) the archipelago is home to 3,400 polar bears. So it seems apt they decided to have one on their town sign. Without wanting to insult Igor, I suggested that it had been painted by someone who had had a polar bear described to him over the phone. Heartily he agreed and pointed out that they had the latitude wrong too.
Igor kept an extremely close eye on me as he showed me round. Constantly impatient at me for wanting more photos. We went to explore the old swimming pool:
The crazy house: So as some miners bought their families up here a dedicated family block was built. Sounds idyllic. Except they have long polar night winters here. The sun doesn’t rise for 6 months, keeping the town in permanent darkness while plunging to -42c. So children playing outside is a no-no before we even mention the bears. As a father of a lively child, I can’t imagine the pent-up energy of a child who hasn’t been out to play for 6 months. Today the block seems equally crazy as over 1,000 kittiwakes loudly caw and defecate all over it.
The Crazy House
Canteen:
I love the little polar bears in the columns
We visit the cultural palace where Igor offers me a drink, “You know a real explorer always matches his drink to his latitude” he says pouring me a shot from a bottle with no branding. “78%” he says clinking my glass. I give a nervous “Spasiba” as we both throw our heads back downing the moonshine.
I opened up a cupboard to find a spare Lenin inside!
The shot must have softened eagle-eyed Igor as he leans in and says in a quiet voice “I will now turn a blind eye, just watch out for bears”. Before he’d finished saying “bears” I was out the door, running from building to building trying to extend my tripod as I ran.
Sports Hall:
Music Room:
Theatre:
Thanks for reading, there's more similar towns to come...
EPILOGUE:
On October 12th 2022 when Russia started re-shelling Kyiv a decision was made among all nations that there would be NO further visitors to Pyrmiden for the forseeable future.
“The sound of the Russian flags fluttering on the abandoned crane above me were broken by the voice of the p*ssed off guard making affirmative orders in Russian. I didn’t understand a word he was saying, but it was clear from the gesturing of his rifle barrel towards me that he was ordering me to get off the boat. Alone and 4,000 miles from home, I couldn’t help wonder if I should have taken up a different hobby” - UrbanX
Context:
Throughout the early 2010’s I was obsessed with Chernobyl and Pripyat. For six years I visited several times a year on extended stays and spent more time walking the abandoned streets of Pripyat than I did my home city. Back in the early days they used to only issue 16 permits to Pripyat per day - For my 30th birthday I bought all 16 tickets just so my partner and I could have the whole city to ourselves for a day. Then in late 2014 they removed the 16 person cap and the zone was flooded with up to 1,500 people per day. I stopped going.
For the next 8 years I obsessed over my new mistress: Pyramiden – An abandoned Russian mining town, some 1,350Km North of the Arctic Circle. The problem was it was six flights and two days on an icebreaker away from my house. So it always remained a pipe dream until last year when Mrs UrbanX innocently asked “So where are you holding your 40th birthday then?”
The journey here could fill a book, (well a report at least) itself. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The week after I booked my flights, Russia invaded my beautiful Ukraine. The couple of operators who would usually sail to Pyramiden were now refusing to dock at the Russian town. The week before I was due to fly covid numbers rocketed and threatened the trip. Then the day before, a pilot strike threatened the trip (The pilots union decided to postponed while I was literally in the air on my way).
Arriving in thick freezing fog, the pilot warned that it often took him two attempts at a landing here and not to panic. I didn’t die, so made my way, alone, to the 108-year-old miners’ cabin that would be my new home. That night I feasted on a roast seal (sorry vegetarians) before getting some sleep and heading to the port to look for an icebreaker.
Icebreaker:
This is not an easy place to get to. There are no roads in and out of the town (there’s no cars either). You can snowmobile across the sea during the winter, but it is pitch black 24 hours a day. It is only accessible by ship in a very short window each year – Although we’re in a high category icebreaker, if we tried to dock during thick ice we’d smash the timber landing stage.
So with my flights booked for a very specific period, I was confident I could make it. Then around 4 months before my trip Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone quite rightly started boycotting anything Russian. Including all of the Norwegian icebreaker owners. My heart sank and I cried a little bit. Through my tear stained face, I stayed up night after night trawling the net, looking for someone who owned an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to the Russian territory.
Most of my Google searches ended with the Foreign Office webpage that warned me in big bold letters “We advise against all travel to any Russian occupied territory due to the volatility of the current situation. All travel insurance is invalid, so if you do travel, please ensure you have sufficient funds to repatriate your body in the event of death”.
Then one night came a reply from one of the hundreds of people I’d contacted “I see these people as my neighbours. We both celebrate the same sun rising. To visit them is not supporting Moscow”. He claimed to have an icebreaker, and was willing to sail me to Pyramiden and Barentsberg. He gave me his bank details before signing off “С уважением” (Kind Regards in Russian) “Stig”
So I done what anyone else would have done, and emptied my bank account into his and crossed my fingers that he was genuine. A few months later I’m standing on the floating pontoon at Longyearbyen harbour, looking out across the foggy Adventfjorden. Cometh the hour, cometh the Stig. Our ship could hold 100 people, but there were only about 15 on the planet who fancied visiting Pyramiden this week. I loved the icebreaker life; wildlife, BBQs on deck against the glacial landscape, and occasionally scooping up some 3,000-year-old ice to drop into my Jagermeister.
Eventually the silhouette of Pyramidens landing stage loomed onto the horizon.
As we got closer the Russian flags fluttered in the wind and I took a gulp; for the last few months the only representation of this flag has been entirely associated with death and destruction of the land I love. A serious looking man holding a rifle approaches the boat and gestured a few us off with the barrel. Knowing my social media is mainly populated with photos of me in Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, and the now annexed Crimea, I was glad that I’d kept my plans of this trip entirely to my immediate family.
Pyramiden:
You see this town isn’t entirely abandoned...
The protocol of the ecologically sensitive arctic is that if you abandon buildings, you must remove them and restore the land to its natural form, including removing the foundations. Which for a town of 1,000 homes is extremely expensive. So the Russians said “Ah, but if one person lives there, it’s not abandoned is it…” With that, a single young man called Sascha was given a rifle, an acoustic guitar and a bottle of vodka and sent on the same journey that I’ve just undertaken. He lived here alone in this town for a good decade before he was relieved.
He was replaced by Igor:
Igor
Igor & Pyramiden sign
So, under the Svalbard Treaty, any of the signatories can live and work on the Arctic archipelago without discrimination. If you wanted to go and mine it tomorrow you could, no paperwork or visa required. So that’s what most of us done in the 1910s (including Britain). In 1927 Russia bought this set of mines from Sweden and named it after the pyramid shaped mountain adjacent to the town.
I shit you not, this is the airport & control tower. Where’s the duty free?
The Russian state-owned company Arktikugol mined here for 53 years, making a token number of Rubles from the coal each year, but keeping a nice foothold halfway across the shortcut to America....
In 1998 the coal production was almost down to zero, then a plane attempting the same landing that I took yesterday crashed into the side of the mountain, instantly killing all 141 Arkitikugol employee passengers. Russian mining ceased and the town was abandoned.
The abandoned mines
After 15 years of nothingness, they decided to open it to tourists, probably to cover Sacha’s vodka bill. They even decked out a couple of rooms of one of the buildings as a ‘hotel’ for a few nights of the year. (I did try and stay, but there was no returning icebreaker for quite some time, and you can’t just go and explore without a guide and a gun due to the polar bear risk. There’s also no TVs or internet signal).
I drank up the soviet architecture and appreciated the way it was a clean slate to create a perfect utopian town, much like Pripyat. They even had a greenhouse and an inside farm in an attempt of some independence.
The old farm
There’s the obligatory bust of Lenin who looks out over the town and across to the bay to the Nordenskiöldbreen glacier.
I went in mid-summer in the short window when there wasn’t snow on the ground, and you could see the grass which was imported from Siberia. Igor was quick to scream at me not to walk on the grass “Oh yeah, radiation” I replied out of habit. “Niet, Niet… The reindeers like it”
While Igor lives here almost entirely alone (there’s a skeleton staff of around 2-5 now to help out when scientific missions arrive) the archipelago is home to 3,400 polar bears. So it seems apt they decided to have one on their town sign. Without wanting to insult Igor, I suggested that it had been painted by someone who had had a polar bear described to him over the phone. Heartily he agreed and pointed out that they had the latitude wrong too.
Igor kept an extremely close eye on me as he showed me round. Constantly impatient at me for wanting more photos. We went to explore the old swimming pool:
The crazy house: So as some miners bought their families up here a dedicated family block was built. Sounds idyllic. Except they have long polar night winters here. The sun doesn’t rise for 6 months, keeping the town in permanent darkness while plunging to -42c. So children playing outside is a no-no before we even mention the bears. As a father of a lively child, I can’t imagine the pent-up energy of a child who hasn’t been out to play for 6 months. Today the block seems equally crazy as over 1,000 kittiwakes loudly caw and defecate all over it.
The Crazy House
Canteen:
I love the little polar bears in the columns
We visit the cultural palace where Igor offers me a drink, “You know a real explorer always matches his drink to his latitude” he says pouring me a shot from a bottle with no branding. “78%” he says clinking my glass. I give a nervous “Spasiba” as we both throw our heads back downing the moonshine.
I opened up a cupboard to find a spare Lenin inside!
The shot must have softened eagle-eyed Igor as he leans in and says in a quiet voice “I will now turn a blind eye, just watch out for bears”. Before he’d finished saying “bears” I was out the door, running from building to building trying to extend my tripod as I ran.
Sports Hall:
Music Room:
Theatre:
Thanks for reading, there's more similar towns to come...
EPILOGUE:
On October 12th 2022 when Russia started re-shelling Kyiv a decision was made among all nations that there would be NO further visitors to Pyrmiden for the forseeable future.
Last edited:
