Pyramiden Museum

The Pyramiden Museum is a small museum located in Pyramiden,[1] an abandoned town in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The museum features exhibits on biology and history, for example in the form of taxidermal polar wildlife, geological samples from the surrounding area, a few archaeological artefacts from the Pomors, some information on the coal mining industry, and a slew of Soviet memorabilia.

Pyramiden Museum
Exhibit at the museum
Established2007
LocationPyramiden, Svalbard
OwnerTrust Arktikugol

Located 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the regional capital Longyearbyen, the settlement was founded by Sweden in 1910 and purchased by the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1927.[2] A prominent coal mining settlement, Pyramiden once had a population numbering over a thousand, and a flourishing community. While on Norwegian territory, ruled by the Governor of Svalbard, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 granted significant freedoms to signatory states in regards to their economic activities.[3]

Pyramiden – like the two other USSR-owned settlements on Spitsbergen, Grumant and Barentsburg – was administrated largely without Norwegian insight, and according to Soviet societal norms. Among the facilities found in the town was a museum, a direct predecessor of the currently existing one.[1][3]

In 1998, a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Pyramiden – still owned by Trust Arktikugol – was abandoned. For years it remained a ghost town, with only sporadic human activity.[4] Most of the buildings, and the items in them, were left as they were. After over a decade of decay, Arktikugol started renovated the old "Tulip Hotel" in 2007, upgrading the infrastructure over the next few years to accommodate a minor tourist industry. Since then a handful of Russian workers tasked with maintaining the facilities and guiding tourists visiting from Longyearbyen have been living in Pyramiden.[5][2] In addition to tourist and employee housing, the hotel houses a museum, which shares a room – adjacent from the hotel bar – with a souvenir shop and a postal office.[1]

The hotel now has modern and comfortable rooms. The stuffed polar bear in the museum was apparently attacked by a live polar bear that entered through a window. A stuffed Svalbard reindeer was also a victim of said polar bear. The bear then proceeded to eat all snacks at the bar, and consumed a quantity of drinks. Fortunately the bear was chased off by hotel staff, and was not injured. The only true victims of the incident were the already deceased animals of the museum.

See also

References
  1. Andreassen, Elin; Bjerck, Hein; Olsen, Bjørnar Olsen (2010). Persistent Memories: Pyramiden - a Soviet Mining Town in the High Arctic. Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press. pp. 40, 178 and 203. ISBN 978-825-192-436-8.
  2. "Пирамида". www.arcticugol.ru (in Russian). Arktikugol. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  3. Graves-Brown, Paul; Harrison, Rodney; Piccini, Angela, eds. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 211–216. ISBN 978-019-960-200-1.
  4. Umbreit, Andreas (2005). Spitsbergen: Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Jan Mayen. Chalfont St Peter: Bradt Travel Guides. p. 199. ISBN 184-162-092-0.
  5. Saim, Khandemer (2014). SVALBARD: A Country of Icy Dreams. AKMERCAN. p. 15.

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