The famous ghost town Chernobyl every year more and more merges with the surrounding area. Nature preserve reconquers meter by meter. But over the Soviet mining village of Pyramiden, located in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, the time has no power. People left here almost 20 years ago. The cold keeps only traces of vegetation.
In 1910 the Swedes who received permission to coal mining on the archipelago laid the village . It owes its name to the nearest mountains. 17 years later mine was bought bought by «Arcticugol» trust, and the village became Soviet. 1300 miles from the North Pole were built houses, school, theatre, library, culture House, two cemeteries (one for people, one for cats) and a sports complex with the most northerly in the world, heated swimming pool.
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pyramiden had a population of over a thousand people. In the 1990-s of money in the upkeep of the village above the Arctic Circle, of course, was not. The last miners returned to the continent in March 1998.
There are at this place and its mystery, a pile of kitchen utensils, sheets, typewriters, musical instruments and even expensive mining equipment — people can pick up these things readily and are subsequently sold. However, all this lies in their original place when workers hastily left Pyramid.
Twenty years after Chernobyl, in 2007 settlement in some sense was brought back to life. «Arcticugol» turned it into a tourist destination. Repainted walls, upgraded interiors, organized a hotel in one of the buildings, built a new power plant. A couple of years ago, the Museum appeared.
Pyramiden can be reached by boat or snowmobile from Longyearbyen, the administrative center of the Norwegian province of Svalbard. From time to time about 30 people live in the village all year round, the work begins.
If you’d like to see more abandoned places in America, then check out our articles on the Abandoned Golf Course in Willcox, Arizona and the Iconic and abandoned Paper Mills in New Jersey
