Pyramiden

It is a document, a photographic record, arranged in sequence, from the former mining town of Pyramiden on Svalbard. Abandoned, Pyramiden coal-mining town on the northern edge of the world is a preserved display of what the Soviet Union wanted to offer in the Arctic if communism worked. It didn’t.  Pyramiden, this is a Soviet ghost town on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago that once was inhabited by Russian and Ukrainian coal miners and their families. Pyramiden former komunist paradise for Soviet miners. Digging for coal gave the Soviet Union a foothold on Svalbard. Pyramiden became communism’s show-room to the West. Moscow’s Arctic dream was mirrored in Pyramiden. A foothold on Svalbard is for Moscow also important in a larger Arctic strategy. A seven years ago, a Russian Defense Ministry report listed Norway’s Svalbard policy as potential risk of war with NATO