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Old 05-19-2021, 10:56 AM   #4 (permalink)
Guybrush
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Scabb Island
Posts: 6,525
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^That's quite dark, Frown :O Interesting, though.

When I joined up on MB, I'm pretty sure I was living in Longyearbyen, a town of about 2500-3000ish people in the high arctic on the island Spitsbergen which is part of the Svalbard archipelago.. phew.

Since it's in the high arctic, you have polar bears, glaciers, no trees and either you have the sun up 24/7 during the summer months or its just dark through the winter months. The transition periods, spring and autumn, feel very short.

When I joined MB, it was winter and I was living alone in this big barrack. Every day, I went to uni to work in the biology lab, usually without meeting anyone because both students and staff had moved back to the mainland for the coming yule tide. I lived like that for about two weeks. I would listen to music and occasionally get drunk by myself on fine whiskey. I needed some human interaction, so joined up here.

Svalbard was a haven for whaling back in the day and there were boats and settlements from various countries. As whaling died down, people moved out, but then coal mining became a thing. Coal mining supported three bigger settlements, Longyearbyen, Pyramiden and Barentsburg with the latter two being under russian control (although Norway rule over Svalbard according to the Svalbard treaty). Many if not most of the coal miners working in Pyramiden died in a plane crash in the 90s and since then, it's been a ghost town, so now there's basically Longyearbyen and Barentsburg left.

Today, the "Big Norwegian" coal company is shutting down their operations on Svalbard which makes the future of Longyearbyen more than a little uncertain. There's a tourism trade up there which is what I believe most people there hope will help save Longyearbyen from becoming another ghost town like Pyramiden.

Some parts of the year, Longyearbyen might look like this:

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