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Last week, Chris took me, Andrew and Phillip as field assistants on a trip to Pyramiden to look for invasive weeds. I’ve been to nordaustlandet, been to Kongsfjorden and Ny-Ålesund, been on a scootertrip to the east-coast, been to Svea, been to two coal-mines and also dog-sledding .. Barentsburg and Pyramiden felt like the two things I had yet to do, so I was grateful for the opportunity!

“So what’s Pyramiden?” you might ask yourself. No worries, I’ll explain. Pyramiden is an abandoned russian settlement about 50 kilometres from Longyearbyen. At most, the town housed over 1000 people and the coal operation ran continously for more than 50 years. In 1998, it was abandoned, but it’s still being looked after by a handful of people living there. Tourist ships also visit regularly and the easiest way to get there is by boat or crossing the sea-ice by scooter if possible.

It was a calm, sunny day and Monica brought us to Pyramiden with the polarcirkel. The first thing we met when we went ashore was a cat hungry for some human contact (or more likely, food). I’m not a big fan of cats, especially not up here on Svalbard where they really shouldn’t be, but this one was charming (a master manipulator) and Phil seemed to take an instant liking to it. After playing around with the pussycat, it didn’t take long until we found some interesting grasses, but focusing on fieldwork is hard when you’re in Pyramiden. The town itself seems so much more interesting. Chris’ idea was to find a map he’d seen in a picture. He knew it was on a wall somewhere in town, so we headed for the town center to start our search.

The russians seem to have a bit more “style” than us norwegians. For example, they know how to decorate a town. Just check out the cool monument in the town center! Instead of putting up simple signs that tell you where you are, they put up real big, chunky pieces of installation art that gives the whole place a real feel of russian pride and history. They also know how to put up benches and areas where people can gather and hang around. Maybe they have more of a “community spirit” than we do.

Anyways, most of the buildings are off-limits according to the notes hanging on most of the doors in Pyramiden. I guess it’s part for people’s own safety and also to protect the place as I guess there may be plans to reopen the operation in the future. Anyways, we did visit some of the more welcoming buildings that didn’t have “no entrance” signs on them. In some of them, the interior was pretty banged up while in other buildings, everything was still in reasonably good shape, kinda like you see in Grumant and Colesdalen. Maybe angry workers trashed some of the buildings before they left? It’s a mystery. Anyways, maybe we entered some of the off-limits buildings as well, but maybe we didn’t. I’m not telling!

Botany in Pyramiden is a lot more interesting than around Longyearbyen. Many of the plants we’re used to as small and sometimes unimpressive are massive in Pyramiden compared to most of their relatives elsewhere. Most impressive were some really big, yellow dandelions. Bistortas and oxyrias also made good impressions and proved a nice nutritional addition to the vast amounts of cakes and sweets the boys brought for lunch. We had our food on a staircase at the end of a boardwalk ending up in front of a mysterious building. Chilling with cake and pacifier-sweets was awesome. Good times!

Just before it was time to leave, Chris had managed to find the map we’d been looking for. It was hanging on one of the buildings next to this other building that reminded me more of a sort of bird-cliff. Gulls had been making their homes in every window and the roof was full of them. Very cool - I even managed to get some pictures without being pooped on. Looking at the map, we thought we knew where to go to find the greenhouse, but being stressed and overconfident at the same time, we ended up behind a pig-farm instead. Oh well, there were still some interesting samples to get from various funky-looking weeds and I think Chris was reasonably satisfied. Also, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind going back if he had to.

On the way back, we met up with Monica who’d been for a hike in the mountain. Before we went back to Longyearbyen, she took us to the calving front of the Nordenskiold-glacier. We got some nice pictures and saw a bunch of seals hanging out on the sea ice. Lovely! Thanks Chris and Monica for an awesome trip!