Barentsburg Travel Information and Travel Guide - Norway

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Introducing Barentsburg

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The first thing you see of Barentsburg, Svalbard’s only remaining Russian settlement, is its power-station chimney, belching dark black smoke into the blue sky. This isolated village continues to mine coal against all odds and still produces up to 350, 000 tonnes per year, though selling it on the open market is a constant problem and stockpiles are huge. Everything’s a bit run-down, dishevelled and sooty. With its signing in Cyrillic script, a still-standing bust of Lenin and murals of muscly workers in heroic pose, it feels further east and of the last century.