Sights in Svalbard
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Pomor Museum
The simple, appealing little Pomor museum outlines (in Russian only) the historic Pomor trade with mainland Russia, plus Russian mining and history on Svalbard. Especially worthwhile are the excellent geological exhibits and the collection of artefacts suggesting Russian activity in Svalbard prior to the archipelago’s accepted European ‘discovery’ by Willem Barents.
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Svalbard Museum
The Svalbard Museum is an impressive, recently inaugurated exhibition space. Themes include the life on the edge formerly led by whalers, trappers, seal and walrus hunters and, more recently, miners. It's an attractive mix of text, artefacts and birds and mammals, stuffed and staring. There's a cosy book-browsing area too where you can lounge on sealskin cushions and rugs.
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Mine No 3
Sign on for a journey deep into Mine No 3. Productive from 1971 to 1996, this was the last shaft to be worked manually, thrusting itself 5.5km deep into the heart of the mountain. The side spurs, from whose veins the coal was hacked, were only 80cm high. You can crawl into one to sense what life at the coal face was really like.
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Galleri Svalbard
Galleri Svalbard features the Svalbard-themed works of Norwegian artist Kåre Tveter, so pure and cold they make you shiver; reproductions of early maps of Svalbard; and a 10-minute film, The Arctic Nature of Svalbard, which gives a glimpse of Svalbard’s other, winter persona.
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Atelier Aino
Follow the sign directing you off the main pedestrian street to the gallery and workshop of Danish artist Aino Grib. A resident of Svalbard, she captures in her canvases the hues and tones of the Arctic seasons.
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Orthodox Chapel
The small wooden Orthodox Chapel commemorates the twin disasters of 1996 and 1997. Above the football pitch and set aside from the community's other buildings, it merits poking your nose inside.
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Mine Museum
The town supports a neat little Mine Museum in the old Tiedemann’s Tabak (tobacco) shop, relating the coal-mining history of this area.
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