A polar bear was seen clo­se to Lon­gye­ar­by­en near 5 a.m. on Mon­day (27 May) mor­ning. It was in Advent­da­len, not far from the road and the lower­most hou­ses. The Sys­sel­man­nen (poli­ce) was cal­led, seve­ral shots were fired with a fla­re gun and the heli­c­op­ter went out to sca­re the bear away from Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The bear then wal­ked away along the shore towards Hior­th­hamn, on the other side of Advent­fjord.

The public is remin­ded to take the risk of mee­ting a polar bear serious­ly also near Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

The Sysselmannen’s heli­c­op­ter and the polar bear (lower left) in Advent­da­len.

Housing mar­ket in Lon­gye­ar­by­en under pres­su­re

The dif­fi­cult housing mar­ket in Lon­gye­ar­by­en has been the sub­ject on the­se pages alre­a­dy seve­ral times befo­re. For years, it has been almost impos­si­ble to find an afforda­ble place to live.

139 flats to be demo­lished

The situa­ti­on got worse after the tra­gic 2015 ava­lan­che, which kil­led 2 peo­p­le in their homes and des­troy­ed seve­ral hou­ses. In the after­math, a new ava­lan­che risk eva­lua­ti­on was made for Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The sho­cking result is that hou­ses with a total of no less than 139 flats have to be demo­lished, and ava­lan­che bar­riers to secu­re remai­ning buil­dings are nee­ded. A num­ber of ava­lan­che pro­tec­tions have alre­a­dy been built on the slo­pes of Suk­ker­top­pen.

Fur­ther 41 fats at risk

Now doubts are coming up if it will actual­ly be pos­si­ble to secu­re some of the remai­ning buil­dings suff­ci­ent­ly. The requi­re­ment is to build ava­lan­che pro­tec­tion that is strong enough even for worst case sce­na­ri­os of cli­ma­te chan­ge – “busi­ness as usu­al” sce­na­ri­os regar­ding future glo­bal CO2 emis­si­ons. In this case, foun­da­ti­ons would have to go as deep down into the slo­pe as 14 met­res to make the bar­riers strong enough.

The ques­ti­on is if this is actual­ly pos­si­ble in the steep ter­rain. The ans­wer is curr­ent­ly unclear. In the worst case, fur­ther hou­ses with up to 41 homes will have to be remo­ved, as repor­ted by Sval­bard­pos­ten. This con­cerns hou­ses clo­se to Suk­ker­top­pen in Way 228.

Even though the result – demo­li­ti­on or not – is curr­ent­ly uncer­tain, one thing is for sure: the housing mar­ket in Lon­gye­ar­by­en will beco­me even more dif­fi­cult.

Resi­den­ti­al hou­ses, and ava­lan­che bar­riers on Suk­ker­top­pen.

Airbnb

Ano­ther fac­tor which has cau­sed public deba­te over years is the short-term ren­tal plat­form AirbnB. It is no secret that a num­ber of homes in Lon­gye­ar­by­en are ren­ted out by their respec­ti­ve owners on short-term basis via Airbnb to tou­rists and not on long-term con­tracts to peo­p­le who want to live in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The actu­al num­ber of homes that are lost this way for the housing mar­ket is not exact­ly known, but it is con­side­red signi­fi­cant. When Sval­bard­pos­ten recent­ly rese­ar­ched the issue, 36 homes in Lon­gye­ar­by­en were offe­red on Airbnb.

More exact num­bers are curr­ent­ly not available, so the com­mu­ni­ty (Lokals­ty­re) has orde­red a report from a spe­cia­li­sed com­pa­ny to get more infor­ma­ti­on about the influence of Airbnb on the local housing mar­ket. Depen­ding on the result, the com­mu­ni­ty could then con­sider limi­ta­ti­ons.

Airbnb is in the cent­re of public dis­cus­sions lin­ked to the housing mar­ket in many places in the world, but Lon­gye­ar­by­en may be more dif­fi­cult than other towns: it is a small place with a small num­ber of hou­ses, whe­re every loss makes a dif­fe­rence. The­re are many tou­rists with a lot of money, dis­tort­ing the small and tight local housing mar­ket. Third­ly, you can not just move, sett­le down in the next vil­la­ge and com­mu­te.

One thing is for sure: it is curr­ent­ly almost impos­si­ble to find a home in Lon­gyear­ben for smal­ler inco­mes.

Two per­sons died during a moun­tain hike in Horn­sund. They were a woman and a man who belon­ged to the crew of the Polish rese­arch sta­ti­on in Horn­sund. They had set out for a pri­va­te tour on Fri­day but did not return until the agreed time on Sun­day mor­ning, so the remai­ning sta­ti­on crew star­ted a search.

Map of Horn­sund show­ing the rese­arch sta­ti­on and the moun­tain Kam­kro­na (acci­dent site). © topo­gra­phic base: Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te.

They had ascen­ded the moun­tain Kam­kro­na, which is part of Sofie­kam­men, a long, steep ridge on the west side of Bur­ger­buk­ta. Kam­kro­na is about 8 km east of the rese­arch sta­ti­on and 770 met­res high, the east side of the moun­tain is very steep.

The moun­tain ridge Sofie­kam­men on the west side of Bur­ger­buk­ta in Horn­sund. Kam­kro­na is a peak appro­xi­m­ate­ly in the midd­le.

Accor­ding to a press release by the Sys­sel­man­nen the two vic­tims died during a fall of seve­ral hundred met­res in an ava­lan­che. No fur­ther details are public so far. The vic­tims were reco­ver­ed by SAR forces of the Sys­sel­man­nen and brought to Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Update: Accor­ding to Sval­bard­pos­ten, Sys­sel­man­nen poli­ce offi­cer Anders Hau­ge­rud told the Nor­we­gi­an news agen­cy NTB that the two appear to have step­ped out on an over­han­ging snow bank on the moun­tain top. This was later con­firm­ed.

As the fami­lies are infor­med, the names of the two decea­sed have been offi­ci­al­ly released. They were Anna Gór­s­ka and Mich­al Sawi­cki. Both had been working at the sta­ti­on, Anna as meteo­ro­lo­gist and Mich­al as geo­phy­si­cist.

Spitsbergen’s first bank rob­be­ry took place in Lon­gye­ar­by­en on 21 Decem­ber 2018. The offen­der was a 29 years old Rus­si­an citi­zen who had come to Lon­gye­ar­by­en a few days befo­re. He threa­ten­ed the bank employees with a rif­le and forced them to hand out 70,000 Nor­we­gi­an kro­ner (ca. 7,000 Euro) with the words “This is not a joke. This is a rob­be­ry”.

The man was soon arres­ted by the poli­ce and taken into pre-tri­al cus­t­ody in Trom­sø. Now the court, Nord-Troms tin­g­rett, sen­ten­ced him to 14 months pri­son, as NRK repor­ted. In addi­ti­on, he has to pay NOK 20,000.00 to each of the 3 bank employees whom he had threa­ten­ed during the rob­be­ry.

Bank rob­be­ry in Lon­gye­ar­by­en: offen­der sen­ten­ced.

Serious psy­cho­lo­gi­cal pro­blems are said to have play­ed an important role. The man said that he had initi­al­ly plan­ned to com­mit sui­ci­de in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, but then deci­ded to raid the bank in order to be arres­ted. It is also men­tio­ned that he wan­ted to avo­id having to return back to Rus­sia.

The rif­le that he had used during the bank rob­be­ry was loa­ded with sharp ammu­ni­ti­on and the offen­der poin­ted it towards the bank employees. It was a bolt-action Mau­ser rif­le, a very com­mon type of ren­tal wea­pon in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. After the rob­be­ry, the man went back to the ren­tal shop with the rif­le still loa­ded and retur­ned the wea­pon. Then he went back to the bank to return the money, but did not suc­ceed. Ins­tead, he was soon arres­ted by the poli­ce. He did not offer reis­tance.

The sen­tence is below the cla­im of the public pro­se­cu­ter, but hig­her than the defence lawy­er had plea­ded for. Revi­si­on is still pos­si­ble.