On Sunday (10 April) afternoon, an accident happened on Longyearbreen, a glacier a few kilometres south of Longyearbyen, during a snow mobile tour. One person was severely injured and later officially confirmed dead.
Official information that is publically available so far is limited to the fact that the casualty was a woman who was not a local resident. The accident happened during a private snow mobile tour. So far, there is no information available regarding the accident cause.
Longyearbreen is a common snow mobile route, and traffic there is frequent during the season.
Lower Longyearbreen. This is the area where the fatal snow mobile accident happened yesterday afternoon (photo taken in late March 2022).
P.S. in an earlier version of this article it was written that the casualty was travelling with a guided group. This was not correct. She was travelling with a group with both local and non-local members.
Completion: On Monday, the name of the casualty was released by the authorities after consultation with her family. It was a Norwegian woman from Trondheim.
The international sanctions introduced by many countries as a reaction to the Russian war of aggression and extermination against the Ukraine will also hit the Russian north including Barentsburg.
Murmansk is Russia’s most important harbour for coal export. According to Barents Observer, years of significant growth resulted in export of more than 16 million tons in 2019. Most of the coal was exported to the EU – mainly Germany – the UK and Israel. The growth led to plans for a new coal harbour in Lavna on the Kola peninsula. The current development involves major questionmarks for this project.
Compared to the Murmansk exports, coal production in and shipping from Barentsburg is small, and irrelevant to the world market. A bit more than 100,000 tons are produced annually in Barentsburg, of which something near 30,000 tons are used in the local coal power plant and the rest is for export. These exports are globally insignificant, but nevertheless important for Barentsburg in terms of economy and jobs. Of near 400 inhabitants, around 150 are working in the coal mine, including many Ukrainians.
Coal storage and industry related to coal mining in Barentsburg: international sanctions will hit here as well.
Coal from Barentsburg was mainly sold to the UK in recent years, but it appears very unlikely that the United Kingdom will continue this trade. This would severely damage a major part of Barentsburg’s economical foundation. Tourism has been developed in Barentsburg in recent years, but this industrial sector has largely collapsed during the last two years because of the pandemic and now because of the war and associated sanctions, leaving coal mining as the only industry in Barentsburg.
Irritating interview of the Russian consul in Barentsburg
Last week – before the pictures of the cruelties in Butcha went around the world – the Russian consul in Barentsburg irritated the public with an interview with Norwegian media (nettavisen.no) saying the images of the extensive destructions in Mariupol were in some cases staged and in other cases fake. He called western media “fake news”, especially referring to Norwegian media, while pretending that Russian information is true. The article by nettavisen is Norwegian, but near the end it includes a video of the interview with the consul in English.
The inhabitants of Barentsburg seem to avoid political discussions both amongst each other and with media, as NRK found out during a visit to the settlement.
Charity: a heart for the Ukraine – handmade in Longyearbyen
As a charity, you can buy a pin in the shape a heart in the colours of the Ukraine in the spitsbergen-svalbard.com webshop. The pins are handmade in Longyearbyen and the entire returns are charity for victims of the Russian war against the Ukraine. Click here for more information.
So far, there have not been any customs controls in Spitsbergen. There was just no need: due to the regulations of the Spitsbergen Treaty, taxes are reduced. There is no value-added tax and no import taxes. Hence, there were no customs controls.
This is about to change.
Longyearbyen airport: no customs control, just a polar bear.
This will change soon (no, the polar bear is not about to disappear).
The background is the Russian war of aggression against the Ukraine and the international sanctions introduced in that context. Norway wants to make sure that Russia does not use Spitsbergen as a logistical loophole to import goods that are sanctioned. This could be possible because there is no control of goods coming to Spitsbergen and there is ship traffic between the Russian settlement Barentsburg and Russia.
This is about to change. The Norwegian government instructed the tax authorities to establish a local presence and maintain controls as necessary, according to NRK. Customs controls are announced to be in place already in early May.
It is also announced that this measure is not planned to be permanent, but will be maintained as long as there is a need.
Norwegian authorities have announced a polar bear warning system in cooperation with the Norwegian Polar Institute and Elon Musk’s satellite-based communication system Starlink.
As a first step, the whole population of Spitsbergen’s polar bears will received microchips provided by Bill Gates. These chips include a micro-sender that sends signals that will be picked up by the Starlink satellites and forwarded to through ground stations to the Norwegian Polar Institute in real time. As a result, the position of each and every single polar bear in Spitsbergen will be known at any time.
Female polar bear with tracker. The new generation of senders will be much smaller, which is also expected to significantly improve the well-being of the animals.
The public, however, will not have access to the data set as such, but users can download an app that works in a similar way as the corona-warn-apps, informing the user when a polar bear is in the vicinity. Fee-paying users of the pro version can even use a function to let the microchips installed in the ears of the bear blink brightly, to make it easier to see the approaching bear in the field – a feature especially useful during the polar night. All versions of the app will produce a loud warning signal when a polar bear approaches within 5 metres.
In the future it is planned to develop the system further so that the behaviour of polar bears can be controlled through the app, for example to make aggressive polar bears turn around and walk away peacefully.
The first version of the app is currently under development. The release of the final version is scheduled for April 01, 2222. It will then not be available here in the Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com webshop.