Barents­bur­gi­ans beco­me Sval­bar­di­ans

It is, to start with, just an admi­nis­tra­ti­ve act: the inha­bi­tants of Barents­burg are now being regis­tered by Nor­we­gi­an aut­ho­ri­ties in the regis­ter of inha­bi­tants of Sval­bard. Until now, this was only done for inha­bi­tants of Lon­gye­ar­by­en; now this prac­ti­ce will also be used in the other sett­le­ments. Next to Barents­burg and Pyra­mi­den, this also includes the Polish rese­arch sta­ti­on in Horn­sund and Ny-Åle­sund, in any case pro­vi­ded a mini­mum stay of half a year for anyo­ne to be regis­tered as a local.

Nor­we­gi­an aut­ho­ri­ties want a bet­ter over­view of who is living in Sval­bard. In exch­an­ge, tho­se regis­tered as locals do get cer­tain rights, inclu­ding more oppor­tu­ni­ties within fishing and hun­ting, wider-ran­ging rights to tra­vel free­ly over lar­ger parts of the archi­pe­la­go and no envi­ron­men­tal fee on flight tickets to Lon­gye­ar­by­en (which is gene­ral­ly included in any flight ticket to Lon­gye­ar­by­en). Locals can also buy a hut or flat; some­thing that is, howe­ver, likely to remain a dream for most, con­side­ring that the­re are hard­ly any offers and, if any, pri­ces are usual­ly bey­ond of what most can pay.

Locals in Barents­burgs. Reinde­er will, howe­ver not be regis­tered.

For many howe­ver, it may make a dif­fe­rence to get a per­so­nal num­ber (for non-Nor­we­gi­an citi­zens: a so-cal­led D-num­ber) which is essen­ti­al for things like ope­ning a bank account in Nor­way, get­ting a mobi­le pho­ne con­tract or pret­ty much any kind of insu­rance, regis­ter a car or snow mobi­le or being able to use the pay­ment app Vipps which is very com­mon in Nor­way. Some may also app­re­cia­te the oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy alco­hol more free­ly in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Accor­ding to infor­ma­ti­on pro­vi­ded by the Rus­si­an mining coma­ny Trust Ark­ti­ku­gol, the­re are as of 01 Sep­tem­ber 340 peo­p­le living in the Rus­si­an sett­le­ments, by far most of them in Barents­burg. Among­st the­re, the­re are 202 men, 109 women and 29 child­ren. 219 peo­p­le have Rus­si­an pass­ports and 57 are Ukrai­ni­ans. In addi­ti­on, the­re are 62 Tajiks, one Kazakh and one per­son from South Afri­ca, accor­ding to Sval­bard­pos­ten.

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