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Svea Nord: Norway's largest coal mine in Spitsbergen

360 degree panorama and photo gallery

Svea Nord is a coal mine that is part of the Nor­we­gi­an mining sett­le­ment Sveagru­va. Svea Nord was ope­ned in 2001 and for a cou­ple of years it was the main coal mine of Store Nor­ske Spits­ber­gen Kul­kom­pa­ni (SNSK), who also own and run mine 7 clo­se to Lon­gye­ar­by­en. The annu­al pro­duc­tion in Svea Nord was up to 3 mil­li­on tons – not a rele­vant quan­ti­ty on the world mar­ket, but the big­gest pro­duc­ti­vi­ty ever rea­ched in a coal mine in Spits­ber­gen. The impres­si­ve thic­k­ness of up to 6 met­res of the coal seems in Svea did cer­tain­ly help to achie­ve this. As a result, SNSK made some good pro­fits with coal mining in Svea Nord for some years. Pro­fits are the excep­ti­on rather than the rule for coal mining in Spits­ber­gen.

Mining was ter­mi­na­ted in Svea Nord in 2015. Alre­a­dy in 2013, SNSK had ope­ned a new coal mine at Lun­ckef­jel­let a bit fur­ther north, but it never came into the stage of pro­duc­ti­ve ope­ra­ti­on. The reasons were within poli­tics and eco­no­my. In 2017, the Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment, as the owner of SNSK, deci­ded to put an end to all coal mining in Sveagru­va inclu­ding Svea Nord and Lun­ckef­jel­let.

The Lun­ckef­jel­let mine was alre­a­dy clo­sed fore­ver in ear­ly 2019. Svea Nord was under­go­ing the final stages of a com­pre­hen­si­ve cle­a­nup at the time of wri­ting (Febru­ary 2020) and is expec­ted to be clo­sed soon in March. Gre­at volu­mes of various mate­ri­als and equip­ment are remo­ved from the mine, espe­ci­al­ly ever­y­thing that includes envi­ron­men­tal­ly rele­vant mate­ri­als. Also this mine will then fore­ver be com­ple­te­ly inac­ces­si­ble.

The pan­ora­mas – over­view

Svea Nord map (dra­wing by the aut­hor, sim­pli­fied)

The sca­le is immense: the main tun­nel, on the left side of this map (but not com­ple­te­ly shown), is more than 10 kilo­me­t­res long! It starts in the sett­le­ment of Sveagru­va and ends at Mart­h­ab­reen, whe­re a road went over the gla­cier to the Lun­ckef­jel­let mine. The­re was ano­ther entrance/exit at Hög­an­äs­breen.

The area in the sou­thern part of the mine that resem­bles a snow crys­tal is from an ear­ly stage of the histo­ry of Svea Nord. Here, coal pro­duc­tion was star­ted as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, using the so-cal­led “room-and-pil­lar” method whe­re pil­lars of coal are left to sta­bi­li­se the roof at least tem­po­r­a­ri­ly. This method could be taken into ope­ra­ti­on rela­tively quick­ly to make money that was nee­ded to finan­ce pro­duc­tion fur­the­ron. But as lar­ge volu­mes of coal had to be left behind to sta­bi­li­se the roof, it is less eco­no­mic­al than the “longwall”-method. Hence, the longwall method was used as soon as pos­si­ble: here, lar­ge machi­nes break coal on a long wall wit­hout lea­ving any­thing behind.

Svea Nord map – detail –

In any case, every area is kept sta­ble only as long as neces­sa­ry. Both the abo­ve-men­tio­ned “snow crys­tal” and the lar­ge room-and-pil­lar pro­duc­tion are­as from later stages (hat­ched are­as) have col­lap­sed a long time ago. The mine as shown on the map did never exist at any one given time! It is rather a sum­ma­ry of sub­se­quent stages of the histo­ry of Svea Nord.

Sam­ple taking and pho­to­gra­phy (Decem­ber 2019)

Entrance to Svea Nord, Sveagruva

Ent­rance to the main tun­nel of the mine Svea Nord in Sveagru­va.

Accor­din­gly, we could only access an area in the sou­thern part of Svea Nord when we went in in Decem­ber 2019. “We”, that was geo­lo­gist Mal­te Joch­mann, mining engi­neer Kris­tin Løvø (you will have heard that fami­ly name befo­re if you are fami­li­ar with Longyearbyen’s local histo­ry), geo­lo­gi­cal assistant Mat­thi­as and me (Rolf Stan­ge) as pho­to­grapher.

Sample taking in Svea Nord

Sam­ple taking in Svea Nord.
From left to right: Rolf Stan­ge, Kris­tin Løvø, Mal­te Joch­mann, Mat­thi­as.

I want to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank Store Nor­ske Spits­ber­gen Kul­kom­pa­ni and espe­ci­al­ly Mal­te Joch­mann for giving me the pret­ty uni­que oppor­tu­ni­ty to join them and take pho­tos. Coal mines are not public places and if you ever have the chan­ce to get in, then you are usual­ly not allo­wed to bring a came­ra (or any other elec­tric or elec­tro­nic equip­ment). All ele­tri­cal items have to be che­cked by a mine elec­tri­ci­an and this was in this case made pos­si­ble to enable me to shoot the pho­tos and pan­ora­mas shown on this page. The chan­ce to get the­se image is now gone fore­ver! The main pur­po­se of the who­le under­ta­king was, howe­ver, to take a geo­lo­gi­cal sam­ple. I also want to thank Kris­tin Løvø who gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get some more mate­ri­al in places fur­ther away from the sam­ple taking site.

Gal­lery Svea Nord (1)

Some pho­tos taken in Decem­ber 2019:

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

Ent­rance to Svea Nord in Sveagru­va

This is the ent­rance to the main tun­nel in Sveagru­va (sett­le­ment). This tun­nel leads to Svea Nord and fur­the­ron to Mart­h­ab­reen and final­ly to Lun­ckef­jel­let (now histo­ry).

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Hög­an­äs­breen

Entrance Svea Nord, Höganäsbreen

Ent­rance to Svea Nord at Hög­an­äs­breen.

This ent­rance was acces­si­ble via a road that was built from Sveagru­va over the gla­cier Hög­an­äs­breen.

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Boat

Svea Nord is under a gla­cia­ted area, so lar­ge volu­mes of melt­wa­ter had to be pum­ped out of the mine every sum­mer. So it could be good to have a boat, and be it to go fishing during lunch break 🙂

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Main tun­nel

The lar­ge main tun­nel, more than 10 kilo­me­t­res long, which led from the ent­rance in Sveagru­va along Svea Nord to Mart­h­ab­reen (con­nec­ting to the road across the gla­cier to Lun­ckef­jel­let).

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SN H8 Tv1

The names are a bit more tech­ni­cal here: SN H8 Tv1 stands for Svea Nord main tun­nel (hovedstol­len) 8 side tun­nel (tverrs­lag) 1. A side tun­nel is a short tun­nel that con­nects two main tun­nels. The name appears cryp­tic, but tells the initia­ted imme­dia­te­ly and pre­cis­e­ly whe­re they are.

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SN H8 Tv2

Ano­ther impres­si­on of main tun­nel 8, clo­se to the sam­ple taking site. The seam thic­k­ness (tun­nel height) is more than 4 met­res.

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SN H7-H8

Main tun­nels 7 and 8 meet here at a right ang­le.

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SN H7 Tv3

Mining equip­ment in main tun­nel 7.

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SN H7 Tv4

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Other parts of Svea Nord were not acces­si­ble any­mo­re, and time and logi­stics did now allow for more. But I dare to say that the mate­ri­al pre­sen­ted here gives a reason­ab­ly repre­sen­ta­ti­ve impres­si­on of Svea Nord, Spitsbergen’s lar­gest coal mine ever. Other parts loo­ked quite simi­lar, pos­si­bly acc­cept the “snow crys­tal” (the old room-and-pil­lar area), but this part has alre­a­dy col­lap­sed a long time ago.

Svea Nord lea­ves the visi­tor with a dif­fe­rent impres­si­on than the Lun­ckef­jel­let mine, sim­ply becau­se the thic­k­ness of the coal seam and hence the tun­nel height was much lar­ger (up to 6 met­res in Svea Nord, clo­se to 2 met­res in Lun­ckef­jel­let). Gene­ral­ly spea­king, coal mines are not ide­al places for the claus­tro­pho­bic, but if so, Svea Nord would have been the bet­ter choice.

Gal­lery Svea Nord (2)

Final­ly, a gal­lery with some images from Svea Nord from April 2017. Then, Store Nor­ske had ope­ned the mine for a while for tou­rists who could do gui­ded tours. Of cour­se, we went for the oppor­tu­ni­ty when we had it and got some inte­res­t­ing impres­si­ons. Back then, we could only use a small came­ra that was pro­vi­ded by Store Nor­ske, but also that one enab­led us to get some inte­res­t­ing snapshots.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

To page:  → The Sveagru­va area  → Sveagru­va (sett­le­ment)  → Svea Nord  → Lun­ckef­jel­let  → Kapp Ams­ter­dam

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last modification: 2020-02-11 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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