Episode 13
Longyearbyen 78˚13’N
On a chilly overcast morning we big farewell to the expedition crew and the Polar Pioneer and climbed onto a bus for a short tour of the small town of Longyearbyen. It is named after John Munro Longyear from Boston USA who formed the Arctic Coal Company in 1906 and began mining coal here. Coal is still mined here and powers the local power plant, the only one in Norway fired by coal.
The town now has a population of 2000 to 2500 depending on the season. There is a hospital but pregnant women are shipped off to the mainland three weeks before they are due to give birth; only the early arrivals are born here. No-one is buried here now either, the bodies are shipped off and buried on the mainland, the only graves here are from long ago. The school is fairly large as most of the people living here are young families. It is both primary and secondary combined. There is a small shopping centre that is quite new; it has everything the community needs.
In the same building as the museum and the tourist office is a small university. About 150 students from many different countries come here to study. The most popular courses are those doing research into the effect of climate change. This is suppose to be a very good place for such study. Our guide on a short bus tour after we left the boat was a Dutch girl who has been here 4 months doing such research. Her group are still compiling there findings but she said that they were all very surprised at what they found; it wasn’t at all what they were expecting, but exactly what they were expecting she didn’t say. One thing she did say they determined is that plants grow better in warmer weather rather than colder. Probably cost a fortune for this group of students to come to that conclusion.
The small shopping centre includes a large and well stocked supermarket with an arctic clothing department as well as household wares and school supplies: There are other arctic outfitters too, and stuff is not cheap here, expect to pay about $80 AUD for a good pair of warm gloves similar to what I could buy in Canada and the US 5 years ago for about $10AU. Even cheap knitted ones, not hand knitted either are around $20AU. We did see some good Canadian Goose down jackets for $700 AU some with at 30% discount and we wonder how much we could get them for from the internet as they look like really good coats. Food is expensive as almost everything has to be shipped in, I think even the reindeer meat is shipped in as here the locals are only allowed to shoot one reindeer per family per year or some such thing. Most people only spend about 3 or 4 years here then go back home.
There are other stores and some cafes, bars and restaurants and some travel excursion companies shops. A big indoor sports centre has a 25m swimming pool and a rock climbing wall. Its not possible to do rock climbing on the mountains here as the rock is too soft for pins to be driven into. All around the residential areas there are lots of snowmobiles parked, just out in the open. There are also trailers for them, a snow cat, that’s a vehicle mounted on caterpillar tracks that carries several passengers. Kids sleds sit discarded next to sand pits where more toys lay about. At present bicycles are the most popular means of transport but there is a hell of a lot of cars for a place that has only a few k’s of road and much of that is gravel. Found out later that cars are cheap here as there is no tax on them and they can be taken across to the mainland and used for three months then brought back. Hurtigrutn must run a car ferry up here I think though I haven’t seen anything about it.
There is a church up on the hill that commands a good view over the town, its very modern but quite nice inside. It’s Lutheran: I believe it’s the only church here. Near here too is a war memorial and a plaque on one of the old pylons that used to be part of the original conveyor system to carry coal from the mine to the power plant. While walking around here we accidently came across a sundial. It was officially unveiled on 6th March 2004. The instigator for it’s erection was a Tasmanian woman, and it was built at Lindisfarne in England. A leaflet there described all about it and the fact that it is the most northerly placed sundial in existence and is specially designed to work at this latitude; it also works as a moon dial. A web site gives more information:- www.longyearbyen.com/sun
The houses are built well up off the ground. Big pylons are sunk deep into the permafrost and insulation is laid then the wooden floor above that. This is done to prevent the permafrost from melting, if it does melt then the pylons become unstable and everything goes awry, as in Russia. Big pipes run around town delivering hot water, this is heated at the power station and then sent around to heat the buildings. It is much more efficient energy wise than having separate heating for each house.
There are several old coal mines around the town, the one in production now is mine no.7 and its well out of town. Half of its production is used for the power plant the rest is exported to some European countries mainly Germany. Apparently there is quite a lot more coal here that can be mined in the future. The seams run horizontally into the mountainsides and vary from .8m to about 3m in thickness.
We took a dog and cart ride; this is an alternative to dogsledding that isn’t possible if there isn’t any snow and at this time of year snow is only on the high peaks. Down low there isn’t really enough for sledding until November or even January sometimes. The most popular time for sledding is from late February onward when the light begins to return. The kennels where we took the ride have 80 dogs, most are male. They breed their own dogs but this year they didn’t need any more so they do not have any pups. The dogs are pure Alaskan Huskies, unlike in Alaska where they mix in other breeds as well. Here they like the purebreds and they also keep them in much better conditions. They have good wire mesh pens on gravel. In Alaska we saw that most dogs were kept just on the ground and it got muddy and really messy with dog pee and droppings, not so here, they are kept very clean.
The pups begin their training when they are 8 months old, at 12 months they begin working and continue until they are 9 to 12 years old. That’s a good long working life. They are feed mainly on dry dog food but in winter they also get some seal blubber to keep them in good working shape. Winter and spring is the working season: Another kennels we visited on the tour feed their dogs only seal meat in the winter and they don’t use them for anything at all during the year when there isn’t any snow on the ground. That kennels had at least 100 dogs and they had some seals hung up to dry. They also gave us some seal meat to try; first you took a piece of thin wafer crispbread, spread it with sour cream then added a small piece of seal meat. It was very salty and may have been cured, and I must say that I didn’t like it particularly. An old style hut built here, it is circular with a fire in the middle. Around the wall are all the bunks used for sleeping and covered in reindeer hides. Reindeer hides are especially warm as the hair is hollow and it keeps warm air trapped inside.
Anyway back to the dogsled ride: It was a lovely sunny day, probably around 4˚ in the sun with a chilly breeze blowing. The kennel owner arrived in a landrover to pick us up and take us to the kennels. We were given very heavy insulated overalls to wear over our clothes then we watched the dogs being harnessed up. I am certain that each dog in the kennels wanted to be picked for the job. These dogs just seem to live to pull the sled, it’s what they love to do. Once they are in the harness they behave much better though sometimes they still will have a go at one another. All these dogs are very friendly to humans, and most get on ok with each other, this is not the case in Alaska where they often tear each other apart and some will attach humans too. Here they use 2 lead dogs side by side in case something should happen to one, such as an injured foot. We had nine dogs pulling our cart, 4 pairs and an odd one immediately in front on the cart. The cart was designed with a bench seat in front where two people could sit but only our girl driver did so, behind was a bench seat of either side that could each seat 3 people. There were 4 of us, a Swedish lady, another Australian fellow from Newcastle and David and I. The man who had picked us up sat with us and told us about the history and the area as we were pulled along. Something that I had never heard before is that the moon shines 24 hours a day here in the winter. Now I bet that gives some very eerie lighting effects: Combine that with the northern lights and that would be something special: We saw some pink footed geese fly past and some barnacle geese on the ground but the reindeer we’d seen yesterday had gone.
We made a stop after about a half hour and 5k’s and the dogs were given a drink of water, then we were off again. We ended at another group of buildings owned by the kennels. Here they have built an exact replica of a house that William Barents, the Dutch explorer had built on Nova Zemlyn (not sure I’ve spelt that right) in 1596. It is quite a substantial building and on display are implements that could have been used at that time. The bunks around the wall are mostly longer in this house so as to accommodate the taller 21st century human, it Barents’ time they were only 170cm long, the bunks: The fire place too is more modern as it now has to be made of steel and set well above the floor to meet local fire standards whereas in Barents’ time it would have been on the floor. The wood used originally would have been cut from the driftwood collected around the shores of the islands; that driftwood comes from Siberia on the sea currents, the timber used in this house came from Norwegian forests. We enjoyed a coffee here and watched a short video of winter sledging. It looks like a really different experience and something that I would love to try sometime. Outside the dogs were taken out of their harnesses and tied to pegs then given another drink of water.
David got a short video of the dogs pulling the cart as we started on the return trip. Again we stopped to give them a drink about halfway. These sled dogs can average 10k’s an hour for around 6 hours a day with 6 in the team. When out on long sledging trips in the winter the dogs sleep outside the tents and should a polar bear put in an appearance then 5 dogs can take it down if necessary. Everything is done to avoid such a circumstance, but it can happen, in such cases it is often an old bear that is starving because it cannot hunt successfully.
We decided that we would visit one of the coal mines: There is only one open for tours and the info I read said that you didn’t have to take an organised tour but pick one up at the mine. It being only 3.5k’s from town we decided to walk. Turned out to be somewhat further but we got there eventually after about an 80 minute walk and that was with some shortcuts where the road zigzagged up the mountain. When we had started out it was -4˚C and although the sun had reached the valley by this it really hadn’t done a lot to warm it up but we had got fairly warm walking. When we finally got to the mine there wasn’t a soul around and we thought we’d wasted our time but just as we were about to leave a car rolled up. A man got out and offered us a tour now if we liked, we gratefully accepted. When we went inside the building leading to the mine shaft we found that there wasn’t any electricity on. It couldn’t have been off long as the room was warm from the heating. There was enough light from a window to see by so the fellow started by showing us the maps and charts of the mine shafts and explained the system of mining that had been used here.
This mine worked from the early 1970’s until 1996, by which time it was almost worked out, but it was also the time when the Norwegian government cut out the subsidy system and the mining company had to become economically viable or go out of business and this mine wasn’t going to be a paying proposition. The seam of coal is in a very narrow band from about 60cm thick to 1.4m thick, so that makes it very awkward to mine. The equipment used dates from the 1920’s and 30’s and its very labour intensive.
The mine has one long main shaft running through it for 3.5k’s, were we were was 270m above sea level and the shaft exited at the other end at 50 metres above sea level in another valley but at the level of the coal seam. This shaft has two railway tracks so the electric trains can go in empty on one track and come out full on the other. Off this main shaft there are evenly spaced side shafts that vary in length depending on how far the coal seam extended out in any direction. Some were several hundred metres long.
Long wall mining was the method used here: This is where the coal is taken out from the side of the shaft and gradually they work their way through to the next shaft, taking out all the coal between shafts.
The men worked in teams of three in three shifts of 8 hours round the clock. The first shift would have to cut out the first 15cm or so from the bottom using one machine, drill holes in the top and place in the explosive and that would blow the rest of the seam. They would do this along the length of the shaft: Second shift would come in with a scraper and scrape out the coal that had been loosened, drop it into the bins on the line below and have them ready to be hauled out, the third shift had to move the props that hold up the roof. This is very soft rock and all roofs have to be propped or they cave in, so the props have to be moved into the bit that had just been taken out. First though they have to take out the props from further back and for this they had tools with extended handles so that they weren’t quite so near to the caving roof. If one of the props was extra difficult the dirt beneath it might have to be dug out first then pull it out but some proved just too difficult to move so they got left behind to be forever embedded in the mountain. This shift had to move 200 to 300 of these props in their 8 hour shift so that it was ready for the cutting and blasting again.
We were each given a pair of overalls to wear and some work gloves, a hard hat with a lamp and a special breathing apparatus in case of dust from a cave in or methane gas. This is just a standard safety procedure but here the levels of methane gas are extremely low in the coal and in this mine they are almost nonexistent. Now we were set to enter the mine:
These mines are dug into the permafrost so they are going to be cold, this one has a constant temperature of -2˚C and during the summer, and I don’t know why, frost forms on the shaft walls making them sparkle in our torch light and white and sparkly when we shone the torch around. It looks really pretty. Icicles were hanging from some of the cables. The man showed us where they have a seed bank in one of the side shafts. There are hundreds of thousands of seeds from the Nordic countries in this seed bank. This is a good place to store them because of the constant below freezing temperature.
We saw where the fire engine is kept, it runs on diesel that way should there be a power failure it can still be used. About 500m along the main shaft we went into a side one and here the man showed us all the equipment he had told us about and explained how it worked. We were allowed to climb up into the narrow area of the seam that the men last worked on, it was only about 50cm high and these men would work in it for 8 hours with just a couple of tea breaks and a meal break. Just think of laying there in that narrow space with hundreds of metres of mountain overhead and knowing that this is soft rock that caves in very easily. Hells Bells!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wasn’t claustrophobic in there but I don’t think I would have liked to spend 8 hours in there day after day, they earnt their money I reckon. The power still wasn’t on when we got back to the meeting room so the man said he couldn’t do what he’d come to do in the first place and offered us a lift back to town that we gratefully accepted. When we went outside two male reindeer were grazing away peacefully at the edge of the car park. They are relatively tame here as no shooting is allowed in this area.
Our next project was to climb up to the cairn on the mountain, walk along the top and come back down by the glacier. For this trip we had to have a gun just in case we should meet a polar bear. So we hired one from one of the shops, and away we went. It was a steep climb and we were late starting after our coal mine expedition. The ground was rough going too, much of it over large angular shaped stones, bits of moss here and there and higher up a little patchy snow. I did ok but David was very slow, when I got to the top I had to wait a while for him. We still weren’t ad the top, just the cairn sitting right on the cliff edge and a view out over the town below. David, when he arrived was very exhausted and it was getting late so we gave the idea of the walk along the top away and instead descended along much the same route David had come up, not quite as steep as my route. The sun had gone from the valley by the time we got back and the temperature beginning to drop again so we returned the gun, didn’t really need it for that walk; it’s along the top that we might have encountered a polar bear. We still had 2k’s uphill to walk back to the hostel where we are staying.
The day we left we awoke to a very light sprinkling of snow on the ground. As we walked down the road towards the town centre we passed the school and there, sitting out in the yard on benches was a class of smaller children with a teacher having a lesson as if it were a pleasant summer’s day. All were dressed in their snow suits and the grainy snow was still falling lightly. By the time we left for the airport the snow was settling nicely. As we flew out the cloud had come down really low so we couldn’t see much at all.
It wasn’t until we were nearly in Tromso that the cloud began to break up and we could see some snow on the mountains as we came down to land there. It had been raining too. A short stop then on to Oslo and again it was thick cloud cover most of the way, clearing only in the last few minutes before landing. The airport is well out of the city and is surrounded by farmland with lots of fields of ripening grain and plenty of patches of forest. We landed there around 7pm and were already on the fast train into Oslo before the sun set around 8pm.
We got to our friend Sigrid’s’ home without any problems and were warmly greeted. We spent a lovely few days with Sigrid and went for some walks with her in the forest areas around Oslo. Each day we would set out with a basket or bag prepared to collect any mushrooms (sopp) we could find. Sad to say we never did find any although Sigrid had read in the newspaper that this year there was a really good crop of mushrooms. Someone else had beaten us to them. Except for one day we had lovely weather up to 17˚C, though I must say it didn’t really feel that warm to me, rarely took my jacket off. Sigrid also had a lovely crop of ripe plums on her tree and they were so sweet and juicy that we ate lots of them. The day we left turned really warm, it was 6˚C when I’d looked at the thermometer first thing but by the time we got to the bus station it was t-shirt and shorts weather. To get to Torp airport that is around 120k’s from Oslo we had a lovely bus trip through the countryside, and the bus cost wasn’t as much as the fast train from the other airport. That other airport is the main one.
Torp is the airport used by Ryan Air and a couple of other discount companies and it was almost deserted until our bus load of passengers arrived. The buses are run to connect with departing and incoming flights. The Ryan air flight had cost us a total of $61 AUD for the two of us including airport taxes, the fare was only $1 AUD ea. We left Torp in brilliant sunshine and very shortly run into thick cloud cover that stayed with us all the way to Stansted where we couldn’t see the ground until we had nearly landed. Stansted too, is in amongst farmland.
Back in England we went back to the same B & B where we had stayed before going to Iceland and where the car was waiting for us. We had another night here before heading back to Arundel and to our poor long suffering friend Heather.
Longyearbyen 78˚13’N
On a chilly overcast morning we big farewell to the expedition crew and the Polar Pioneer and climbed onto a bus for a short tour of the small town of Longyearbyen. It is named after John Munro Longyear from Boston USA who formed the Arctic Coal Company in 1906 and began mining coal here. Coal is still mined here and powers the local power plant, the only one in Norway fired by coal.
The town now has a population of 2000 to 2500 depending on the season. There is a hospital but pregnant women are shipped off to the mainland three weeks before they are due to give birth; only the early arrivals are born here. No-one is buried here now either, the bodies are shipped off and buried on the mainland, the only graves here are from long ago. The school is fairly large as most of the people living here are young families. It is both primary and secondary combined. There is a small shopping centre that is quite new; it has everything the community needs.
In the same building as the museum and the tourist office is a small university. About 150 students from many different countries come here to study. The most popular courses are those doing research into the effect of climate change. This is suppose to be a very good place for such study. Our guide on a short bus tour after we left the boat was a Dutch girl who has been here 4 months doing such research. Her group are still compiling there findings but she said that they were all very surprised at what they found; it wasn’t at all what they were expecting, but exactly what they were expecting she didn’t say. One thing she did say they determined is that plants grow better in warmer weather rather than colder. Probably cost a fortune for this group of students to come to that conclusion.
The small shopping centre includes a large and well stocked supermarket with an arctic clothing department as well as household wares and school supplies: There are other arctic outfitters too, and stuff is not cheap here, expect to pay about $80 AUD for a good pair of warm gloves similar to what I could buy in Canada and the US 5 years ago for about $10AU. Even cheap knitted ones, not hand knitted either are around $20AU. We did see some good Canadian Goose down jackets for $700 AU some with at 30% discount and we wonder how much we could get them for from the internet as they look like really good coats. Food is expensive as almost everything has to be shipped in, I think even the reindeer meat is shipped in as here the locals are only allowed to shoot one reindeer per family per year or some such thing. Most people only spend about 3 or 4 years here then go back home.
There are other stores and some cafes, bars and restaurants and some travel excursion companies shops. A big indoor sports centre has a 25m swimming pool and a rock climbing wall. Its not possible to do rock climbing on the mountains here as the rock is too soft for pins to be driven into. All around the residential areas there are lots of snowmobiles parked, just out in the open. There are also trailers for them, a snow cat, that’s a vehicle mounted on caterpillar tracks that carries several passengers. Kids sleds sit discarded next to sand pits where more toys lay about. At present bicycles are the most popular means of transport but there is a hell of a lot of cars for a place that has only a few k’s of road and much of that is gravel. Found out later that cars are cheap here as there is no tax on them and they can be taken across to the mainland and used for three months then brought back. Hurtigrutn must run a car ferry up here I think though I haven’t seen anything about it.
There is a church up on the hill that commands a good view over the town, its very modern but quite nice inside. It’s Lutheran: I believe it’s the only church here. Near here too is a war memorial and a plaque on one of the old pylons that used to be part of the original conveyor system to carry coal from the mine to the power plant. While walking around here we accidently came across a sundial. It was officially unveiled on 6th March 2004. The instigator for it’s erection was a Tasmanian woman, and it was built at Lindisfarne in England. A leaflet there described all about it and the fact that it is the most northerly placed sundial in existence and is specially designed to work at this latitude; it also works as a moon dial. A web site gives more information:- www.longyearbyen.com/sun
The houses are built well up off the ground. Big pylons are sunk deep into the permafrost and insulation is laid then the wooden floor above that. This is done to prevent the permafrost from melting, if it does melt then the pylons become unstable and everything goes awry, as in Russia. Big pipes run around town delivering hot water, this is heated at the power station and then sent around to heat the buildings. It is much more efficient energy wise than having separate heating for each house.
There are several old coal mines around the town, the one in production now is mine no.7 and its well out of town. Half of its production is used for the power plant the rest is exported to some European countries mainly Germany. Apparently there is quite a lot more coal here that can be mined in the future. The seams run horizontally into the mountainsides and vary from .8m to about 3m in thickness.
We took a dog and cart ride; this is an alternative to dogsledding that isn’t possible if there isn’t any snow and at this time of year snow is only on the high peaks. Down low there isn’t really enough for sledding until November or even January sometimes. The most popular time for sledding is from late February onward when the light begins to return. The kennels where we took the ride have 80 dogs, most are male. They breed their own dogs but this year they didn’t need any more so they do not have any pups. The dogs are pure Alaskan Huskies, unlike in Alaska where they mix in other breeds as well. Here they like the purebreds and they also keep them in much better conditions. They have good wire mesh pens on gravel. In Alaska we saw that most dogs were kept just on the ground and it got muddy and really messy with dog pee and droppings, not so here, they are kept very clean.
The pups begin their training when they are 8 months old, at 12 months they begin working and continue until they are 9 to 12 years old. That’s a good long working life. They are feed mainly on dry dog food but in winter they also get some seal blubber to keep them in good working shape. Winter and spring is the working season: Another kennels we visited on the tour feed their dogs only seal meat in the winter and they don’t use them for anything at all during the year when there isn’t any snow on the ground. That kennels had at least 100 dogs and they had some seals hung up to dry. They also gave us some seal meat to try; first you took a piece of thin wafer crispbread, spread it with sour cream then added a small piece of seal meat. It was very salty and may have been cured, and I must say that I didn’t like it particularly. An old style hut built here, it is circular with a fire in the middle. Around the wall are all the bunks used for sleeping and covered in reindeer hides. Reindeer hides are especially warm as the hair is hollow and it keeps warm air trapped inside.
Anyway back to the dogsled ride: It was a lovely sunny day, probably around 4˚ in the sun with a chilly breeze blowing. The kennel owner arrived in a landrover to pick us up and take us to the kennels. We were given very heavy insulated overalls to wear over our clothes then we watched the dogs being harnessed up. I am certain that each dog in the kennels wanted to be picked for the job. These dogs just seem to live to pull the sled, it’s what they love to do. Once they are in the harness they behave much better though sometimes they still will have a go at one another. All these dogs are very friendly to humans, and most get on ok with each other, this is not the case in Alaska where they often tear each other apart and some will attach humans too. Here they use 2 lead dogs side by side in case something should happen to one, such as an injured foot. We had nine dogs pulling our cart, 4 pairs and an odd one immediately in front on the cart. The cart was designed with a bench seat in front where two people could sit but only our girl driver did so, behind was a bench seat of either side that could each seat 3 people. There were 4 of us, a Swedish lady, another Australian fellow from Newcastle and David and I. The man who had picked us up sat with us and told us about the history and the area as we were pulled along. Something that I had never heard before is that the moon shines 24 hours a day here in the winter. Now I bet that gives some very eerie lighting effects: Combine that with the northern lights and that would be something special: We saw some pink footed geese fly past and some barnacle geese on the ground but the reindeer we’d seen yesterday had gone.
We made a stop after about a half hour and 5k’s and the dogs were given a drink of water, then we were off again. We ended at another group of buildings owned by the kennels. Here they have built an exact replica of a house that William Barents, the Dutch explorer had built on Nova Zemlyn (not sure I’ve spelt that right) in 1596. It is quite a substantial building and on display are implements that could have been used at that time. The bunks around the wall are mostly longer in this house so as to accommodate the taller 21st century human, it Barents’ time they were only 170cm long, the bunks: The fire place too is more modern as it now has to be made of steel and set well above the floor to meet local fire standards whereas in Barents’ time it would have been on the floor. The wood used originally would have been cut from the driftwood collected around the shores of the islands; that driftwood comes from Siberia on the sea currents, the timber used in this house came from Norwegian forests. We enjoyed a coffee here and watched a short video of winter sledging. It looks like a really different experience and something that I would love to try sometime. Outside the dogs were taken out of their harnesses and tied to pegs then given another drink of water.
David got a short video of the dogs pulling the cart as we started on the return trip. Again we stopped to give them a drink about halfway. These sled dogs can average 10k’s an hour for around 6 hours a day with 6 in the team. When out on long sledging trips in the winter the dogs sleep outside the tents and should a polar bear put in an appearance then 5 dogs can take it down if necessary. Everything is done to avoid such a circumstance, but it can happen, in such cases it is often an old bear that is starving because it cannot hunt successfully.
We decided that we would visit one of the coal mines: There is only one open for tours and the info I read said that you didn’t have to take an organised tour but pick one up at the mine. It being only 3.5k’s from town we decided to walk. Turned out to be somewhat further but we got there eventually after about an 80 minute walk and that was with some shortcuts where the road zigzagged up the mountain. When we had started out it was -4˚C and although the sun had reached the valley by this it really hadn’t done a lot to warm it up but we had got fairly warm walking. When we finally got to the mine there wasn’t a soul around and we thought we’d wasted our time but just as we were about to leave a car rolled up. A man got out and offered us a tour now if we liked, we gratefully accepted. When we went inside the building leading to the mine shaft we found that there wasn’t any electricity on. It couldn’t have been off long as the room was warm from the heating. There was enough light from a window to see by so the fellow started by showing us the maps and charts of the mine shafts and explained the system of mining that had been used here.
This mine worked from the early 1970’s until 1996, by which time it was almost worked out, but it was also the time when the Norwegian government cut out the subsidy system and the mining company had to become economically viable or go out of business and this mine wasn’t going to be a paying proposition. The seam of coal is in a very narrow band from about 60cm thick to 1.4m thick, so that makes it very awkward to mine. The equipment used dates from the 1920’s and 30’s and its very labour intensive.
The mine has one long main shaft running through it for 3.5k’s, were we were was 270m above sea level and the shaft exited at the other end at 50 metres above sea level in another valley but at the level of the coal seam. This shaft has two railway tracks so the electric trains can go in empty on one track and come out full on the other. Off this main shaft there are evenly spaced side shafts that vary in length depending on how far the coal seam extended out in any direction. Some were several hundred metres long.
Long wall mining was the method used here: This is where the coal is taken out from the side of the shaft and gradually they work their way through to the next shaft, taking out all the coal between shafts.
The men worked in teams of three in three shifts of 8 hours round the clock. The first shift would have to cut out the first 15cm or so from the bottom using one machine, drill holes in the top and place in the explosive and that would blow the rest of the seam. They would do this along the length of the shaft: Second shift would come in with a scraper and scrape out the coal that had been loosened, drop it into the bins on the line below and have them ready to be hauled out, the third shift had to move the props that hold up the roof. This is very soft rock and all roofs have to be propped or they cave in, so the props have to be moved into the bit that had just been taken out. First though they have to take out the props from further back and for this they had tools with extended handles so that they weren’t quite so near to the caving roof. If one of the props was extra difficult the dirt beneath it might have to be dug out first then pull it out but some proved just too difficult to move so they got left behind to be forever embedded in the mountain. This shift had to move 200 to 300 of these props in their 8 hour shift so that it was ready for the cutting and blasting again.
We were each given a pair of overalls to wear and some work gloves, a hard hat with a lamp and a special breathing apparatus in case of dust from a cave in or methane gas. This is just a standard safety procedure but here the levels of methane gas are extremely low in the coal and in this mine they are almost nonexistent. Now we were set to enter the mine:
These mines are dug into the permafrost so they are going to be cold, this one has a constant temperature of -2˚C and during the summer, and I don’t know why, frost forms on the shaft walls making them sparkle in our torch light and white and sparkly when we shone the torch around. It looks really pretty. Icicles were hanging from some of the cables. The man showed us where they have a seed bank in one of the side shafts. There are hundreds of thousands of seeds from the Nordic countries in this seed bank. This is a good place to store them because of the constant below freezing temperature.
We saw where the fire engine is kept, it runs on diesel that way should there be a power failure it can still be used. About 500m along the main shaft we went into a side one and here the man showed us all the equipment he had told us about and explained how it worked. We were allowed to climb up into the narrow area of the seam that the men last worked on, it was only about 50cm high and these men would work in it for 8 hours with just a couple of tea breaks and a meal break. Just think of laying there in that narrow space with hundreds of metres of mountain overhead and knowing that this is soft rock that caves in very easily. Hells Bells!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wasn’t claustrophobic in there but I don’t think I would have liked to spend 8 hours in there day after day, they earnt their money I reckon. The power still wasn’t on when we got back to the meeting room so the man said he couldn’t do what he’d come to do in the first place and offered us a lift back to town that we gratefully accepted. When we went outside two male reindeer were grazing away peacefully at the edge of the car park. They are relatively tame here as no shooting is allowed in this area.
Our next project was to climb up to the cairn on the mountain, walk along the top and come back down by the glacier. For this trip we had to have a gun just in case we should meet a polar bear. So we hired one from one of the shops, and away we went. It was a steep climb and we were late starting after our coal mine expedition. The ground was rough going too, much of it over large angular shaped stones, bits of moss here and there and higher up a little patchy snow. I did ok but David was very slow, when I got to the top I had to wait a while for him. We still weren’t ad the top, just the cairn sitting right on the cliff edge and a view out over the town below. David, when he arrived was very exhausted and it was getting late so we gave the idea of the walk along the top away and instead descended along much the same route David had come up, not quite as steep as my route. The sun had gone from the valley by the time we got back and the temperature beginning to drop again so we returned the gun, didn’t really need it for that walk; it’s along the top that we might have encountered a polar bear. We still had 2k’s uphill to walk back to the hostel where we are staying.
The day we left we awoke to a very light sprinkling of snow on the ground. As we walked down the road towards the town centre we passed the school and there, sitting out in the yard on benches was a class of smaller children with a teacher having a lesson as if it were a pleasant summer’s day. All were dressed in their snow suits and the grainy snow was still falling lightly. By the time we left for the airport the snow was settling nicely. As we flew out the cloud had come down really low so we couldn’t see much at all.
It wasn’t until we were nearly in Tromso that the cloud began to break up and we could see some snow on the mountains as we came down to land there. It had been raining too. A short stop then on to Oslo and again it was thick cloud cover most of the way, clearing only in the last few minutes before landing. The airport is well out of the city and is surrounded by farmland with lots of fields of ripening grain and plenty of patches of forest. We landed there around 7pm and were already on the fast train into Oslo before the sun set around 8pm.
We got to our friend Sigrid’s’ home without any problems and were warmly greeted. We spent a lovely few days with Sigrid and went for some walks with her in the forest areas around Oslo. Each day we would set out with a basket or bag prepared to collect any mushrooms (sopp) we could find. Sad to say we never did find any although Sigrid had read in the newspaper that this year there was a really good crop of mushrooms. Someone else had beaten us to them. Except for one day we had lovely weather up to 17˚C, though I must say it didn’t really feel that warm to me, rarely took my jacket off. Sigrid also had a lovely crop of ripe plums on her tree and they were so sweet and juicy that we ate lots of them. The day we left turned really warm, it was 6˚C when I’d looked at the thermometer first thing but by the time we got to the bus station it was t-shirt and shorts weather. To get to Torp airport that is around 120k’s from Oslo we had a lovely bus trip through the countryside, and the bus cost wasn’t as much as the fast train from the other airport. That other airport is the main one.
Torp is the airport used by Ryan Air and a couple of other discount companies and it was almost deserted until our bus load of passengers arrived. The buses are run to connect with departing and incoming flights. The Ryan air flight had cost us a total of $61 AUD for the two of us including airport taxes, the fare was only $1 AUD ea. We left Torp in brilliant sunshine and very shortly run into thick cloud cover that stayed with us all the way to Stansted where we couldn’t see the ground until we had nearly landed. Stansted too, is in amongst farmland.
Back in England we went back to the same B & B where we had stayed before going to Iceland and where the car was waiting for us. We had another night here before heading back to Arundel and to our poor long suffering friend Heather.
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