The ruins of Grumant, a Soviet ghost town on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard

The Svalbard archipelago has been under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Norway since 1920, but has a very specific legal status.

Pyramiden: a Soviet ghost town on a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean
The German World War II bomber that was 59 years abandoned on an Arctic island

Before Svalbard came under Norwegian rule, these remote islands north of the Arctic Circle were abandoned and were established by Russian coal mining settlements. The 1920 Svalbard Treaty prohibited naval bases and military fortifications on the islands, although it does allow Norway to maintain military forces on the archipelago to ensure its sovereignty.

At the same time, the treaty allows people of any nationality to settle on the islands and exploit them economically within Norwegian law. This helped the USSR continue its mining operations in Svalbard. The USSR had several towns on the islands. The largest were Pyramiden, now almost abandoned, and Barentsburg, a town of 297 inhabitants that is the second most populated locality in Svalbard. Even today it remains under Russian control and its inhabitants are mostly Russian.

In western Svalbard is Grumant (Grumantbyenm in Norwegian), a Russian settlement established in 1912 that grew to over 1,100 inhabitants by the mid-20th century. Located along the coast, this place was like a part of the USSR in Norwegian territory, like Pyramiden. Due to the lack of a deepwater port, coal mined in Grumant was transported by narrow-gauge railway to another Russian settlement, Kolsbey (Colesbukta in Norwegian). Grumant was abandoned in 1961, but the Russian company that operated the village still retains ownership of its buildings.

Last Sunday, YouTuber Cecilia Blomdahl, a Swedish citizen living in Longyearbyen, the largest town in Svalbard (with just over 2,000 inhabitants), posted an excellent video visiting and exploring the Soviet ghost town of Grumant:

I'm ending this article with some screenshots from this fantastic video, which contains images worthy of a great photography artist:

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Main image: Cecilia Blomdahl.