Mine 2b Longyearbyen
Perched on the steep, wind-scoured slopes above Longyearbyen, Mine 2B looms as a skeletal testament to the ambitions and hardships of Arctic coal mining in the 20th century. These photographs trace the eerie remains of the site, where time and weather have worn the timbered catwalks and buildings into a precarious choreography of collapse. Originally constructed in the early 20th century, Mine 2B was a central cog in Svalbard’s coal economy, operated by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani.
In the first images, we follow a splintered wooden boardwalk clinging to the mountainside, leading past derelict cabins and towards the shattered skeletons of loading platforms and cableway pylons that once ferried coal down to the valley. A light snow caps the distant peaks, while the vibrant structures of modern Longyearbyen dot the tundra far below — a stark juxtaposition of decay and renewal.
Deeper into the fogbound heart of the site, the main coal sorting facility emerges: vast, multistoried, and ribbed with aging beams. Inside, shafts of cold light fall across dusty floors and rusting machinery. Abandoned workbenches still bear the scattered documents and helmets of miners long gone — as if the workers might return at any moment. The final images, taken inside the coal sorting structure, reveal a poignant still life: a rust-pocked helmet resting on faded papers, under the slanting light of a cracked window. The silence here is not empty — it is dense with memory.
This mine, decommissioned decades ago and now preserved in semi-ruin, embodies the stark isolation, danger, and endurance of life in the high Arctic. It’s a place where architecture, geology, and history blur — a ghostly sentinel above the fjord, watching over a town and world transformed.
Mine 2b Longyearbyen
Perched on the steep, wind-scoured slopes above Longyearbyen, Mine 2B looms as a skeletal testament to the ambitions and hardships of Arctic coal mining in the 20th century. These photographs trace the eerie remains of the site, where time and weather have worn the timbered catwalks and buildings into a precarious choreography of collapse. Originally constructed in the early 20th century, Mine 2B was a central cog in Svalbard’s coal economy, operated by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani.
In the first images, we follow a splintered wooden boardwalk clinging to the mountainside, leading past derelict cabins and towards the shattered skeletons of loading platforms and cableway pylons that once ferried coal down to the valley. A light snow caps the distant peaks, while the vibrant structures of modern Longyearbyen dot the tundra far below — a stark juxtaposition of decay and renewal.
Deeper into the fogbound heart of the site, the main coal sorting facility emerges: vast, multistoried, and ribbed with aging beams. Inside, shafts of cold light fall across dusty floors and rusting machinery. Abandoned workbenches still bear the scattered documents and helmets of miners long gone — as if the workers might return at any moment. The final images, taken inside the coal sorting structure, reveal a poignant still life: a rust-pocked helmet resting on faded papers, under the slanting light of a cracked window. The silence here is not empty — it is dense with memory.
This mine, decommissioned decades ago and now preserved in semi-ruin, embodies the stark isolation, danger, and endurance of life in the high Arctic. It’s a place where architecture, geology, and history blur — a ghostly sentinel above the fjord, watching over a town and world transformed.