Tag: sovereignty

Svalbard is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. Average temperatures are up, and sea ice is declining. Life there means having to adapt to longer summers and shorter, warmer winters. Svalbard, a Norwegian Arctic Archipelago located midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, and the spectral presence of abandoned Soviet-era coal mining towns on the peninsula are the subjects of this paper. Shaped by Soviet coal mining, this essay is framed by an analysis of spatial haunting and Cold War/neocolonial aspirations and current anxieties around climate change. Evidence is rendered concrete through abandoned industrial architecture and the combined spectres of war and climate catastrophe in the region. This conceptual framework provides a setting for the analysis of Pyramiden, an abandoned Soviet coal mining town on Svalbard. It serves to explore the Arctic as more than terra nullius; rather, it presents a region of ambiguous spatial sovereignty produced in the interstices of governance. This highlights an evolving spatiality that rests on Arctic fantasies and imaginaries materialized in “haunted” sites like Pyramiden.