Old postcards On the polar archipelago of Svalbard

This 1978 set, “On the polar archipelago of Spitsbergen”, was photographed mainly in the Soviet coal-mining settlements of Barentsburg and Piramida. The archipelago’s name was given in 1596 by the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz and means “pointed mountains”; his surname also went to Barentsburg, whose mine belonged to the Soviet Arktikugol (“Arctic Coal”) trust from 1932.

Most of these Soviet postcards of Spitsbergen deal with work and daily life: “Polar miners. The mine office and the Piramida mountains. Mine rescuers”, the mechanical workshops, Soviet geologists and the weather station in Barentsburg, surveyors near Piramida, a two-storey clinic under construction and a kindergarten. Piramida takes its name from the pyramid-shaped mountain above it, and opposite it lies the Nordenskiöld Glacier, which has a card of its own.

One card goes to Ny-Ålesund, with the Amundsen monument, the Tre Kroner peaks and a memorial to those who died on the Nobile expedition. The choice makes sense: in 1925, 1926 and 1928 the Amundsen and Nobile expeditions set off from there for the North Pole by plane and airship. Nature is covered by Isfjord, “Spitsbergen summer”, a seabird colony, the Palace Mountains and musk oxen.

The result is a portrait of an Arctic mining community, from the mine office to the kindergarten.