The Guardian,
Saturday March 8 2008
Spring in the Norwegian arctic seems to spend a long time plotting its annual comeback. When it returns, though, it does not disappoint. The permafrost and glaciers of Spitsbergen forbid the early flowers that erupt further south, but the islanders have their own way of knowing when winter is over.
Day by day in late January and February, the sky grows light again. And today, the people of Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, which claims to be the most northerly town in the world, will bask in their first full day of sun since October. Spring's light has been bugling itself around the island this week, dying the mountains pink, the sea deep azure and the sky rose, green and yellow.
From the hills, it looks like a watercolour come to life. But the 2,000 or so inhabitants pay a high price for their spring spectacle: three months of freezing and total blackness.
When the darkness comes, there is little to do but work; coal must be mined, scientific experiments undertaken and the community fed and cared for. Some try to drink the winter away, while others visit friends and search the sky.
"The darkness is very hard," says Mary-Ann Dahle, who runs one of the town's three hotels. "It feels good when the light starts to come back, the darkness can be very depressing. The longer you stay, the harder it gets." She thinks the long, dark winters are one reason why people don't stay on the island for as long as they used to. "Young people used to come here for about five or 10 years, but now they only stay for one."
Over the last decade, four people Dahle knew in the community have killed themselves. "It's something to do with this place when it's dark. If you sit at home, it's like you're living in a bubble. If you're not active in the community, then you've got a problem."
Liv Rose Flygel, a glass artist who also works in the cafeteria at the tiny airport, came to Longyearbyen when she was a baby. "This place is my home. I like the darkness and it doesn't bother me because I have grown up with it." Far worse, she says, was the time she spent in "grey, depressing" mainland Norway.
She believes the onset of winter tends to unite Longyearbyen. "When it gets dark, people come together, because they are scared of the darkness - and the polar bears. They start visiting."
The community, though, is changing, partly because of the tourists who come to ride snowmobiles and look for the bears, and partly because of the influx of new people from all over the world.
Founded by John Longyear, a US mining magnate, a century ago, destroyed by the Nazis in the second world war and rebuilt from scratch, it is now an international centre for mining and scientific research. Most residents are Norwegian, but there are a few hundred Russians, 70 or 80 Thais and a solitary Iranian who sells kebabs from a van.
As befits workers who spend much of their lives underground, Longyearbyen's miners are indifferent to the changing seasons. "The dark is OK," says 30-year-old Guttorm Wilhelmsen, who has stepped out of the Kroa bar for a cigarette, apparently oblivious to temperature of -22C. "I do have friends who can't take the dark. They just head back to the mainland when it comes."
Far more annoying to him is the constant light of the midnight sun, which burns from April to September.
His colleague and drinking partner, Pål Karstensen, has his own strategy for keeping the winter blues at bay. "I work for 14 days and then have 14 days off. And like coal miners all over the world, when I'm not working, I get drunk."
Some mainlanders are more concerned about other perils stalking the archipelago. One passenger on the flight from Tromsø was perturbed by the captain's invitation to look out for furry yellow stains on the pristine snow. "I'm worried about the bears," he said. "I have been practising my shooting."
The interplay between light and dark, humans and nature, holds most of Longyearbyen's residents in its thrall. But even its most devoted inhabitants recognise tourism and economics are changing the island's character.
A cold outpost surrounded by bears and hours from specialist medicine is not the most practical place for retirement. "We'll stay until my husband is too old to work and then we will go to Norway," says Flygel. "But I love it here."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/08/arctic.endangeredhabitats