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Concept
Barentsburg
Summary
Barentsburg (Баренцбург) is the second-largest settlement in Svalbard, Norway, with about 455 inhabitants (). A coal mining town, the settlement was almost entirely made up of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. With the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of the Ukrainian citizens were reported to have left.
Rijpsburg, a now abandoned Dutch settlement on Spitsbergen on Cape Boheman (Bohemanflya), at the north site of Nordfjorden in the Isfjord, stood roughly diagonally opposite Longyearbyen. The Rotterdam-based Van der Eb and Dresselhuys Scheepvaartmaatschappij (ship-building company) built it in 1920, using prefabricated huts, for the mining of coal. Twelve Dutch staff and 52 German miners started mining coal here that year.
The Dutch Spitsbergen Company, founded in 1920, bought a mine in Green Harbour from the Russians and mined coal from 1921 to 1926. The company renamed its settlement Barentsburg after the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz. In 1932 the company sold the mine, including its settlement Barentsburg, to the Russian trust Arktikugol.
On October 17, 2006, Norwegian inspectors detected a smouldering underground fire in Barentsburg, prompting fears that an open fire might break out, which would have forced the total evacuation of Barentsburg for an indefinite period of time, and would also have caused environmental problems of unknown magnitude for the entire archipelago. The fire was later contained. Coal mining resumed at the end of 2010.
Under the terms of the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, citizens of signatory countries have equal rights to exploit natural resources, and as a result Russia, along with Norway (via the Sveagruva mine and Mine 7), maintains mining operations on Svalbard. However, as Svalbard is under Norwegian sovereignty, the Russian government is represented in Barentsburg by a consulate. This is the northernmost diplomatic mission of any kind in the world.
Consequently, the town has a Norwegian postcode, 9178. Similarly, it uses Norwegian telephone numbering.
Official source
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