After sailing across the glacier front of Kronebreen, we sailed out of Kongsfjord anchoring on October 6 at Blomstrandhalvøya where we stayed over night. Some of us chose to forgo a landing on the 7th to work instead on the the ship. I focused on getting all my images transferred to my hard drive as well as polishing up my first video.
Docking at Pyramiden
From there we sailed further south and on Tuesday the 8th we moored at PYRAMIDEN.
Pyramiden is a Russian settlement originally founded by Sweden in 1910 and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. It was a viable coal mining community with a population of over 1,000 inhabitants until 1998 when it was suddenly closed. It remained largely abandoned with most of its infrastructure and buildings still in place. Russia is now beginning to maintain the structures and develop this ghost town into a tourist destination.
I took a whole series of images that I actually began to develop on board. Here are some examples:
In a recent episode on Pyramiden, on the History Channel titled " Life After People" they predicted that due to the low rate of decay in a frigid climate, the abandoned town's major buildings would be visible 500 years from now.
Leaving Pyramiden for Skansbukta