Pyramiden Museum

About

The Pyramiden Museum is a small museum located in Pyramiden, an abandoned town in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The museum features exhibits on biology and history, for example in the form of taxidermal polar wildlife, geological samples from the surrounding area, a few archaeological artefacts from the Pomors, some information on the coal mining industry, and a slew of Soviet memorabilia. Located 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the regional capital Longyearbyen, the settlement was founded by Sweden in 1910 and purchased by the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1927.

A prominent coal mining settlement, Pyramiden once had a population numbering over a thousand, and a flourishing community. While on Norwegian territory, ruled by the Governor of Svalbard, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 granted significant freedoms to signatory states in regards to their economic activities. Pyramiden – like the two other USSR-owned settlements on Spitsbergen, Grumant and Barentsburg – was administered largely without Norwegian insight, and according to Soviet societal norms.

Among the facilities found in the town was a museum, a direct predecessor of the currently existing one. In 1998, a few years...