VLADIMIR  VOJIR                       

published: Czech geographic magazine - KOKTEJL - 1999, July/August

© Vladimir Vojir 1999

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The date is March 30, 1995 and a plane of Scandinavian airlines is getting ready for take-off at the airfield in Tromso in northern Norway. The destination of this „inner-state“ line is a distant Arctic archipelago Spitsbergen. Nina Olaussen, a college student, waves her parents, waiting behind the airfield fence, before boarding the plane. None of them has an idea that flight would be her last …

After a two-hour flight the plane brakes sharply on a very short runway of the Longyearbyen airfield at Spitsbergen but stops safely. The same day Nina and her friend start for a short trip to the nearest neighbourhood. On Platåfjellet plateau both see for the first time a lone polar bear. He is two years old, weights only 88 kilos and slowly approaches them. Girls are not armed. Nina’s friend jumps immediately down the steep slope and runs fast back to the village for help. Just 13 minutes after her information has been received a helicopter with the Spitsbergen governor lands on Platåfjellet. But Nina is dead already. She was 22 years old...

FEAR (POLAR BEARS)

I did not know of this tragic incident but still I was much afraid of meeting the polar bear before my expedition to inland Spitsbergen. Four thousand polar bears, protected worldwide since 1973, live nowadays on Spitsbergen, more than inhabitants. But humans and bears have divided their “spheres of influence” rather reasonably. Bears mostly wander in the north-eastern part of Spitsbergen, by the coast and on ice floes where they hunt seals. People settled on the western part, which has nice climate thanks to the warm Gulf Stream. And only exceptionally, if the winter is really cruel, the bears may travel in search of food across the archipelago to areas where they can meet people. And then tragedies might occur: on July 18, 1977, a bear killed a 33 years old skier in Magdalena fjord. On September 6, 1987, a bear on Edgeøya island attacked two Dutch biologists. One of them was badly wounded. They were armed but their weapons did not have sufficient calibre. Luckily, they both survived the attack. „My Spanish revolver ASTRA 357 Magnum is big enough for a bear according to local hunters’ experience,” tries to allay my worries the head of our 14-member expedition, including two women, Miroslav Jakes, the well-known arctic explorer and conqueror of the North Pole. Spitsbergen are probably the only place on earth where you do not have to have a gun permit, quite opposite, here they press them on you. In Longyearbyen, you can borrow some from a large assortment of rifles, including products from Brno gun factory. To use a gun against bears in not so simple though. Not just because perhaps only an experienced local hunter is capable of keeping cool head and firm hand while meeting a bear. It is necessary to aim accurately, as there is only one spot where a bear can be killed instantly – the chest. But there are administrative limitations. It is permitted to kill this strictly protected animal exclusively in case of an imminent life hazard. A series of steps must precede though – starting with a proven effort to avoid the direct contact, to warning shots into the air. Each such event is investigated by a commission of Spitsbergen authorities – the same way as courts judge a “reasonable self-defence”. And if they do not find it reasonable, you do not risk a prison sentence but such a high fine that you may not be able to pay it to the end of your life. Each evening before going to bed, we install wires with signal rockets and petards around our tents. They should react to a touch and perhaps shy away an uninvited guest. Meeting a bear scares me. At the same time, I would love to see some bear from a distance. Simply a paradox. I did not have such luck during my whole stay on Spitsbergen.

EMPTINESS (DESERTED MINES)

The steep mountain slopes of Grumant valley, by the shores of a majestic Arctic Ocean, were once the site of one of the first Russian coal centres on Spitsbergen– Grumantbyen. „At the beginning of 50’s, even over 1000 miners used to live here. But the mining proved unprofitable and so Russians left it in 1961“, Mirek tells us of this strange place, of which the official tourist information says nothing. It is not easy to reach it. The approach both from the sea and by walking along the coast is practically impossible and an inland detour will take us two days of an intensive march. The inexorable ravages of time and the rough Arctic climate had done their job on a location that once had belonged to the largest settlements on Spitsbergen. Deserted and half-ruined structures have remained from once snug houses of miners. The dusk is near and I slowly enter one of them. Up the stairway probably not touched by human foot for many years and all covered all over by some lichen. It’s a house with no windows, no doors. I walk through individual rooms. The storeroom contains the remains of various instruments, parts of miners’ Davy lamps and rusty lanterns. On devastated walls I can see inscriptions in Cyrillic alphabet as well as children drawings. Sitting on a bed in one of living rooms I watch the cups and glasses scattered on a table. They still keep their shape given to them by someone, sometime 40 years ago. Whole families including little children lived here less than a thousand kilometres from the North pole. With their worries and joys. Motionless and silent clouds, hanging low above the gulf, look at me through the whole between the beams of a disintegrating roof. It is so silent here that suddenly it seems to me that you call my name. But here it sounds so unreal. And I forget how I feel… (my body is rejecting the cure).

I shall return to others. All of them watch a white polar fox with a great interest. She holds a seagull in her jaws and is so confused that she drops her prey and then starts to wander aimlessly through rusted remains of mining equipment, rails and other scrap metal spread all around in abundance. A crooked wire colossus towers above all this – a scythe and a hammer. It seems that this symbol of the past quite fits here both by its style and symbolically. I have a great desire to investigate a little old coal galleries the openings of which are spread at surrounding foothills. Equally great is the danger – who knows what Russians had left in there and their timbering is so rotten that it stands only by magic. And I forgot to pack a carbide lamp and helmet into my almost a quintal weighing rucksack. Anyway, the ice collected around their entrances mostly prevents the entry to mines. Perhaps never before have I felt such a strong emptiness as here, on this desolate and perhaps godforsaken spot. And I am leaving Grumantbyen as well...

NOSTALGIA (AN OLD RAILWAY LINE)

Due to its position and relatively shallow coastal waters, Grumantbyen made it impossible for Russians to build here a coal preparation plant, a transfer point and especially a loading port. They built them in Colesbukta bay, about 10 kilometres southeast from here. An old narrow-gauge line connects both locations. It runs along the coast, partially through tunnels in a massive of mountains that sometimes plunging almost vertically into the ocean. But where the spacing of contour lines mapping the coast of Isfjord was more favourable for Russian engineers, these tunnels dug in rocks were supplemented by wooden tunnels. They protected the line against snow but due to the potential danger of fire prevented using the steam machines, which I love so much. I am walking the timber sleepers of the whole section of this line. It is the world northernmost railroad, excluding a short rail connection in Ny-Ålesund, located just several degrees of northern latitude to the north. The Russian engineers perhaps calculated the optimal distance between sleepers but for me, carrying my rucksack, camera and video camera, is absolutely inconvenient. If I step on each of them, I am trotting and overstepping one is just too much. I stop to take pictures of the rails that under the influence of the frost and frequent landslides took slightly bizarre shapes than we have been used to from well-behaved rails. Before I take off my sack, find a suitable place, figure out composition push the release and pick up again my heavy load, others will disappear in a distance behind the mountain gallery. Then I recall the bear and to be sure, regardless the sleepers, I step lively. The only one having the weapon is Mirek and, as usual, he is far ahead. This march, for me so demanding and exhausting, he takes as a light training. The remains of a wooden tunnel above the old line are strangely quite well preserved and there are no signs of disrepair or rotting. I cannot resist and take some heavy rusty thing from the rail line, perhaps once serving to charge electric engines. Later, when we climb a steep slope to overcome some mountain, my colleagues make fun of me: „We are all traversing but Vladimir also carries a traverse.“ Each of us is liable to pack a piece of a plank from this tunnel. There is not one tree on Spitsbergen. So later, we can make a fire from these pieces a Russian tunnel. And it smells so good…

LOVE (RUSANOV’S COTTAGE)

A lonely cottage stands about a kilometre from the desolate Russian port, by the old rail line on the Colesbukta bay coast. It is one of the nicest on Spitsbergen, built in 1912 by a Russian geologist Vladimir Rusanov. „In the depopulated Spitsbergen inland there are several other cottages. Some belong to Norwegians, other to Russians. A little difference between them lies in the fact that the Russian ones are never locked and therefore are ready to offer a shelter to anybody needing it. Simply different national mentalities and the Russian sole is open…” explains Mirek. A comfortable cottage, its big stove radiating such a pleasant warmth in a while, with several bunks and even kitchen utensils, is a true act of charity for frozen trough and hungry pilgrims exhausted by a several days long march. I walk outside and spread my wet tent on a wooden table. Others are inside and I am alone on the bay shore. I watch its quiet surface, the distant massifs of mountains the opposite coast, the Arctic sky, and suddenly I am overwhelmed by a strong melancholy. What on earth is more beautiful than the sky? I thought I would see the Blue (Love) and kept saying to myself how wonderful colour it would be. But I see only clouds wandering across northern skies. And they are white and sad... They pass like human dreams...

The Russian geologist Vladimir Rusanov built this cottage on Spitsbergen in 1912. Commissioned by the Czar’s government he searched for coal here and also made a series of scientific researches. Although he had completed his tasks successfully he was so fascinated by the Arctic that he set off further north. His French mistress accompanying him out of her love was the first woman who had the courage to participate in a polar expedition. Their next fate was tragic though and has remained mystery till today.

 

The next day I shall look around the second room of Rusanov’s cottage, which is a sort of small museum of this explorer. His large picture hangs on the wall. I know Russian enough and translate to my colleagues from his biography the story of his tragic fate, till now unexplained. This man was well educated but many times imprisoned for his progressive ideas by Tsarist regime. He spent a part of his life in Siberian exile. While studying natural sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris he had met a student of medicine Julie Jean and they fell in love. But Rusanov was fascinated by the North and somehow managed that the Russian government even put him in charge of a polar expedition to Spitsbergen. His small ship Hercules landed on these islands in 1912. Here Rusanov searched coal deposits for Russia, mapped and claimed them. He built this cottage to be able to winter here. He completed his task quickly and well but did not return home. Instead he set course for his beloved north, this time on his own and wanted to go through the north-eastern passage from Atlantic to Pacific. On board, next to his nine men crew there is his beautiful French fiancée, perhaps the first female participant of a polar expedition. Vladimir resisted for a long time but Julie persevered – she would just always follow her beau anywhere. Hercules was seen for the last time on August 8, 1912, heading from the estuary of Matockin Sar passage to Kara sea, extremely ice covered at that time of the year. Then the Rusanov’s expedition has vanished. Some objects and pieces of writings demonstrably belonging to the expedition were found in 1934 but its fate has remained a mystery. Julie’s father died of grief in Paris, having lost his last hope of seeing his only daughter again after two-year waiting in wane. Here, at this place, in this cottage, both young people loved each other so long ago… I help with cleaning the cottage and preparing firewood before our departure. We are leaving here a part of our food for other visitors. Will they come in a month or a year? It is an unwritten law though.

PAIN (PLANE CRASH)

On August 29, 1996, a plane TU-154 belonging to a private Russian company Vnukovo is taking off the Moscow airfield. Its direction is a distant Spitsbergen archipelago. Ukrainian and Russian miners who are returning after their vacations back to work in Spitsbergen coal mines are waving for last time to their relatives and nobody suspects that it would be their last flight... Spitsbergen reports bad weather with low overcast. At that time, other 120 miners ready to fly home wait impatiently in Longyearbyen airport hall. Because of the strong wind, captain of the plane asks for permission to land from the sea but the Norwegian control tower insists on the usual landing manoeuvre from the opposite direction. Without giving any emergency signal, the plane flying in poor visibility conditions hits an Opera mountain, less then 10 kilometres east of the airport shortly after 10 a.m. All 141 passengers on board, including 3 children, die...

According to the agreement from 1920 when Spitsbergen, this nobody’s land, fell to Norway, Russians have the right to mine the coal here. Two national communities have begun to grow here in 20’s - Norwegian and Russian - and the Russian one has more population. It is strange but mutual relationships here in the north have always been literally exemplary, regardless of all ideological antagonisms, cold war and other nonsense of time limited span. Then the tragedy of the TU-154 cast a certain shadow on them. A culprit has to be always found and everything, the technical state of Russian airlines and the frequency of accidents on Russian lines witnessed then against Russians. There were talks of drunken Russian pilots but Russians had their information and so the mutual visits and traditional joint cultural and sports activities were influenced for a while by this event. „Really we tried to lay the blame for this tragedy on Russians,” says a sympathetic Norwegian hunter. We talk in an isolated cottage in the Spitsbergen inland. He invited me for a talk and some cognac, so precious and expensive here. He shot a reindeer short time ago and its entrails are hanging around the cottage. „But it was not so, the Norwegian personnel of the control tower made a navigational mistake.” And this tells me a proud Norwegian! The real truth about causes of this catastrophe probably will not be ever known, if somebody knows them. Not too long ago, a Russian investigative commission performed here a reconstruction of the landing of the unfortunate TU-154. I do not know its conclusions. But it is good that the relationships of Norwegians and Russians on Spitsbergen are again as good and friendly as they used to be for so many years...

 

I stop by the stone memorial on Platåfjellet, built on the place where Nina once met the bear. Instead of a usual epitaph, only photography is on the marble slab. The photography of a beautiful young girl. Fresh flower prove the unfortunate Nina has not been forgotten by her own even here, so far north.

 

Written and photographed by: Vladimir Vojir

 

Prague, 1999, May 15

translation: Dr. Pavel Kriz

© Vladimir Vojir 1999

 

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