The refuge of water

By Flavia Tomaello, https://flaviatomaello.blog/, Instagram @flavia.tomaello

The maps of the Arctic abound with names that evoke feats, shipwrecks, kings, whalers or scientists. Very few suggest what actually happens upon arrival. Colesbukta, known internationally as Coles Bay, seems to promise just another inlet on the western coast of Spitsbergen. However, it is enough to set foot on that stony beach to discover that the protagonist here was never the landscape, but rather the extraordinary capacity of human beings to insist on inhabiting a territory where everything conspires in the opposite direction.

The first impression belongs to visual silence. Not because elements are missing, but because none of them demand attention. The sea remains motionless. The mountains, rounded by millions of years of ice, draw a mineral amphitheater around the bay. The tundra covers the slopes with a carpet of mosses, lichens and tiny arctic flowers that barely survive a few weeks of summer. Only later do abandoned buildings appear, almost absorbed by the landscape, as if nature had decided to slowly recover them without having to destroy them.

Colesbukta is located at the entrance to the Grønfjorden, very close to Barentsburg, one of the only two permanent settlements still active in Svalbard outside of Longyearbyen. That proximity explains a good part of its history.

Before becoming an industrial enclave, these coasts were part of the immense territory traveled by European whalers since the beginning of the 17th century. The Dutch, English and later Russians arrived attracted by the abundance of bowhead whales, walruses and seals. That extractive economy transformed the region for decades, although the real change would appear much later, when important coal deposits began to be exploited under these mountains.

The mineral would forever mark the identity of Colesbukta.

At the beginning of the 20th century, several companies began explorations on the western coast of Spitsbergen. After the Treaty of Svalbard of 1920, which recognized Norwegian sovereignty while guaranteeing economic rights for other signatory countries, the Soviet Union consolidated an important mining presence here. Colesbukta became a shipping port for coal mined mainly in Grumant and later in Barentsburg.

For decades, small locomotives moved wagons loaded with ore to the docks. Conveyor belts, warehouses, workshops and administrative buildings made up a daily scene where hundreds of Soviet workers coexisted with one of the harshest climates on the planet. Coal exploitation was never solely an economic activity. It also represented a demonstration of political presence in a territory where different nations shared rights under a Norwegian administration.

Today hardly any vestiges remain.

Metal structures show the oxidation of saline air. Some buildings have broken windows and doors left open by the wind. The old rails appear interrupted by arctic vegetation, a tiny, persistent vegetation that slowly reoccupies the space given up during the last century.

Nature always returns

Walking through Colesbukta produces a feeling that is difficult to find elsewhere in Svalbard. While many landings are dominated by glaciers, bird colonies or great mountain panoramas, here the experience takes place among the traces of a human activity that practically disappeared without the need for major catastrophes. It simply stopped being viable.

Mining progressively decreased until the facilities were abandoned. The landscape then began a process inverse to the one it had been involved in for decades. Where machines used to circulate, mosses began to settle. The birds used roofs and beams as occasional perches. The reindeer recovered old industrial paths to move between the slopes.

It is inevitable to think about the speed with which the importance of a place changes. For much of the 20th century, Colesbukta was an essential logistics network for the Soviet economy in the Arctic. Today it constitutes an almost archaeological testimony of that period, preserved by isolation and by the strict environmental regulations that protect the historical heritage of Svalbard.

The bay also allows us to understand another unique characteristic of the archipelago. Here human history always occupies an extremely brief chapter compared to geological chronology. The mountains that surround Grønfjorden began to form hundreds of millions of years ago, when this region was much closer to the equator and extensive swamp forests accumulated organic matter that, over time, would end up becoming coal. The same deposits that fueled the industrial colonization of the 20th century were born during the Carboniferous, long before modern mammals existed.

While the wind passes through the empty buildings, the sea remains completely alien to that history. On the coast there are common eiders, kittiwakes and occasionally a seal resting near the shore. It is not strange to see reindeer feeding among old railway embankments. In summer, the continuous light softens the austere appearance of the landscape and turns the tundra into a surprising succession of greens, ochers and small violet or yellow dots produced by the brief arctic flowering.

There is a tendency to imagine the High Arctic exclusively as an ice universe. Colesbukta offers another perspective. Here the ice matters, of course, but also the memory of those who tried to build a stable life in a territory governed by winter darkness, extreme temperatures and isolation.

Leaving the bay you have the impression of having visited a museum without showcases. No sign explains what happened. No reconstruction attempts to beautify the past. The structures remain exactly where their useful days ended, exposed to wind, snow and the slow work of time. That authenticity makes Colesbukta one of the most eloquent places in Svalbard. Not because of what it preserves intact, but because of the way in which it allows us to observe the permanent dialogue between human ambition and a nature that, sooner or later, always finds a way to recover the last movement.

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