In Longyearbyen, local issues outweigh geopolitical concerns

On the last day of April, I stared out the window of a Norwegian Airlines Boeing 737 as Svalbard’s snowy mountains loomed larger and larger over the horizon. My seatmate, a bedazzled French tourist, snapped several photos by stretching in front of me and then behind me. I offered to take a few photos on her phone for her, which I did. Afterwards, though, she continued contorting herself around me. I couldn’t fault her: the terrain was otherworldly.

We were not the only people drawn to the archipelago’s glaciated landscape, as so many Arctic tourists find out upon arriving, much to their disappointment. Below us, Mark Zuckerberg was sailing on his $300 million superyacht Launchpad, with his second yacht, the aptly and obnoxiously named Wingman, right behind. Rumors spread that the billionaire had come to Svalbard for heli-skiing. Although the sport is banned in Norway, Zuckerberg was able to use his yacht’s helipad to circumvent the rules.

The first cruise ship of the year, National Geographic’s Resolution, had also docked in Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s biggest settlement, that morning for a four-day cruise. Prices for a berth started at over $16,000 – chump change for the one percent.

A Norwegian Air 737 disgorges its contents at 78°N.

Svalbard, the archipelago situated halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole, has attracted growing numbers of tourists in recent years, much like other Arctic destinations like Iceland and Greenland. I was one of the 200,000 air passengers who now fly to the Norwegian island each year in contrast to the 67,000 tourists who arrive by cruise vessel. While leisure was one of my motivations for traveling to Svalbard, I also wanted to get a sense of the current geopolitical situation.

As a result of the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, Norway holds sovereignty over the islands. The treaty’s 47 other signatories, however, among them Russia and China and also the United States and United Kingdom, possess certain benefits, including carrying out economic activity and establishing scientific facilities. Citizens of the signatory nations (and those from all other countries, too) can reside visa-free in the archipelago as well.

Svalbard’s unique legal status has put the islands in the crosshairs of Arctic geopolitics. Norway is trying to assert its authority and make the islands a “community for Norwegian families,” in the words of the government’s Svalbard white paper. These moves come in the face of an emboldened Russia keen to increase its presence and activities on the archipelago, including coal mining and scientific research.

Protestors in Longyearbyen take on Zuckerberg’s superyacht

In my first few days on Svalbard, it became clear that as in so many communities across the Arctic, people were far more concerned about local politics than geopolitics.

Soon after landing, I learned that a protest would be taking place at the Port of Longyearbyen to contest the arrival of Zuckerberg’s superyacht. I walked twenty minutes from town to the port in sunny but chilly temperatures as strong wind blew up the fjord. At first, I couldn’t find the protestors and only saw a couple of young women on bicycles. This was a promising sign, though, as I figured they might be students from the University Center in Svalbard (UNIS), who are often are the ones responsible for organizing environmental protests in Longyearbyen.

Almost as if on cue, from another part of the port, a stereo started playing protest songs. The bicyclists and I headed towards the sound and found a group of people who were gathering to hold up cardboard signs and banners that had been painted the night before.

The signs bore messages like “Zuck off our fjords” and “Don’t make polar bears pay for your luxury”. The students were emphatic that Svalbard should not become a playground of the rich, for its fragile environment simply can’t afford it. A study published in 2024 by Oxfam, an environmental NGO, calculated that a billionaire’s yacht emits on average 5,672 tons of carbon per year. This is triple the emissions of a private jet. It would take the average Norwegian 709 years to emit that much carbon, and the average American 350 years. Carbon emissions have an even more damaging effect on Svalbard than elsewhere in the Arctic because it is one of the region’s fastest-warming places. While the Arctic at large is warming four times faster than the global average, Svalbard is heating up seven times faster.

A protestor advocates for a local mountain instead of the social media tycoon.

For half an hour, I listened to speeches by Franziska Hasenburg, a member of Arctic Climate Action Svalbard, and Halvard Raavand, a representative of Greenpeace Norway, while rubbing my hands to stay warm. A photographer took what seemed like a hundred photos of us standing in the cold, with the mountains behind us offering a scenic backdrop.

Zuckerberg’s yacht, for better or worse, wasn’t in the picture. Hasenberg said that while she thought the billionaire’s ship would be docked at the Port of Longyearbyen that evening, he had instead chosen to anchor off the airport. “I’m not sure if it was because of a change of plans or if it was because he knew we would be here,” she suggested. “Let’s say it’s the second one.” I checked the MarineTraffic website and found this indeed to be the case: Zuckerberg’s yacht had apparently sailed from the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 5,000 kilometers to Longyearbyen, where the vessel was docked off the airport. (As of this writing, the yacht is now in the warmer climes of Spain.)

That evening, I had dinner with a researcher from the Svalbard Museum. They told me that a few days prior, they had been enjoying SvalBad, a floating sauna down at the port built out of reclaimed materials. The yacht, however, was blocking the view of the mountains across the Adventfjord. A friend of the researcher had taken a picture of the oversized ship and posted it to Facebook, but they weren’t able to “at” Zuckerberg to get his attention. I suggested that they should repost it to Instagram, another platform owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, since Zuckerberg seems to be fairly active there.

The protest left me feeling conflicted. While I find superyachts socially and environmentally reprehensible, here I was, a Californian like Zuckerberg who had benefited in a much smaller way from the tech boom, traveling in the Arctic. While I had research reasons for traveling to Svalbard, I had also come to partake in winter sports, albeit snowmobiling rather than heli-skiing.

A photo of Zuckerberg’s superyacht, Wingman, anchored outside SvalBad, posted to a Longyearbyen Facebook group. Screenshot: Ullrich Neumann (used with permission).

As Czech anthropologist Zdenka Sokolíčková makes clear in her superb book on the archipelago, The Paradox of Svalbard (2023), which is based on ethnography carried out between 2019 and 2021, the line between research and tourism can be blurry. After interviewing numerous UNIS students, Sokolíčková observes, “…there were only a few who would admit their motivations to come to Svalbard overlap with the motivations of those who visit without a scientific purpose – the tourists – as if leaving behind a significant ecological footprint were better justified by collecting data for a Master’s thesis than by fulfilling a once-in-a-lifetime dream to experience the Arctic” (p. 71).

No doubt, Arctic research – including my own – exerts a significant carbon footprint, as scientists and students fly to the north by plane from destinations hundreds or thousands of miles to the south.

I also felt conflicted over my role here on Svalbard. Though I’d come to make observations, I suddenly found myself carrying a sign someone handed to me against the superyacht. “Don’t make the glaciers pay for your luxury,” it declared in navy blue ink. Here I was, temporarily bound up in local politics rather than merely making observations of them. I ended up in several of the photographs run by several of the Norwegian news outlets which reported on the event, including Verdens Gang. “Is that you?” my friend in Oslo wrote to me. “You’ve only be in Norway for a few weeks and you’re already in the news!” they remarked. Seeing as I’m drawn to newsworthy events in a newsworthy place, it sounds about right.

May 1: Another day, another protest

The next day was Labor Day in Norway and 159 other countries around the world. In Norway, it’s a day for political organizing and calls for social justice. I heard there would be a number of activities that evening at the church, which is both the world’s northernmost religious gathering spot and a hub for community organizing. The Svalbard Church seamlessly merges these planetary and local identities.

I was a little late for the 5pm “Solidarity Service,” slowed down by a thick blanket of snow that had fallen earlier in the day during a sudden springtime blizzard. Fortunately, the snow turned a hill that would normally be an impossibly steep field of scree into a useable shortcut, which I hurried up as the church bells pealed through the glacial valley. Upon reaching the church, I took off my shoes upon entering, which is a custom dating back to the days when coal mining was the dominant industry, and dirtier of floors, in Svalbard. I headed upstairs to the service, where a church member warmly greeted me and handed me a psalm book. Almost immediately, I started singing along as the only visibly non-Norwegian person in the audience. At one point, we sang the Svalbard psalm, which was selected as the church’s new anthem, if you will, out of 19 entries, in a competition held in 2008. Written by Geir Knutson and Tore Thomassen, its first verse goes:

Farthest north in the Norwegian Sea
among ice and snow and wind
there is an open church
where people can go in
A light that always shines
when night falls long
A hope that still rings out
from the church bells’ ringing

The service was delivered by Liv Simstrand, a priest bedecked in a rainbow stole. A magnetic speaker who has been covered in a photo essay by The Guardian, Simstrand spoke about climate change, Trump, Ukraine, and Gaza. There were several musical performances, including a cover of Bob Dylan’s song, “The Times They Are a-Changing,” which also was the theme of the sermon that evening. Its message must have been one of the must liberal I’ve ever heard in a religious service. The pamphlet slipped within the pages of hymn book also had instructions for how to donate to NORWACS, the Norwegian charity assisting with emergency health aid in Gaza.

After the service ended, we headed outside and I found myself enveloped in yet another protest. Two in two days! It was quickly becoming clear that Longyearbyen is not only geopolitical hotspot: it is locally politically active, too. This time, the protest signs were pointed not at Mark Zuckerberg, but, implicitly, at the Norwegian government. “NEI TO SOSIALDUMPING” (“No social dumping)”, said one. This is the term given to the practice of Norwegian employers treating and paying foreign workers, of which there are many in Svalbard from Thailand and the Philippines employed in the service industry, worse than Norwegian workers.

“INGEN BOLIG, INGEN JOBB” (No housing, no jobs), said another protest sign. A third demanded lower energy prices. With the Norwegian government set to finally end coal mining on Svalbard this summer, Longyearbyen’s coal-fired power plant was shut down in 2023. In the long term, a move towards renewable energy is planned. But in the meantime, Longyearbyen has switched to diesel power, which has pushed up energy prices.

Laying flowers at the memorial dedicated to those who lost their lives in the mine.

Meeting at the statue of the miner in the town square.

We walked up a snowy hill to a memorial for miners who lost their lives while working for the Norwegian state-owned coal company on Svalbard, formerly known as Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani, between 1916-2016. After a speech was given, flowers were laid, and a moment of silence held for those who lost their lives in Svalbard’s coal mines, we walked a few kilometers into the center of town, where protests often culminate at the statue of the miner. The protest leader again said a few more words, and another moment of silence was held.

Then, we retired into the Kulturhuset (Culture House) for chocolate cake and coffee despite it being 7pm. A Norwegian politician gave a speech for thirty minutes. Her talk was followed by rather more entertaining musical performances of an impressive caliber – all the more so considering that Longyearbyen only has 2,500 residents. One boy of about twelve played the theme song to the French film Amélie on piano, while two teenage girls sang “Linger” by The Cranberries. These were followed by a Norwegian choir, traditional dancing, and a brass band.

At first glance, the entertainment might have seemed lighthearted. But local (and geo-)politics can be read into the event, even in the absence of protest signs. I didn’t spot a single Thai or Filipino person in the audience or on stage despite them making up a significant proportion of Longyearbyen’s residents. Instead, they are often hidden away in hotel kitchens, in cruise vessel cockpits, or grocery store stockrooms. And much of the musical talent is due to the Norwegian government’s support for cultivating local arts and culture in the settlement, even as it in recent years stopped offering a Norwegian language class for newcomers. While no real reason was given, the effect seems to be making non-Norwegians feel increasingly unwelcome in the archipelago. In Longyearbyen, life, as anywhere, is political – and so is the song and dance, too.

Epilogue: The 100th anniversary of Svalbard. becoming Norwegian territory

In Oslo this past Wednesday, another brass band was playing – this time, at a symposium held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Svalbard being a part of Norway. While the Spitsbergen (later Svalbard) Treaty was signed in 1920, it did not go into effect until 1925. The King and Queen of Norway and the crown prince and princess attended the anniversary event, at which the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Astri Aas-Hansen, spoke. She underscored:

“The main message here is that the state is taking a stronger grip on developments and strengthening national control over activity in Svalbard. This message reflects the situation we are in – in the country as a whole – and in all of Europe. National security is high on the agenda, and this also affects Svalbard.”

Away from Svalbard, geopolitics, not local politics, reigns supreme. And while the archipelago may be open to all, its master is battening down the hatches.

Screenshot of video from Svalbard 100 Year – Symposium. Source: Regjeringen.no