How does a town die? How does a place, once full of people, full of life, full of children playing, become a silent abandoned husk where the most lively sound is that of the wind rustling the metal siding of empty buildings. Buildings with basketball courts and swimming pools, drinking halls and movie theaters, libraries and, halls, all empty, all waiting patiently

to be used by people who will never return.

This is the story of how a town became a ghost town. This is the story of how a town became a ghost town.

This is the story of Pierre Meadon.

In the summer of 1910, a five-man crew of Swedes

aboard a steamship came to Svalbard as prospectors in search of new mining sites.

They had tried to do the same the previous two summers but had been held back by ice.

This time though, they managed to break through and arrived at a large pyramid-shaped mountain which they claimed for their country.

They called the land that lay in the shadow of that pyramid-shaped mountain, pyramedin.

But beneath this pyramid, you won't find mummies, you would find coal.

Or at least, that's what the Swedes had hoped.

For the next 17 years, Swedish workers mined at this site, mostly in the summers, until they sold the town to the Soviet Union.

When Arkegogel was formed in 1931, the company took the land and began preparing in earnest to make Pyramidden a true permanent mining town.

By 1940, after years of preparation and prospecting, it was finally ready.

A crew of 40 was shipped in from Russia and they spent a year living and mining there.

Things were going well, but of course everything came to a halt in 1941 when Operation Gauntlet led to the evacuation of the whole town.

Once the war ended, nearly every settlement on Sfallbard was in ruins but not Pyrameden.

For whatever reason, it had been spared from the destruction and so the

Soviets built a consulate there and began to repopulate the town. In 1955, Purimitan began coal production

yet again and over the next 20 years, mining would continue,

largely uninterrupted and moderately successful.

Though of course, they never made a profit.

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