For over 100 years, Norwegian mined coal on Sfallbard. In fact, without coal mining, it's unlikely

that Sfallbard would exist in anything like its current form.

When you see Longyear Ben now, with its mall and restaurants and tourists, it's easy to

forget it spent most of its history as a company town built and run by the Norwegian mining company Stornorsk, which has long been

owned by the Norwegian government.

For over a century, Stor Norfolk operated two main mines, Sveagruva and Linchavel.

For over a century, men did back-breaking labor in those mines

twiling away to produce the coal that would in turn produce food to put on the table.

For over a century, those mines made little to no profit because, as I have said

probably a dozen times now on this podcast, mining on Svalbard has never been profitable.

In 2017, the government decided that they were done for never been needed mining in order to sustain itself and so they pulled funding.

It was a logical economic decision but also one that meant that dozens of Norwegian miners were

out of a job.

Nowadays there's only one place on the archipelago where you'll find Norwegian mining.

Mine number seven, and even though it's called Mine Number seven, in the 52 years since it opened,

mines one through six have closed, which means that Mine number 7 is the only one that's left.

Right now it has 40 miners and in a great year it'll produce 130,000 tons of coal.

Less than 10% of what a mine like Svea would regularly produce.

It sells most of its coal to the local power plant in Longerbin, as it makes more sense for the

Norwegians to produce coal themselves as opposed to getting it shipped to Swalbard, which is an expensive endeavor.

The excess, about 60,000 tons a year, goes to a German mining company called Claryant.

As a wrinkle to this whole story, as if to make the process of the mining layoffs even more painful, coal prices have been on a roller coaster in the past two or so years, giving Norwegian mining a real hope of recovery and then dashing those hopes as quickly as they'd arrived.

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