Guidebook: Spitsbergen-Svalbard

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Advent City

Early coal mining in Spitsbergen

Advent City is on the north side of Adventfjord, opposite Longyearbyen airport.

Advent City, on the north side of Adventfjord opposite the airport, was a small early coal mining settlement that was in operation from 1904 to 1908.

The first panoramic view is from April 2013, giving an impression from the light part of the winter. All other panoramic photos are from July 2017.

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There is not much left of Advent City today. You can see where some buildings once stood. There are still remains of old machines close to the shore and the wreck of a small ship lies on the beach. The entrance to the actual mine can still be seen on the slope in an altitude of about 120 metres.

A few years after Advent City was abandoned, the buildings were moved to Hiorthhamn, about 2.5 kilometres inland from the fjord, where they continued to be used.

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It is difficult to say exactly can be seen here. A steam boiler, some kind of machinery, and some kind of small railway from the mine to the shore.

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This kind of ‘railway’ is referred to as ‘bremseban’ in Norwegian, which translates as a ‘braking railway’. If anyone knows a better translation, I’d love to hear it. It was probably a kind of summer toboggan run on rails.

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In the winter of 1905-06, work was carried out in the mine all year round for the first time, but on a rather modest scale. The following winter (1906-07), there were as many as 70 people in Advent City.

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Here – the location where the following images were shot – we are in the central area, halfway between the shore and the mine. This is where the miners had their accommodation.

The human factor, along with the poor quality of the coal (see below), was one of the main reasons for the failure of Advent City (and probably also the Hiorthhamn mine): There were considerable difficulties between the English manager of Spitsbergen Coal & Trading Co, Ltd and the Norwegian workers.

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The Englishman Muscamp had previously been an officer in the Boer War in South Africa and probably thought he could adopt a similar tone in his dealings with the workers. Obviously completely different cultures clashed here, British capitalism on the one hand and Norwegian workers with a more socialist attitude on the other. It is harly exaggerated to describe the atmosphere that sometimes prevailed as bad, to put it mildly, and strikes and a lot of troubles were the result, which also had an impact on the mine’s profitability.

Here we can probably see the foundations on which buildings stood. Due to wind, snow drift and cold, it was advantageous not to place them directly on the ground.

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As mentioned, another problem was the poor quality of the coal, which dates back to the lower Cretaceous period and is therefore older than the Tertiary (Palaeogene) coal, which was mined in Hiorthhamn and Longyearbyen.

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The coal seam at Advent City was of rather poor quality: a layer of sandstone runs through the middle of the coal seam, which is naturally unfavourable in terms of quality. You can see the sandstone in the photo and in the panorama.

The coal seam at the entrance to the Advent City mine is of Lower Cretaceous age.
The occurence was not profitable because of poor quality.

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In the winter of 1907-08, there were between 30 and 40 people in Advent City. The following summer was the last operating season of the mine. The following winter, two trappers hired as guards were still on site, but they did not get their agreed wages after the winter. As compensation, they loaded everything they could onto two ships and auctioned off the cargo in Tromsø.

That was the end of Advent City. Fredrik Hiorth from Kristiania (Oslo) took over the rights in 1912, and he soon began investigations on site, which led to the start of mining in Hiorthhamn in 1917. That’s where the story continues.

Photo gallery Advent City

And last but not least, a collection of photos with various impressions of Advent City from fjord to fjell, from shore to mine, from winter to summer. Compiled during several visits from 2013 to 2020.