October 25, 2016 'Longyearbyen at Its Best:' Modern Tragedies, Triumphs Part of Traditional Tributes During Syttende Mai Celebration Page 7
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FREE Weather summary Cloudy w/ occasional rain and strong winds, w/ temperatures dropping from 4C to below 0C this weekend. icepeople Full forecast page 3 The world's northernmost alternative newspaper Vol. 8, Issue 29 October 25, 2016 www.icepeople.net 'Longyearbyen at its best:' Modern tragedies, triumphs part of traditional tributes during Syttende Mai celebration Page 7 “ To believe that the governor can rescue people out, regardless of circumstances, is wrong. There is no guarantee for that. - Per Andreassen, police lieutenant Svalbard governor's office ” UNIS MARK SABBATINI / ICEPEOPLE The road between Huset and the old museum, left, is closed due to multiple landslides on Platåberget, right, since an intense rainstorm Oct. 14-15. Late update: 12 apartments vacated again due to building, infrastructure damage. MUCK AMUK icepeople.net Worst landslides in more than 40 years close roads, prompt warnings for travel in mountain areas By MARK SABBATINI tures have set in. of the ground that begins in October has not Editor Longyearbyen has received nearly 150 started yet – and it will be a long time before A month-long stretch of record rainfall millimeters of precipitation since July 1, the underlying permafrost is full solid. and unusually warm temperatures have trig- roughly twice the average for that time span, "Perhaps by Christmas and New Year's gered the worst landslides in Longyearbyen said Ole Humlum, an adjunct professor of everything will be frozen up," he said. since 1972, forcing the closure of roads near physical geography at The University Centre Humlum offered his observations about What's next: Lots of people offer ideas as hillsides and prompting safety officials to in Svalbard. Temperatures have been two to Longyearbyen's landslide situation during a Parliament finally weights the possibilities. warn people not to travel near mountainsides three degrees Celsius above normal during presentation Tuesday evening at UNIS. Much Page 3 in wet weather until after freezing tempera- much of that timespan, so the typical freezing See MUCK, page 6 Between kid and adult 14th annual Dark Season Blues puts old, new side-by-side on stage KJERSTiN ASKHOLT / SYSSELMANNEN By MARK SABBATINI Some very familiar faces a lot of new ones Editor will be among the 15 bands performing during There's a famous band celebrating its 50th the four-day Dark Season Blues festival starting anniversary by making a comeback. An ob- Thursday. The festival, now in its 14th year, is COURTESY OF DARK SEASON BLUES scure local one celebrating maybe its 50-day sticking mostly to the schedule that has made it Norwegian singer Tina Lie is among the artists anniversary. And some visiting veterans shar- Svalbard's most popular music event, although making a return appearance to this year's Dark MAKSYM BOREIKO ing the stage with a new group of local youths. See FESTIVAL, page 11 Season Blues Festival starting Thursday. Skinning the localsSee REALITY, Jumbo page 4shrimp stink Swampland in Svalbard? Who charted? Bear pelt helps Trawler fined Did Noway get Mystifying us 'win' telethon 850K for took in sale of maps of – yet again poaching private land? Svalbard Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 9 https://us- mg6.mail.yahoo.c om/neo/ launch?.rand=epm v8hf4ja5bp# Page 2 October 25, 2016 Who's to blame and how Gamle Sykehuset reborn – as a crash barrier to express your wrath Editor Mark Sabbatini Bag lady Marion Prudhon Principal of principles Kristan Hutchison Psychiatrist Irene Gallion Accomplice Get some real dirt on icepeople! Jeff Newsom Our global headquarters available for rent during the March 20 eclipse! Sleeps three on actual Mailing address furnishings (double bed and sofa), plus a few can squeeze in on the floor. Washing machine, turbo Icepeople wi-fi and about a 5-10 minute walk to most places. Plus, you'll be helping provide our pitiful little Vei 210 -2- 13 newspaper with desperately needed funds. Contact [email protected] for details. Longyearbyen, Svalbard GAMELOFT 9170 A decaying apartment that 30 folks (including our vagabond editor) got hastily tossed out of is a Norway potential target of revenge in the upcoming video game Asphalt Xtreme. Evicted residents will be able to use the collapsing former hospital as a demolition target and/or crash barrier in the game Telephone for PCs and mobiles devices. The racing game puts players on an unusual assortment of off-road Norway: +47 41 51 46 38 terrain, and provides them with “various vehicles like rugged SUVs, rally racers, and buggies that U.S. +1 (970) 673-4472 are suitable for such environments,” according to an official description by the developer. Locations include Thailand, Egypt, the Gobi desert and Svalbard – and, yes, it appears we’ve all PRIVATE E-mail been confused about where various buildings are located around town. But we squinted really [email protected] hard at the preview shot above and there’s no doubt we can see what look like digitalized cracks Web site that have appeared in recent years in the right places. There’s no release date specified at the www.icepeople.net company’s website, but since you can now get some virtual currency by pre-registering we’re assuming it’ll be out before the building collapses on its own Icepeople is published weekly (or thereabouts) on Tuesdays (or thereabouts), with printed copies available free on a limited basis in Icesheet Longyearbyen. Additional printed copies are available locally and by mail upon request. Random bits of the week's weirdness: probably won’t bring down the local travel in- Charges are on an "at cost" basis. Uh-oh. Is it possible Svalbard has already dustry all by herself. But how long will it take Briefly hit peak tourism just as the industry is start- before the inevitable “it’s being overrun” arti- Copyright stuff ing its all-out ramp up to replace to mining? cles become the norm?…And then there’s the Lucy Fuggle, in a blog post at The Huffington little-known set of islands just east of ours, Cruising: Getting out of Original contents of this publication can be Post, sounds like the ideal type to visit here: a which is getting gobs of global headlines right reproduced for non-commercial purposes free solo traveler with a small backpack looking for now in publications from series scholarly jour- danger, but into 'death?' something unusual in June. “I was initially nals to seedy scandal sheets. This space being of charge if Icepeople is credited as the Another cruise season is about to embark planning to hit up Svalbard this summer, the what it is, we’ll go to the always reliable Sun of source. The original writers, photographers full speed ahead in Svalbard, but the smiles of why-would-you-go-there island above Norway L o n d o n t o r e v e a l “ H i t l e r ’ s G h o s t Mainland town claims to be top and other contributors retain their rights to all those greeting passengers aren't being shared where you’re compelled by law to carry a gun Island” (a.k.a. Franz Josef Land, 800 kilo- published works. by a lot of industry executives these days. per-person telethon giver, a title to fend off polar bears if you leave the town meters east of Svalbard): “Secret Nazi ‘Trea- They took a blow last month when Britain limits. But the thing was, I knew people who sure Hunter’ base in Arctic found by Russian held by Longyearbyen for years issued a warning telling travelers cruising here Corrections policy had already been there. But I didn’t know any- scientists after being abandoned over 70 years is too dangerous. That warning may be re- one who had been to Greenland. I pondered this ago when crew was poisoned by polar bear When we screw up you'll know about it – on while browsing the Lonely Planet and seeing a meat.” It’s not like we need to add a lot to that the front page. One of the big complaints write-up from a clearly wild and exciting travel description. Oh, except the always reliable Rus- about newspapers is they tend to bury writer. The photos were incredible; the remote- sia Today says it was a meteorological station corrections and clarifications deep inside ness overwhelmingly tempting.” So the next that mostly provided needed weather data from where few people who read the original article several hundred words and many pictures are the Arctic during the war to help German cruis- see them. If we need to fix something, an alert devoted to that unspoiled Arctic landscape, ers and submarines that were conducting raids SYSSELMANNEN box on the front page will state what story is in rather than our heavily traveled one. No, she along the Northern Sea Route. error and where the full correction is printed. Submitting material ANONYMOUS Letters, columns, photos and other material Waaaait a minute…Who allowed this greenie are welcome, but we can't offer pay for propaganda photo to slip by our Truthy editor? published items since nobody here is getting paid at the moment. Submissions in electronic form (text, Word documents, JPEGs, etc.) are highly preferred, although typing and/or scanning of items will be considered on a per- case basis. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length, clarity, accuracy, libel October 25, 2016 Page 3 HEADLINES STOLEN FROM SVALBARDPOSTEN VERDENS NORDLIGSTE AVIS Replacing runway lights may seriously limit summer flights Replacing the lights and smoothing out the surface on the runway at Svalbard Airport may severely affect tourism next summer, according to industry officials.