Pyramiden, Norway

Pyramiden was a small Soviet coal mining town 50 km north of Longyearbyen in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. It was abandoned in 1998 but has since become a tourist destination with a single hotel that houses a museum, gift shop and post office. This updated postmark was put into use in May of 2021.

Polish Polar Station Hornsund

This recently came back to me from Svalbard. The Polish Academy of Science has been operating an Arctic research station on Spitsbergen island since 1957. The base is situated on the north side of the Hornsund fjord, about 136 km south of Longyearbyen.

This isn't the envelope I sent up there, but those are the stamps I used. The original cover must have been damaged somehow (wouldn't be the first time) so someone salvaged the postage and sent me this instead. No postmark and only the "41st Polar Expedition" stamp marked on the front but there were some extras inside, including a couple of pages with various hand-stamps on them.

UK Arctic Research Station in Ny-Ålesund, Norway

Managed by the British Antarctic Survey and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the UK Arctic Research Station in Ny-Ålesund is a seasonal research base for conducting environmental research in the Arctic. I sent this to the base four years ago and just got it back this week!

Sveagruva, Norway

Sveagruva is a mining settlement on Spitsbergen island, 60km south of Longyearbyen. It is the largest coal mine on the island and employs over 300 people who all live in Longyearbyen. Nobody permanently lives in Svea and yet, they have a post office there. The animal on this faded postmark is a muskox.

Dirty cover from Hopen, Norway

This is from the meteorological station on Hopen Island (part of the Svalbard archipelago). This cover had a rough journey. At some point is was soaking wet and started falling apart at one end. But somehow it managed to find me.

Bjørnøya, Norway

Bjørnøya or Bear Island is the southern most island in the Svalbard archipelago. It's about half way between the Norway mainland and Spitsbergen, the main island of the Svalbard island group. In 2002 the entire island was declared a nature reserve and the only people living on the island are the personnel who operate the  weather station.

At one time the post office at the weather station was using a pictorial postmark with an image of an arctic loon on it.

The Netherlands Arctic Station, Ny-Ålesund

I like coming back from a long vacation to find my mailbox stuffed with mail. Unfortunately this time it was mostly bills and junk mail, except for this one. I sent this to the Netherlands Arctic Station late last summer and when the station was opened this past June my request to have this cover returned to me was finally answered.

All philatelic mail returned from the station gets the "Barnacle Goose" cachet that was applied to this envelope. It was also signed by researchers Nico van den Brink and Martine van den Heuvel-Greve and base leader Maarten Loonen. I wish I had sent a bigger envelope. Next time.

The station website has lots of information about this tiny research base and the team that supports it. Dr. Loonen keeps the site updated with photos and videos about their research and Ny-Ålesund. A very informative site. And while looking through his blog I came across an entry that mentions preparing philatelic mail at the Ny-Ålesund post office. You can even see my cover in the image on the left side of the counter.

Barentsburg, Svalbard

Barentsburg is a Russian mining settlement in the Svalbard archipelago, a short distance away from Longyearbyen. It's a Russian village with a population of 500 and it has a Norwegian post office. Svalbard is Norwegian territory but they allow other nations to have mining settlements there.

There is also a larger 'Barentsburg' cachet on the back of the envelope, similar to the one in blue on the front. The postmark is not very clear though. The image on the postmark is a Svalbard grouse.

Koldewey Station, Ny-Ålesund, Norway

This cover came back to me today from the AWI's Koldewey Station in Ny-Ålesund. Koldeway was originally a German research station but the AWI merged its Arctic research operations in Svalbard with the French IPEV and now conduct their research in the Archipelago jointly.

I sent this cover to the AWI headquarters in Bermerhaven, kindly requesting that it go up to Koldewey station and be mailed back to me. And at the time I was under the impression that all of the station's mail was somehow returned to Bremerhaven where it would enter the mail stream so I stuck some German postage on it. But in hindsight, why would they do that?!? It's in Ny-Ålesund; home of the world's most northern post office. I should have just mailed it directly to the station with the correct Norwegian postage on it. Fortunately someone up there (thank you very much whoever it was) was kind enough to stick the correct postage on it and mail it back to me through Ny-Ålesund.

Two reasons I'm glad this came back through Norway Post: 1) It has a different version of polar bear franking labels on it (these were either older labels, or labels used exclusively in Svalbard... can't recall) and 2) it has the new Ny-Ålesund postmark on it.

Ny-Ålesund, Norway

Although the postmark says Ny-Ålesund, the postmark request was sent to Oslo. It would be nice to see this postmark replace the actual one used at Ny-Ålesund. The last few I've seen from there looked a little worn out. But I suspect this is just a philatelic postmark to be used by the Norwegian philatelic bureau in Oslo.

Dasan Station, Ny-Ålesund

This was mailed back to me from South Korea's Dasan Station in Ny-Ålesund (Norway) by Dr. Soon Keun Chang of the Korean Polar Research Institute (KOPRI). He is an honorary research scientist with the division of polar earth system sciences. Dasan Station is a seasonal base established in 2002 for conducting environmental research, glacial and periglacial geomorphology, hydrology and atmospheric chemistry. The building is maintained by Kings Bay AS: the company that owns everything in Ny-Alesund. This same building houses the French IPEV Rabot Station.