Advent City is an abandoned coal mining settlement located on the east side of

Adventfjorden Adventfjorden (Advent Bay) is a 7 km long and 4 km wide bay running south-eastwards from the southern side of Isfjorden, on the west coast of Spitsbergen in Svalbard. The name represents a corruption of ''Adventure Bay'' - probably name ...

on the island of

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It was founded in the early 20th century and was the first year-round mining village in Svalbard. The village was situated on a fell field with a High Arctic

tundra In physical geography, tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term ''tundra'' comes through Russian (') from the Kildin Sámi word (') meaning "uplands", "treeless moun ...

vegetation grazed by

Svalbard reindeer The Svalbard reindeer (''Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus'') is a small species of reindeer found on the Svalbard archipelago of Norway. Males average 65–90 kg (143-198 lb) in weight, females 53–70 kg (116-154 lb), while fo ...

and

geese A goose (plural, : geese) is a bird of any of several waterfowl species in the family (biology), family Anatidae. This group comprises the genera ''Anser (bird), Anser'' (the grey geese and white geese) and ''Branta'' (the black geese). Some o ...

and dominated by mountain avens (''

Dryas octopetala ''Dryas octopetala'', the mountain avens, eightpetal mountain-avens, white dryas or white dryad, is an Arctic–alpine flowering plant in the family Rosaceae. It is a small prostrate evergreen subshrub forming large colonies. The specific epithet ...

''), polar willow (''

Salix polaris ''Salix polaris'', the polar willow, is a species of willow with a circumpolar distribution in the high arctic tundra, extending north to the limits of land, and south of the Arctic in the mountains of Norway, the northern Ural Mountains, the no ...

''),

mosses Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and horn ...

and

lichens A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among hypha, filaments of multiple fungus, fungi species in a mutualism (biology), mutualistic relationship.3D reconstruction of Advent City
in its heyday. Advent City was a

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

camp operated by the Spitzbergen Coal & Trading Co., Ltd, based in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

, United Kingdom. After the discovery of a seam of Early Cretaceous coal in 1901, a coal claim was staked out by the Norwegian A/S Bergen-Spitsbergen Kulgrubekompani. The mining activity started in 1903 and the first structures appeared, which included a small smithy, a kitchen and a mess tent. Additional buildings and structures, including a bakery and two streets, followed in 1905 after the Spitzbergen Coal & Trading Co. had taken over the mine in 1904. Advent City had c. 100 inhabitants from 1904 to 1908. The small coal mine was, however, unprofitable due to, among other factors, the disappointing quality of the coal, the poor working conditions in an exposed environment, and the differences in language and culture between the British management and the Scandinavian workers. Advent City was abandoned in 1908. Unpaid guards confiscated portable possessions and a neighbouring mine salvaged some machinery and buildings. All remaining buildings were moved to

Hiorthhamn Hiorthhamn is an abandoned settlement located on the east side of Adventfjorden on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway. It served as a coal mining camp from 1917 to 1921 operated by De Norske Kullfelter Spitsbergen. The settlement was n ...

in 1916 and 1917. The human activity at Advent City was short but intensive and with significant local environmental pressure. The settlement and mine changed the local landscape. The inhabitants hunted and fowled, disposed waste, and imported non-native animals and plants. After a hundred years after the abandonment of the settlement and mine, ground clearances, animal dung and waste dumps continue to have an effect on landscape and vegetation. Dung and waste dumps are highly

eutrophic Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in phytoplank ...

and are still unsuitable for

liverworts The Marchantiophyta () are a division of non-vascular land plants commonly referred to as hepatics or liverworts. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of ge ...

and lichens. A reduction of the natural patchiness of the tundra vegetation can also be observed. However, despite these effects on the vegetation, the impact of Advent City is mainly restricted to the visual impact of its ruins on the landscape.

References

Former populated places in Svalbard 1906 establishments in Norway Spitsbergen {{Spitsbergen-geo-stub