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SVALBARD

‘Extraordinary’ red skies wow Svalbard locals

Midwinter usually brings nothing but darkness to the far northern Norwegian island of Svalbard, where the sun does not rise above the horizon in either December or January. But something special has happened this year.

Published: 28 December 2015 17:13 CET
'Extraordinary' red skies wow Svalbard locals
Sunset in Longyearbyen. Photo:Magnus Hagdorn/Flickr

An unusual set of meteorological circumstances have left islanders with striking skies of red and pink hues over the last week.

A number of Svalbard’s residents have taken photographs of the other-worldly skies, including Anastasia Gorten, who told state broadcaster NRK that the uncommon phenomenon is caused by sunlight being reflected by stratospheric clouds.

The position of the clouds between Svalbard and the Scandinavian mainland is the main cause of the red light rays. Ice crystals within the clouds split the sun’s rays and send the red part of the spectrum back towards the Arctic island group.

“The Sun’s red spectrum is shining on us in a unique way, from almost 30 kilometres’ altitude, during a time when we are unable to see blue light,” Gorten said.

Gorten also said that the northern lights were visible in the red sky, as well as a near-full moon.

Although similar red skies were seen on Svalbard last year, the phenomenon has not otherwise occurred since the early 2000s.

According to Gorter, the crimson and lilac winter skies are a sign of a mild winter – meaning above-zero temperatures on the island and an associated risk of avalanches.

Svalbard’s largest town, Longyearbyen, has already suffered one avalanche this month, with two people, including a two-year-old girl, killed by a snow slide on December 19th.

 

 

 

MUSEUM

Norway digitally freezes national treasures and stores them in Arctic archive

Norway’s National Museum has preserved some of the country’s most treasured artefacts digitally and stored them in a former mine on Arctic archipelago Svalbard.

Published: 11 November 2020 16:58 CET
Norway digitally freezes national treasures and stores them in Arctic archive
Photo: Bartek Luks on Unsplash

The Arctic World Archive was originally constructed in 2017 to “protect the world’s most important cultural relics”, the National Museum said on its website.

The data preservation facility is located on the island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, not far from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

The National Museum has now placed its entire collection of around 400,000 items as digital copies on plastic film rolls, which are to be stored at the Longyearbyen site.

“The dry, cold and low-oxygen air gives optimal conditions for storing digital archives and the film rolls will have a lifetime of around 1,000 years in the archive,” the museum writes. Emissions emitted by the archive are low due to its low energy consumption.

Offline storage of the archives also insures them against cyber attacks, the museum said.

In addition to all data from the National Museum collection database, high-resolution digital images of works by selected artists are included in the archive.

Works to be stored include ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch, ‘Winter Night in the Mountains’ by Harald Sohlberg, the Baldishol Tapestry and Queen Maud’s ball dress.

“At the National Museum we have works from antiquity until today. We work with the same perspective on the future. The collection is not only ours, but also belongs to the generations after us,” National Museum director Karin Hindsbo said via the museum’s website.

“By storing a copy of the entire collection in the Arctic World Archive, we are making sure the art will be safe for many centuries,” Hindsbo added.

In addition to the Norwegian artefacts, organisations from 15 other countries are represented in the archive, including national museums in Mexico, Brazil and India; the Vatican library, Sweden’s Moderna Museet and Unicef.

READ ALSO: Norway's Arctic 'doomsday vault' stocks up on 60,000 more food seeds

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