You don’t have to do a big stunt in Longyearbyen before you get a nickname. It’s the same with places. Here’s the history of some of the local place names.
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Ahlmannkåken
Building 316. The Swedish glaciologist, geographer,
professor and ambassador in Oslo, Hans Jakob
Konrad Wilhelmsson (W.son) Ahlmann (1889-
1974), erected the building on the south side of
Murchisonfjorden, opposite Søre Russøy on
Nordaust landet, at the Sveanor base in the summer of
1931. SNSK bought it and placed it where
it stands today, below the church.
Prayer House
Road 238/21. Was built in 1990. The somewhat square
two-storey house with 13 apartments was quite
lonely down by the sea before the other houses
were added. Got the name because some believe it looks
like a prayer house.
Blåmyra
Road 232. Started in 1990. The blue-painted
houses are partly located in marshy terrain.
The cage or virgin cage
was built in 1947 and is located opposite Stormessa
in Nybyen, above what was then Formannsmessa.
Here, there were cabins for female fairground attendants.
The fair moved to Busen in 1985 and
Buret became a regular dormitory.
Burma Road
The first Burma Road was built around 1950. The
new Burma Road was built in 1963 and is
partly below the old one. The Burma Road between
Burma and China was of great strategic importance
during the Second World War. Hence the name.
breasts
is part of Lompensenteret, which was built in
1985. Britt Ohm won the competition to name the café
. As you know, the bus is the honorary name
of a miner.
Cowboy town
Route 234. The facades of the houses resemble sets
for a cowboy movie with their small verandas at
the entrance.
Sparks
Egentlig Funksjonærmessa (FUM) was built
in 1947 and was housing for unmarried salaried employees.
The boys lived on the right when we came up the stairs
to the second floor, and the girls on the left. On the first
floor there was a table tennis room (later a billiard room),
a fireplace, a telephone booth, a separate booth
with white tablecloths, a lounge and a VIP area for
SNSK’s guests.
Grønnbrakka
At the old cable car angle at the
descent to the Milky Way. The building was first used as
housing. In February 1987, it was converted into a
pistol range with fine caliber. Coarse-caliber pistol
from 1992.
Hiorthhamn or Moskushamn
In 1918, the place was named Hiorthavn after director Fredrik
Wilhelm Louis Hiorth. In 1933, the name Hiorthavn
was changed to Hiorthhamn in accordance with a rule that
Nynorsk orthography should be used as far as
possible when it comes to place names on
Svalbard. In 1938, Hiorthhamn was renamed
Moskushamn because 17 musk oxen were put ashore
from Greenland in 1929. Changed back to Hiorthamn in 2002.
The house
is the abbreviation for the community center that was
built in 1951 and is located at the foot of the road to
Sverdrupbyen.
Indian village or Spisshusene
was built in 1976. The field of identical houses in Vei
230. At first, they were called Indianerlandsbyen
because of their pointed roofs. Not long after
it became Spisshusene.
The basement
From 1984-1992 there was a polo shop in the basement of
Funken.
It was called Kjelleren. Before 1987, you could buy crates of beer
in the basement of AMV (workers’ fair
west) in Sverdrupbyen. It was also called Kjelleren
– or Ølkjelleren. Beer sales were moved to the
store in Nybyen in 1987.
Clogs
Prior to 1985, people lounged (changed into/out of work clothes)
in various places such as Maskinbrakka
at Skjæringa, Funken and Nybyen (the main swimming pool).
From August 1985, the multi-purpose center
was called Lompen, where you walked in clean on the upper
side of the bathroom and in dirty mud out to the bus on the
back, and vice versa. This bathroom section of the
multi-purpose center, which also contained a laundry
and offices, was named Lompen after a naming competition
won by Judith Gylseth.
Løwøbroen
In 1953, NSB’s Sørlandsbane supplied Ing. Fridtjof Løwø
in 1953 delivered the railway bridge that formed communication
between Mine 1b and Mine 4. The track
was 17 meters above the ground. It transported rock from Mine
1b to the other side of the valley in connection
with the planning of Mine 4. Later used for
coal transport. The bridge was demolished in 1981.
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Milky Way
“Iron cow’s milk” (made by machine from powder) was
made in the basement of Stormessa until 1995. You
could collect milk in buckets at various locations in
the city. In 1985, bread sales and all milk collection
were centralized to the new multi-purpose building.
It was said that the governor’s wife had too far
to go, so they had to build the so-called Milk Road
in 1985.
The pearly gates
A landslide from “Vannledningsdalen” at Haugen destroyed
the bridge over Hilmar Rekstensvei just below
Haugen in 1989. As there was already a
parallel road from Haugen to the sea, the decision was made to
just make a footbridge over the river. Because people
were used to driving here, the railing was marked
with many reflectors in all colors. They shone
like pearls on a string in the light from the cars.
Supplies
Built in 1950. At the power station in the seaside area
was the provision store with frozen goods, vegetables
and dry provisions. At that time there was no ordinary
grocery store. Based on an overview list,
a requisition was written and placed in yellow mailboxes
around the city. The goods were packed and
delivered to the door, and the bill was deducted from the wages.
This was only for households with access to
kitchens, and it was mostly families that had
access to them to begin with. In 1992, the new
Svalbard store was opened in the town center, and Provianten
stopped selling food.
Riding fence
Hybelhus 232/16 built in 1979. Named after
the Reitgjerdet asylum. The name was a little kick
to the many teachers and government employees who
lived there.
Rose cellars
The basement in Murboligen between Funken and the old
hospital that was built in 1954 was called Rosekjelleren.
Until the beginning of the 1980s,
Funken had its own fair for the unmarried white-collar workers
who lived there.
The unmarried girls (the roses) who worked in the
kitchen lived in the basement of Murboligen.
Thus Rosekjelleren. Another explanation is
that it was a hive of activity and was compared
with Rosekjelleren in Oslo.
Russeboligen
228/9+11 was built in 1975. Employees
of Aeroflot lived here from 1975 to 1991 when they had
flights to Longyearbyen every Wednesday.
Shang-Po-Lar
From Maundy Thursday 1962 to 29/9-1984, a Shang-Po-Lar evening was
arranged with a local orchestra
in Nysalen in Sverdrupbyen. Chinese
symbols were painted on a wide
band around the walls, and exotic paper lamps were hung
up. A starry sky was painted above the stage.
Skjæringa
From the quay front on the old quay, there were trolley tracks
in several directions. To make it
less difficult for the horses, they made a ditch/cut
through the mound roughly where the governor’s
administration building is located today.
Hence the name Skjæringa.
Stone Tip Valley
During excavation work in Mine 2a, stones were
dumped in Gruvedalen. Thus the name
Steintippdalen in the vernacular until
residential buildings began to be planned here in
the early 2000s.
Stormessa
Arbeidermesse øst (AMØ), which was built in
1948 in Nybyen, is called Stormessa. Here there was
room for 550 people at long tables. 1600
m² spread over two floors. Later rebuilt and
had different functions.
Svea apartments
228/1-5, built in the 1970s, was called Sveaboligen
because the house type was to be a prototype
for houses that were planned to be built in Svea at the
time there were big plans for Svea.
The sin
Hybelhus 220 at Perleporten. Here there was life
and excitement.
Tarzan loft
Fitness room with equipment on the second floor of
Lompensenteret, which was built in 1985.
Villa Gjennomtrekk or Jernsenga
The beds and the stove standing on the slope inside
Adventdalen.
A group had cleaned up Passhytta and
replaced the beds and stove in 1961. They burned
all the rubbish on site, but the steel beds and
the stove had to be discarded in town. On the return trip with the
weasel, Kristen Bøen decided to dump
them on the bank as a landmark because they
needed a landmark right there in bad
weather. And that’s how Villa Gjennomtrekk came to be.
In recent years, only the name
Jernsenga has been used.
Eagle’s Nest
The official name is Hiorth-fjellgruva,
but the facility was called Sneheim. In later times
also called Ørneredet.
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Kilde: Kari Holm
